We might feel that somehow we should try to eradicate these feelings of pleasure and pain, loss, and gain, praise and blame, fame and disgrace. A more practical approach would be to get to know them, see how they hook us, see how they color our perception of reality, see how they aren’t all that solid. Then the eight worldly dharmas become the means for growing wiser as well as kinder and more content.

Pema Chodron

In Chapter 8, “Eight Worldly Dharmas” in When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron discusses getting hooked in the experiences of our everyday lives – in Buddhist teaching, the eight dharmas. She explains, “According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites – pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame – is what keeps you stuck in the pain of samsara.”

I know about the eight worldly dharmas. I get hooked by them every day. Getting hooked happens more easily for me right now. My fuse is shorter because everything is urgent. I am more reactionary because I am always right. I run from quiet because noise is comfortable. Listening is painful because I have so much to say. I am so good at getting hooked, that I even help others take the bait in their lives, too. Right now, the ebb and flow of things falling apart and then back together, falling apart and then back together, falling apart and then back together is difficult to remember. Vigilance and fear pervade our zeitgeist. It feels harder to relax and let the current of the river carry us to the shore.

I would say this is just a sign of the times, but I don’t believe that to be true. I am always the proverbial fish just trying swim attracted to the shiny wiggly bait right in front of me. Chodron’s words have resonated with me for years, and I am revisiting them right now because now is when I need them most. It is easier to swim away from bait in calm waters, when we just might see the hook and avoid it. Not so in times when fear and anxiety and pain make taking the bait seem like an instant relief, a quick fix, an antidote to pain – even when the bait is neither relief, a real fix, or honest antidote.

That is the challenge of now. Don’t take the bait. Allow dharma to swim amidst all that is. Remember the times in your life when things have fallen apart and come back together, and fallen apart and come back together, and fallen apart and come back together. That is how it goes.