Death will definitely come and will quickly come. Should you neglect to train your thoughts again and again on such certainties you will grow no virtuous mind, and even if you do, it will be spent on the enjoyment of the glories of this life.

The eight worldly concerns and the concern for happiness of only in this life prevent us from creating any virtue at all. When we do create virtue, these concerns can pollute our virtue so that it becomes half virtue and half non-virtue.

I received an email from an attendee of my talk on the mindfulness craze where I quoted one executive from Google who said that it really disturbed him when other people made the world better than what he could do. In other words, it means we have to be the ones that make the world a better place, better than anybody else. This attendee said the quote jumped out at him. He realised he really needed to be careful because he was developing a new program with a good motivation of wanting to help benefit people, and that Google executive’s comment made him realise that he had to ensure that he kept his motivation pure, and not for it to become a competition with others who could improve the educational system more or do the program better. I thought he was quite sharp because that is a very good example of how in wanting to create virtue, our mind can get hooked on wanting a good reputation, and then the virtue diminishes.

We need to be careful when we are creating virtue so as not to compete with other people or get jealous of them. All of that simply relates to our attachment to the happiness of this life — attachment to a good reputation, and aversion to a bad reputation. Our mind becomes like the minds of those who want a good reputation because they sell golf clubs, have a good golf game, got the outstanding award for being the best correctional official in the prison that month, etc. It is all reputation.

Attachment to reputation is one of the most difficult attachments to overcome. Great meditators say that attachment to food is easy to let go of, but attachment to reputation is much more difficult. You could go into your retreat place and be content with the food you eat but have the mind thinking, “I wonder what the town people think of me. Do they know what a great practitioner I am? Do they think that I have realisations now? When I finish my retreat, will the town people think that I’m hot stuff because I’ve done this retreat? Maybe I’ll even have a new title. Maybe I should learn to look holy.” It is very seductive.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!