The eight worldly dhammas, or in English we can say the eight worldly conditions: praise and blame, fame and obscurity, pleasure and pain and gain and loss. As much as we're attached to any one of them positive or negative, it will create pain or Dukkha in ourselves.
Achievement mind is often tied up with these eight worldly dhammas. What does the achievement want? To achieve, whatever is the actual goal is actually kind of insignificant, it might be a type of gain, a type of pleasure, but even more important than getting the pleasure and the gain is to have the fame and praise. Achievement mind is by and large caught up with wanting attention, wanting fame, wanting praise. Many times the achievement mind doesn't really want gain, it actually wants loss. Sometimes it doesn't want pleasure it actually wants pain. Because the rotten kid in school is trying to achieve fame, he does everything rotten to be kept after school later, to be disciplined by the principal and this and that, and actually gets loss, gets pain, whatever. Yet they still achieved fame in the classroom; it's just warped kind of fame.
Competitive drive? Caught up with the eight worldly conditions again, comparing yourself with others. Sure! Every bit of mental Dukkha, when you think about it, is connected to wanting or not wanting the eight worldly conditions, the eight worldly dhammas. Now if you can find one that's not connected to those eight let me know, because I don't know any.
Some hints for returning to the West , we have to be very aware of the eight worldly dhammas. We've got to be mindful of them, just as mindful as trying to be aware of the hindrances, this is a deeper level. All of you know in a normal retreat, we don't talk about the eight worldly dhammas, it's a little step above the regular retreat. The Five Hindrances though are pumped into everybody, and by the end of day 10, they know what the 5 are and they can try to observe them and so on. But with our old students, being aware of the eight worldly conditions is a big one. We plan on doing a meditation regarding them later in this retreat. So in the West, and actually everywhere you go, in retreat and out of retreat, can we be aware of these eight worldly conditions?
Now, when you want fame in the retreat, it's not so easy, is it? You can't talk to anybody, you can't impress people, so what else can happen when a person wants fame in a retreat? They whistle to the birds and hope the birds whistle back. That's a type of fame, fame in the sense that we are recognized, we are somebody, we're not obscure. When we're obscure we whistle to the bird and it sits up there and it doesn't take any notice of us. At Wat Kow Tahm we have a dog and cats. It's just amazing how many people want the dog and cat to come to them. They somehow feel fame if the dog and cat looks at them. And if the dog happens to walk over to the meditator next to them, it's like, "I'm obscure." Can we observe these things whether we're in retreat or out of retreat? At work, wanting the promotion, wanting fame, wanting pleasure, wanting gain.
At home with our friends, sitting at the table, maybe you're sitting with four or five friends, and somebody is telling a story, and it's very lively and humorous. Rather than enjoying yourself, you may become jealous and discontent and unconsciously feel, "They're all paying attention to him, he's getting all the attention, I'll have to tell a story right after him." Well that's wanting fame, isn't it? That's wanting to be somebody; that's wanting the attention. Can we work with that in our normal life, out of retreat? So with these eight worldly dhammas, if you start using them in retreat here, with your mental noting if you haven't already, use them out of retreat as well every time you have mental Dukkha of any type. See which one it's related to, see whether you're wanting something regarding the four nice ones, the fame, praise, pleasure and gain. See whether you're pushing away the other four, the loss, pain, obscurity and blame. And at times, see whether you want the four negative ones, when you want to be blamed, when you want loss and all of the others, too. That's a kind of self-pity, and self-pity is very big. So that's also how we can work with things. In or out of retreat, the eight worldly conditions.