“Some of our suffering comes from our relationships to the external world and people. Because we are social creatures, our relationship to others is the very thing that allows us to survive. But we traumatize each other due to lack of awareness, which is why sometimes people want to run away from the world. We can never be completely isolated—we could not find food or clothing without others. We cannot create the world from scratch. But there are also times that the human world feels like a battleground. Some people tend to view it as a survival game, always trying to win affection, love, and approval, so that the world will proclaim how good, beautiful, and strong we are. The urge to pursue such acclaim causes greed and prevents us from feeling compassion and empathy with fellow human beings. This is the essential trap of what Buddhism calls the eight worldly concerns. The eight worldly preoccupations are what govern our actions: hope for happiness and fear of suffering, hope for fame and fear of insignificance, hope for praise and fear of blame, and hope for gain and fear of loss. These eight worldly concerns are classifications of attachment and aversion that bind us to suffering. We cycle through them until we are released from them into the state of enlightenment.”

Excerpt From
Into the Haunted Ground
Anam Thubten