In these last few verses of the chapter, we receive some final encouragement by Shantideva, strong encouragement to strive for and gain the wisdom realizing emptiness.

With these verses Shantideva primarily shows us how we can apply our understanding of emptiness to practically solving the delusions that arise in our mind and in our daily life. If there is one theme that is important from the entire chapter, it is the necessity of not engaging it as an intellectual exercise but rather as a practical necessity. Here Shantideva shows us how we can use what we have learned to overcome our daily delusions.

(9.151) With objects that are empty in this way,
What is there to gain and what is there to lose?
Who is there to praise me?
And who is there to blame me?

(9.152) With no truly existent benefit or harm,
What is there to be happy or unhappy about?
And, when their ultimate nature is sought,
Where are those who seek a good reputation, and where is what they seek?

Here Shantideva shows how we can use the teachings on emptiness to overcome all of our worldly concerns. What differentiates a worldly being from a spiritual being is their principal object of concern. Worldly beings are primarily concerned with the experiences of this life. A spiritual being is primarily concerned with the experiences of our future lives. A pure being is someone primarily concerned with gaining experiences outside of samsara.

We have to honestly admit how we are still dominated by worldly concerns.  We have these worldly concerns because we are still listening to our self-cherishing, paying attention to its object, rather than neglecting or forgetting about it.  All of the things that we are concerned about, possibly condensed into the eight, are not only empty of meaning, but they are also empty of true existence.

Thus far Shantideva has explained how we can oppose our grasping at our I with wisdom, how we can oppose our grasping at our feelings and so forth with wisdom, now he explains how we can oppose our grasping at the very objects that we feel so strongly about, again with wisdom.  So what is there to gain, what is there to lose?  Nothing.  Whatever we feel there is to gain, whatever we feel there is to lose, we will find upon analysis or examination, nothing.  Who is there to praise me, who is there to blame me?   No one.  We can remind ourself of a previous verse in chapter eight that words of praise are just like empty words in a cave. 

For this to work it has to connect with our heart.  Otherwise we read these things, even we try to understand them, it will make little or no difference because in our heart we still believe the objects of our concern are important and we will be affected by such things.

Perhaps we are afraid to accept this reasoning because we fear we will lose our current objects of happiness.  Actually, we will.  We will no longer be able to enjoy things in a worldly way anymore.  But these things never had the power to give us any happiness anyway, only suffering.  All we need to do is examine our life and realize how the vast majority of our suffering has come from our preoccupation with the worldly concerns. But losing our current objects of happiness and not being able to enjoy things in a worldly way anymore does not mean that we lose our happiness and can no longer enjoy things. Quite the opposite actually. Our normal objects of happiness do not actually have any power to give us happiness, they usually just give us problems. But when we find new spiritual reasons for wanting these things, we can enjoy them in a much more sublime way. Further we find new objects of happiness that are within us that produce and provide much greater happiness than our external objects ever could. This is the essential meaning of finding happiness from a different source.

Abandoning worldly concerns does not mean we no longer seek or need things such as a good reputation, wealth, pleasant experiences and so forth. It means we change our reasons for wanting these things. When we are dominated by worldly concerns, we want these things because we believe they are actually causes of our happiness. With emptiness, we recognize that they have no power whatsoever to give us any happiness because in fact they do not exist at all. So of course they cannot give us the happiness that we seek because there is nothing there. However, this does not mean that praise, wealth, a good reputation, and so forth are without value. If we want these things for pure spiritual reasons so that they can help us fulfill our bodhicitta wishes to lead all of these beings to enlightenment, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing them and being concerned about them. What we abandon is our attachment to them, thinking that it is somehow impossible for us to be happy without having these things. We also recognize that they are at best a means to an end, and not an end in themselves.

But we happily do so because by enjoying things in a worldly way, we guarrantee that we will suffer from things in a worldly way.  There are many more objects of worldly suffering than worldly happiness, so this is a rational trade-off.  Further, we will learn to be able to enjoy worldly pleasures in a spiritual way, which is much better, so we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.