First Things First

　　October 6, 1958

　　There are three ways in which people order their priorities: putting the world first, putting themselves first, and putting the Dhamma first.

　　Putting the world first: There”s nothing at all dependable about the affairs of the world. Stop and think for a moment: Ever since you were born, from your first memory up to the present day, what is the best thing that has ever happened in your life

　　 What is the most enjoyable thing

　　 What have you liked the most

　　 If you answer, you have to say that of all the things in the world, only 50 percent are satisfactory; the other 50 are unsatisfactory. But if you asked me, I”d answer that there”s nothing satisfactory about the world at all. There”s nothing but stress and misery. You get friends and they take advantage of you. You get possessions and you have to worry about them. You get money and you end up suffering for it. The people you work with aren”t as good as you”d like them to be. Your family and relatives are nothing but trouble. In short, I don”t see anything that really brings a person any real happiness. You get money and it brings trouble. You get friends and they make you suffer. The people you live and work with don”t get along smoothly. This is the way it is with the world. For this reason, anyone whose mind runs along in the current of the world is bound for nothing but pain and sorrow. The Buddha taught, "For the mind not to be affected by the ways of the world is to be serene and free from sorrow: This is the highest good fortune."

　　The world has eight edges, and each edge is razor sharp, capable of slicing human beings to bits without mercy. The eight edges of the world are, on the one side, the edge of wealth, the edge of status, the edge of praise, and the edge of pleasure. These four edges are especially sharp because they”re things we like. We keep polishing and sharpening them, and the more we do this the sharper they get, until ultimately they turn around and slit our throats.

　　The other side has four edges too, but actually they”re not so sharp, because no one likes to use them. No one wants them, so no one sharpens them, and as a result they”re dull and blunt — and like dull knives, they can”t kill anyone. These four edges are loss of wealth, loss of status, criticism, and pain. No one wants any of these things, but they have to exist as part of the world.

　　How are the sharp edges sharp

　　 Take status for an example. As soon as people gain status and rank, they start swelling up larger than they really are. You don”t have to look far for examples of this sort of thing. Look at monks. When they start out as ordinary junior monks, they can go anywhere with no trouble at all, along highways and byways, down narrow alleys and back streets, anywhere they like. But as soon as they start getting a little ecclesiastical rank, they start getting abnormally large. The roads they used to walk along start feeling too narrow. They have trouble walking anywhere — their legs are too long and their feet too heavy. Their rears are too large for ordinary seats. (Of course, not all high-ranking monks are like this. You can find ones who don”t swell up.) As for lay people, once they”re hit by the edge of status, they start swelling up too, to the point where they can hardly move. Their hands get too heavy to raise in respect to the Buddha. Their legs get so big they can”t make it to the monastery to hear a sermon or observe the precepts — they”re afraid they”d lose their edge. This is how one of the edges of the world kills the goodness in people.

　　As for the edge of wealth, this refers to money and possessions. As soon as we get a lot, we start getting stingy. We become wary of making too many offerings or of being too generous with others because we…

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