Fame and disrespect is the second pair of the 8 worldly concerns. The 8 worldly concerns are the ways we ordinarily live our lives. Our default position is to be caught up with these. We have to make effort to break our habits of liking fame and feeling down when disrespected. It’s once again all about the ego. The ego is fragile. It is fickle. It is reactive, always pushing away what we don’t like and grasping at what we do like. In reality fame is much more about what is “hot” according to public perception. What is “cold” gets little attention. It is more about the current situation than about us. But our ego sees it as 100% about us. Once again it comes down to wisdom, doesn’t it? The main cause of all of our problems like anger, jealousy, pride, obsessive compulsiveness, and greed always related back to a distorted view of our ego – either 100% good or 100% bad. It is the wisdom to know who we are correctly that finally gets us out of all of our problems. In reality we live in the mud much of the time. That’s o.k. In fact, it’s better than o.k. It gives us the opportunity to grow the lotus!
