Tricycle Talks Weathering the Eight Worldly Winds with Ethan Nichtern
Jun 19, 2024
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist teacher and author who blends meditation with modern psychology, explores the eight worldly winds. He talks about how pleasure and pain shape experience. He examines hope versus fear, praise and criticism, recognition and comparison, and how failure and success inform resilience. A short guided practice surfaces throughout.
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Confidence As Holding Your Seat
- Confidence is firm trust in your capacity to deal with life, linked to equanimity rather than arrogance.
- Ethan frames confidence as the ability to "hold your seat" amid life's disturbances rather than being unaffected.
The Eight Winds As Hope And Fear
- The eight worldly winds are four pairs of hope and fear: pleasure/pain, praise/blame, recognition/insignificance, success/failure.
- Ethan uses the wind and "tube person" metaphor to show how we oscillate between elation and deflation.
Use Felt Experience As Grounding
- Use mindful attention to feel pleasure and pain fully rather than chasing pleasure or avoiding pain.
- This grounds you in shared sentiency and builds resilience by tolerating the full sensory range.
