Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [111]
Fame and Shame
Concern about and attachment to pleasure, gain, praise, and fame are powerful forces that can sometimes seize us with hurricane ferocity, blowing us about like leaves in the wind. We’ve all seen people jeopardize life, limb, ethical considerations, and contentment for the briefest of pleasures, the possibility of financial gain, the right kind of praise, or for fifteen minutes in the winner’s circle of fame. It’s easy to respond to these driving forces with knee-jerk reactions and lose sight of our inner goals. Sometimes we are distracted for only a second; nonetheless, we get blown off course. Regarding the consequences of reaching for instant gratification, a Weight Watchers slogan says, “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.” This is Dharma wisdom, the practical ethics of conscious restraint.
To better understand the way you react to the Worldly Winds, imagine yourself driving down the road, heading for your goal of enlightenment or nirvana. Suddenly out of the corner of your eye, you see something that captures your attention. Perhaps it suggests something you want desperately—a winning lottery ticket, a prestigious job, an old love, or even an ice cream cone—your favorite flavor. Perhaps it’s something you fear, something that personifies loneliness, depression, or terror. You respond almost without thinking and are so overcome that you veer off, ending up in a roadside rut. There your wheels, stuck in the mud or sand, spinning round and round. This is like being mired in samsara.
Look around the marketplace, and you will see the worldly forces that blow people every which way. To get a sense of how you might be blown about by one of these “Winds,” stop long enough to check out your motivations on a regular basis. Are you caught up on the pleasure-pain axis? Do you find it difficult, or sometimes even impossible, to overcome your impulses and resistances in order to do what has to be done? Do thoughts of loss or gain (financial or otherwise) dominate your life? Are you so easily inflated or deflated that praise or blame can make or break your day? Do you simultaneously long for the fame of center stage and fear the shame of exposure? When one of the Worldly Winds gusts in your direction, do you find it difficult to just proceed straight ahead, while overcoming your fleeting impulses? Lama Yeshe always exhorted his students to “check up yourself.” The words, “check up,” were like his mantra. He transmitted that helpful and useful mantra to me, and I can still hear his words ringing in my ears today.
True spiritual masters are so centered and inner-directed that no matter what is happening in the outer world, they don’t lose touch with their innate Buddha-nature; they are guided by their own principles instead of merely reacting according to momentary conditions and temporary circumstances. Going through life with their hands on the steering wheel of awareness, they are paying attention; they understand karmic causation, how things actually work. Many of the rest of us, of course, are still gripping the rearview mirror and wondering why we so often end up lost or in the ditch.
It’s easy to become so enmeshed in our worldly goals that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Without more foresight and perspective, we cannot help but prioritize foolishly. The ups and downs of office politics and interpersonal dynamics, for example, will overly affect the untrained mind. One minute you can feel like a winner, elated and on top of your game; the next you’re in a slump, defeated, hopeless, and depressed. Buddhism reminds us that nothing lasts, not even our successes or defeats. When gods in the celestial realms use up their accumulation of good karma, even they must come back to earth; even Superman can fall from the sky. The virtue of equanimity helps us not to become overly invested in success or unduly disrupted by disappointment. Commonsense wisdom reminds us that there is a difference between making a living and making a life. Our pursuit of worldly success in this thorny rosebush-like