Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron leads a guided meditation on the eight worldly concerns, the pair of attachment and aversion patterns that habitually trap the mind and waste our precious human potential. She walks through each of the four pairs in turn: attachment to receiving material possessions versus aversion to losing them; pleasure at receiving praise versus pain at being blamed; attachment to a good reputation versus fear of a bad one; and craving pleasant sensations while rejecting unpleasant ones. Throughout, she invites listeners to examine their own lives concretely—how much time and energy do these concerns consume? Do they bring lasting happiness or merely confusion and suffering? The meditation builds to a turning point: recognising that chasing the eight worldly concerns wastes this rare opportunity, and choosing instead to redirect the mind toward something genuinely valuable.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 GM.mp3
UUID: 93aaf125-eb15-415b-8745-6fcefe024d73
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~890
So we have a precious human life that’s very meaningful in terms of pursuing spiritual goals and actualizing our potential. And this precious human life is very rare and difficult to receive. And now we have to look at how we usually use it, what usually occupies our mind. So as we contemplate the eight worldly concerns, make specific examples of each one in your own life and see if they make you happy or if they make you confused. Check up if following the eight worldly concerns helps you to grow or if it keeps you in prison.
And as you reflect on them, also try and understand how the more attachment you have for something, the more aversion, the more bitterness or anger you’re going to have when you’re deprived of it or don’t get it. And, also, as we meditate on the eight worldly concerns, think of how you can think differently in regards these things so that your mind doesn’t get so confused by attachment and aversion. Try and apply the antidotes. So the eight worldly concerns come in four pairs. So the first pair is being pleased at receiving material possessions and thus getting attached to material things and money.
And the flip side of having aversion at not receiving or being separated from these things. So check up how attached you are to your paycheck, to receiving presents, to buying things, to having things. How much time do you spend craving and planning to get things? And then how much anger and disappointment do you feel when you’re separated from your material possessions or your money when you don’t get them, when they’re taken away from you? So check up in your own life how much time and energy this occupies and what your attitude is.
How much attachment do you have towards these things? How much aversion do you have towards not getting them? And make specific examples in your life and check up the effect it has in your life. And the second set is attachment or pleasure at receiving praise or approval and aversion to being blamed or having people disapprove of us. So again, make specific examples in your life.
Whose praise do you seek? How do you go about getting that praise? How do you react when you’re criticized or blamed? And even if we get the praise and the approval that we want, does it really solve our internal emotional problem? So check out your relationship to praise and approval from others and then how you feel when you get the opposite, when people disapprove, they criticize, when they blame.
How much of your energy in your life revolves or is stuck in this? And the third pair is attachment to having a good reputation. So having a good image where a whole group of people think well of us and aversion to having a bad reputation. So the previous one about praise and blame has to do more with what an individual says to us. And this one has more to do with what a whole group of people thinks about us, our image, and society.
So how much pleasure do you get from making a good impression on others, either in your work or in your family? How much fear do you have of people talking behind your back and ruining your reputation? How much do you go up and down depending upon what people think about you? And how much do you compete with others to try and have a good image and reputation and avoid a bad one. So just check-in your own life how much of your energy is revolving around this, is stuck in this.
And the fourth pair has to do with being pleased at sensual pleasure and displeased at unpleasant sensations. So how much of your life is spent trying to make sure that you see only the things you like to see and hear pleasant sounds, smell good things, taste good taste, have a comfortable body. How much of your time and energy is involved in getting that, and how much is involved in defending yourself from the opposite? So how displeased do you get when the things around you are ugly or the music or the sound is bad or things smell bad or the food is awful or you’re too hot or too cold or too hungry or the clothes are itchy or too rough. So how much attachment and aversion do we have to the sense objects and how much of our precious human life is involved in trying to get things that are pleasant and avoid things that are unpleasant.
So really feel like you don’t want to continue living your life on automatic. Get a sense that following these eight worldly concerns is wasting your time and not really taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity that the precious human life presents you with. Get a feeling that you really want to actualize your inner human beauty, your inner potential, and not waste time following these eight worldly concerns, running after things that are so transient and impermanent and lack the ability to bring us lasting happiness. And instead, steer your mind towards something valuable that will bring long lasting happiness to yourself and others.