The Eight Worldly Winds
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When we find ourselves caught in the gales of the Eight Worldly Winds—gain and loss, fame and disgrace, praise and blame, pleasure and pain—we have no more control over our minds and lives than an inflatable “air dancer” flopping in the breeze outside a used car lot.
In this talk, Zuisei looks at how we give up our power by frantically chasing after what we want while running away from what we don’t, trapped by an obsessive desire for life to be other than it is. Drawing on foundational Buddhist teachings, she points the way to freedom within—rather than from—life’s storms.
This dharma talk on the Eight Worldly Winds was given by Zuisei Goddard. Scroll below for audio, video and transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
The Eight Worldly Winds
Tonight I want to speak about the eight worldly winds. Also called the eight conditions, vicissitudes, concerns, preoccupations or—my personal favorite—obsessions. “Obsessions” describes well the push and pull of these eight winds, and the way that they buffet us, like wind whipping saplings in a storm. Some teachers call them “anxieties” or “hang-ups,” and I like those too. Being thrown about by these eight winds definitely causes us anxiety. In our chasing and holding on, our pushing away and avoiding what we don’t want to face, there’s very little to keep us grounded. (The image that just came to my mind is of a metal chair—one of those metal desk and chair attachments that schools use—getting dragged across the street during a hurricane. A friend was in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, and this is one of the many things she saw.) But it’s even crazier than that, more out of control.
A fellow teacher says being caught in these winds is like being one of those tube men or “air dancers.” Those inflatable figures outside used car dealerships. And if you really stop to notice what it’s like to be gripped by desire, by attachment for things, for approval or power or attention, if you really feel the desperation that comes when you’ve lost these for a period of time, then you know this is a good image for it. In our chasing after happiness, we flail about when we meet things we can’t control, can’t pin down, can’t will into shape the way we want.
Someone was telling me about a comedian who was giving a talk about this. He said, on any given night, I can have a roomful of people in stitches, just laughing away at my jokes. But then one night, there’s one woman sitting in the front row not looking at him. She looks angry or worried or depressed—he can’t tell. And he spends his whole set obsessing about her:
“You don’t think my jokes are funny? You think you’re too good to laugh like everyone else.” Stuck up this and that, he’s thinking until, at one point, she looks down at her phone, then she gets up and starts to leave, and a man gets up and follows her.
“Hey!” he calls out after them, “You’re leaving? What, you don’t like my show?”
“My mother’s in the hospital,” she says. “I just got the note.”
Oooops! And here I was, thinking it’s about me. That what happens—what others do or don’t do is all about me.
If we could take our self worth in our hand, put it in an external drive, let’s say, we’d never consciously give it to someone and say, “Here, you take care of it for me. You tell me how much I’m worth and why?” But isn’t this what we do in a million little ways? You tell me if how I dress, what I drive, where I live, what I say, how I look is up to par? And not just you, but you and you and you and you. You take care of my happiness for me. How crazy is that? Why would anyone do such a thing? Indeed.
In the Lokavipatti Sutta, translated as “The Failings of the World,” the Buddha says, “These eight worldly conditions spin after the world, and the world spins after them. Which eight? Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, and pleasure and pain.”
This pretty much covers it, doesn’t it? All the ways in which we spin after the world, and the world spins after these winds: Having and not losing; being known or recognized and not being ignored or disgraced; getting praise, avoiding criticism, and of course, the one that supports the other six: pleasure and pain. The wish to have and keep what feels good, and the attempt to avoid what feels bad at all costs. But, as we study these winds and their antidotes, we have to be careful not to vilify ourselves or these states. It’s easy, when listening to the teachings, to think that if we work hard enough, we’ll get to a place where we won’t want, we won’t crave, we won’t push away our feelings of doubt or insecurity or pain or boredom. That we will be always blissful, always equanimous, always clear and never unclear.
Instead, what is being asked of us is much simpler and much more human. What is being asked of us is to acknowledge that sometimes we get caught. We get caught wanting power, recognition, or at least a little bit of approval. We want someone to pat us on the back and say Good job! And why not? Isn’t that normal, natural?
I remember years ago when I first started practicing, I was visiting my family in Mexico one day and my Dad was asking about the practice and why I was doing it, and at some point I said something like, “You know, life is about so much more than being comfortable.”
And my Dad looked at me and said, “What’s wrong with comfort?”
I wasn’t mature enough at the time to say, “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with comfort. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure, with things, with enjoying someone praising you for a job well done.”
So then what’s the problem? Why are these eight winds a teaching? We really could boil it down to one sentence: “Wanting things to be otherwise.” We don’t have a problem when we get a new car, a new house, a new partner. We like it when we get the promotion, when people like our posts or when they praise our kids or our personality. We like it when things are going well, and we want more. The problem is when things change, as they inevitably do. The problem is that we lose our peace, our inner stability when the world shifts and flows and we can’t flow with it. I love that phrase that one of my teachers used many years ago: “the self cannot move at the speed of impermanence.” It’s absolutely true. The self is heavy; it’s burdensome. Seeing through the self is light; it makes us fleet of foot.
When I was in high school I was part of the track team, and one of the drills we’d periodically do is run sprints with a big tire tied to our waist. One of the guys would have another team member sit on the tire, and then he’d pull him around. And of course, when you took off the tire, the next sprint was like flying. So, constantly feeding the self is like dragging around that tire behind us. The self wants what it wants and generally, it doesn’t want to feel pain or sickness or discomfort. It doesn’t want to feel aging or loss of any kind. Which is really a problem, given how often pain and sickness and discomfort and aging, etcetera show up in our lives.
Holding on—to pleasure or anything else—is like trying to bottle the summer breeze. Letting go is like opening a window and letting that breeze flow through.
I was reading an article about a man who wanted to build a life-extension research center in Texas. The center never came to be, but people are getting themselves preserved in the hope that they’ll be able to be revived some day and go on living. Some do their whole body, many of them do just the head, since it’s cheaper. The idea, I believe, is to grow a new, young, healthy body from it—a Zuisei 2.0. It’ll be interesting to see, if something like this does come to pass. Since nothing lasts forever, not even a head on ice, what will the changes be, once the person gets a new body. How long will that body last before it breaks down? Do you just keep getting a new one? And what will happen to the head as the years go by? Creepy, isn’t it?
What will happen to memories when they’re cut off from the original vessel that is the body? I don’t have the same body I had when I was five, but I don’t have a completely different body either, and I know that much of what I remember, what I’ve lived, is not in my brain.
I work with someone who has the means to do something like this. I’m not sure if they will, but we were talking the other day about the melding between humans and machines and the hypothetical possibility of living forever. And when I asked them if they would take the option, if it were possible, they unequivocally said, Yes. I just as unequivocally said No when they asked me. I’m fine letting my skandhas turn into loam for mushrooms and other things to grow when the time comes. To turn back into earth and water and sky. Give something else its turn.
Eight Worldly Winds: Antidotes
In terms of working with the eight winds, there is a series of antidotes that helps with these four pairs:
For gain and loss, we can practice gratitude and appreciation. Instead of focusing on what we lack, we turn toward what we have. To remind ourselves, as one teacher said, that “enough is a feast.” We can invoke the Buddha’s last teaching—according to the Mahayana tradition, at least—to have few desires, and to learn to be satisfied. Easily said, not so easily done. But this practice benefits everyone: us, those who have less than we do, and this great planet that we rely on for our sustenance. Taking more than we need is quite literally killing us, so practicing moderation and appreciation is not just for monks, but for everyone who wants humanity to endure. We can therefore practice not fueling desire with our thought—I want, I need, I must have. Desire is very much like the wind, without a source like temperature and pressure, wind dies down. Without our craving, desire calms.
For fame and disrepute (or disgrace, some translations call it), we can remind ourselves of impermanence. One moment we’re up, another moment we’re down. The same is true of praise and blame. There’s always someone better at doing something we do. There’s always someone who loves us, someone who doesn’t. But our own freedom and happiness don’t have to depend on another’s opinion. So we take back our power, as it were, and put it where it belongs: in us. In our own conviction about our actions and the way we want to live our lives.
In the Brahmajala Sutta, the Buddha says to his monks: “If others speak in dispraise of me, or the Dharma, or the Sangha, you should not give way to resentment, displeasure, or animosity. And if others speak in praise, you should not give way to jubilation, joy, and exultation.” Your own anger or joy, he continues, will only create obstacles for you. The point is not what someone thinks of me or my teaching, but whether their statements are true or false, and whether they accord with the facts—namely, the facts of suffering and its cessation, nirvana.
In other words, focus on what’s important. When someone says something about us, good or bad, we can ask ourselves, is this true? Is it based on fact? More importantly, will it lead to my liberation? If the answer is No, let it go. If the answer is Yes, then take it up. In the end, it’s all about what will lead to the end of suffering, what others think is irrelevant.
The antidote to pleasure and pain is essentially non-possessiveness. In another sutra, called the Na Tumhaka Sutta, the Buddha says, “Let go of what isn’t yours. And what is not yours?... [whatever is] experienced either as pleasure, as pain… that is not yours: let go of it. Your letting go of it will be for your long-term happiness and benefit.” The good that comes to you isn’t yours to claim. The bad that comes to you isn’t yours either. Not being yours, you can let it go instead of holding on. You can let it arise when it does, and let it pass when it does. Holding on—to pleasure or anything else—is like trying to bottle the summer breeze. Letting go is like opening a window and letting that breeze flow through. One is free, one isn’t.
Cultivating Equanimity
And if none of these antidotes work, we can always turn toward equanimity, the main antidote when working with these winds. Which makes sense. If the problem is getting thrown from one extreme to another, getting caught in the inevitable highs and lows of our lives, then a solution would be to focus on that which will keep us grounded.
I’ve spoken of equanimity (upeksha) as the ability to ride a wave. We don’t wait until the sea is calm, until there are no waves. We learn to ride the waves when they’re there. So here it’s very helpful to understand that these highs and lows are simply part of being human. Of course we want what feels good and don’t want what feels bad. We’re wired to not like pain; it’s part of what keeps us alive. People who suffer from congenital insensitivity to pain tend to die sooner, for example. Not having the usual alarms to avoid things that can harm them, they get hurt and don’t notice, sometimes until it’s too late. A burn, a bone break, particularly when you’re very young, can be fatal. So, from this perspective, pain is good.
Of course we want to be liked, not disliked. This keeps us within the tribe, where we have a higher chance of survival. It’s only when we let these winds lead us around that we run into avoidable suffering. But what do these winds want? Or rather, what does the self want when it follows one wind, then another? It wants to be happy? It wants, believe it or not, to be free—it’s just not going about it in a very efficient way. So instead of flowing, like the breeze, it gets caught inside the bottle where it is very cramped, very uncomfortable and very unnatural.
A good thing to remember when we’re having a hard time being moderate, or letting go: Holding on is like being stuck inside a bottle; it’s suffocating. It’s not where life’s happening. Because life is moving; it’s not slowing down for us. We’re the ones who have to drop the ballast to get lighter. Working on not getting caught by praise, by our need to be liked is difficult at first, but much, much simpler in the long run. It’s much lighter, like running without any weight tied to our waist. We can then think of equanimity as the moment when we look down and we see that big, fat tire dragging behind and we think, “Okay, here it is. I have a choice: I either pull this along or I cut the rope.” And if you decide to pull because the reward seems too good to give up, that’s okay, just choose deliberately. Then cut the rope when you’re ready.
Bikkhu Bodhi says that the best antidote for relieving our pain, which is the reason we do most things—to avoid that pain—is to say: “This is not mine, this is not me, this is not myself.” And here it is, a short mantra to help us ride the waves, no matter how small, no matter how tall, whipped this way and that by the wind. To let them rise and crest without holding on, to let them pass and fade: “This is not mine, this is not me, this is not myself.”
Explore further
01 : Equanimity Paramita with Zuisei Goddard
02 : Lokavipatti Sutta: The Failings of the World translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
03 : The Eight Worldly Winds by Zuisei Goddard
The Eight Worldly Winds is a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard.