Fear

[zeta]

Hello everyone,

I'd be interested to know how zazen might have transformed your relationship with fear. And what kinds of strategies you've found useful in your practice to cope with fear.

For me, fear has been one of those 'big' issues to work with. Here are some of my key learnings so far:

1. For a long time, I was 'conditioned' to either fight it or run away from it. This has a number of inherent judgements within it - primarily that fear is something that's 'negative' and has to be removed. Of course, one cannot 'get rid' of this conditioning, but I just notice it, notice that it's there.
2. One can work with the branches or work with the root itself. There is fear of various objects (branches), and then there is 'fear of fear' itself.
3. All the so-called emotion states that we have - 'happiness', 'sadness', 'fear' etc are all part of the same continuum. They are just different bundles of thoughts & sensations. Judging one to be particularly 'good' or 'bad' creates problems. Thus, judging 'fear' as 'bad' usually leads to me judging some other state as 'good'.

Thus in a certain sense, to 'solve' the problem of fear, I realize i have to work with literally every other emotion state that's out there, i.e. as long as 'being happy' is judged as 'good', 'being fearful' is judged as 'bad'. As long as I continue to categorize my experience, the 'problem' continues to exist.

Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Hi Zeta,

Funny you raise the issue for I did spend yesterday in a kind of funny space. Received the visit of many beloved ghosts.

Fear? Vast problem. Everybody is different. Different triggers. Fear is a very solid fiction, any attempt to manipulate it, as with any emotions, makes it look more real, seems to give it more power. Acceptance is one of the teachings of shikantaza. To stay with it, to get closer and closer, as you would with a wild wounded animal. Embracing fear with the dance of compassion and loving kindness is the most liberating experience, not to redeem it, not to suppress it, just because because. No because. Fear is calling the boddhistava in us, it brings you-me-Kannon into our flesh-bones-speech-silence, makes it so intimitate that you can hardly notice it. But it is here. Here. HERE! Fear has never ever been. For who is behind? please read the Wizzard of Oz again and again. Look at this castles of sand called childhood, teenage years, look at things that did or could happen. Nothing there. Yet we may notice a strong sound in the body, from time to time, the scared child, abused victim, seems to come back again, out of the blue. Deep dark blues. It is triggered by a situation. Fear seems to overwhelm us. Ghosts. A very believable fiction. Then, sit. Act. Sit. Make a Buddha of flesh-bones-speech-silence. In the mudra, the breath, the open-minded simplicity, resting there one can play with demons and ghosts. In this, we are not haunted anymore. We can be friend with all things, beyond the pair of opposites, beyond the idea of good or bad, past or future, beyond even the beyond.


gassho

Taigu

[Brock]

Re: Fear

Sometimes you get what you need, and I needed that, Taigu Sensei. Thank you.

[Brock]

Re: Fear

Crap. I'm getting forgetful, negligent and nearsighted.

Thank you, Zeta and Padre.

[Jen]

Re: Fear

Thank you for that, Taigu.

Zeta,
I have seen that fear is rarely what we think it is. A simple example- one is not afraid of spiders, or spider bites, but of pain. The pain may be caused by spiders and spider bites, or we could even blame the body for reacting to the venom. The point is one says "I am afraid of spiders," when in truth they never actually looked at what they were really fearing. It often boils down to a fear of suffering. When we sit we cast aside the illusion of spiders, spider bites, auto-immune systems, and even of pain.

While sitting and the fear comes, don't fight it but also pay it no special mind as you would any other thought during zazen. In my case it was hard not to fight the fear. I had built my illusion of me-ness on being fearless and I was perceiving a weakness in myself for feeling fear. Once I penetrated the illusions I had built around it, the fear was no longer something to be afraid of. I would not say I have no fear, just that the fear is all that it is- just fear and nothing else. Fear and not-fear, as Jundo would say :wink:

Gassho,
Jen

[zeta]

Re: Fear

Thanks guys, for your responses.

Taigu - interesting that you mention that. A few days ago, I had one of my old ghosts come and visit me, and immediately had a 'fight' reaction. Instinctively, I began to plot a strategy to 'confront' it. However, 'sitting' through this reaction, I come to realize that a 'fighting/confronting' reaction is but just another way to get rid of fear.

Jen - it's funny how we sometimes judge some fears to be 'OK', and some as 'not OK'. For me personally, there were some fears that I would classify as 'normal', and some which I wouldn't. And perhaps it was the classification that was the source for a lot of the suffering.

[Shokai]

Re: Fear

"People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see. " - Nietzsche

"Nothing has power except what you give it." - Vivekananda [ google this one just for kicks! ]

Fear; something that builds the longer you ignore it. As a teenager I spent years in fear of a bully who promised to kick the sh-- out of me. As a child at age four I witnessed the skinning of a bear. That scared the living daylights out of me. I had a recurring nightmare of being chased by a man with a lantern; only to be run into a body hanging in a doorway. As an adult, I encountered a bat in a darkened hallway; knowing fear to the point of not being able to speak and fogetting to breathe. In my second career I confronted the overriding fear; that of death. I studied to become a funeral director, not specifically to overcome the fears but in retrospect, I was ready. I was trained to accept whatever came. Acceptance is the quintessential quality of a compassionate/non-judgemental attitude toward life itself. I graduated with honours and became a first class embalmer as well. My fascination with antomy and physiology helped to transcend the grossness of the physical; nine hours to restore human likeness to a 90 year old cut in half by a train, accepting the gratefulness of a young widow whose husband's body I had restored after a motorcycle accident, being praised for properly readjusting the rings on a loved one's hands. All this became the stuff of my existance. I provided a service to my fellow travellers but, at the same time, I learned to confront my fears; no longer to suffer the anxieties that build in the dark depths of the mind if not accepted.

This I share in faith that it sheds light.

gassho, rj

[Rich]

Re: Fear

Thank you for sharing your story. With acceptance comes correct action or no action. What is amazing is how we replay the same old fears and anxieties. What is also amazing is how sitting lets us see them and accept them as they are.
/Rich

[Myoshin]

Re: Fear

Wow the responses above are great!

I would say let fear be fear. I like to think that trying to change any emotion is like trying to change the weather on a nice rainy day.

I have a rather large fear of flying... come to think of it if you want to get technical it is not flying but crashing. Once I realize that the fear is exclusively of crashing in a fiery wreck and not of flying then the fear of flying is relaxed a little.

Gassho,
Kyle

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Hi everybody and thank you for your teachings. Here is another way to put it if I may, in a clumsy poetic form, and it is very late, time to go to bed, anyway...

With what kind of mouth do one swallow this big sky and spits it on the spot?
Who if not this skin-bag of ours is a path, a break, a joy?

Bodhisatva in rags, blues and lonely tunes,
dirty looking guys
heroes, heroes in the fields of dust
sometimes lost in lust
sometimes not
plain heroes
in streets, kitchens, wherever,
my friend and shadow
birds of all kinds will come
and eat out of your hands
forming the neither one nor two mudra,
hungry ghosts will feast of your flesh
invite them closer, closer

you may then see
behind the veil, the mask and the mirror
that used to frighten you
the dance itself

[zeta]

Re: Fear

Myoshin - In a certain sense, the fear probably isn't about crashing, but about facing a set of unpleasant mental and physical sensations.

Thus, isn't any fear really just a judgment against certain types of mental & physical sensations? i.e. you have your fear of flying, i have my fear of snakes, fear of certain people etc. But ultimately, are we afraid of the same thing?

[Myoshin]

Re: Fear

In a certain sense, the fear probably isn't about crashing, but about facing a set of unpleasant mental and physical sensations.

That is what I meant. I am not afraid of the flight but the crash which includes physical and mental pains. So to answer your question, yes I believe people do not fear a certain subject (spiders, people, snakes, clowns and open spaces) but our association of that subject with physiological or psychological pains or sensations.

Gassho,
Kyle

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Hi guys, Let me insist. Because I simply think it is very important. As long as we maintain for whatever reasons the belief in the illusion of I-me-mine, then fear arises. It seems that as soon as we see through the empty, impermanent self then the clinging and what Myoshin calls association will fade away. Yes Zeta, we fear the display and set up of fear itself, objects, situations and ideas should be seen as mere triggers. Going to the other shore has for us also a very hidden meaning, hidden because so very obvious, it is to go through the body of appearances and beliefs, when we sing go, go beyond, gyate gyate in the Heart sutra...it invites us to go through fears themselves, to dive into the sea of Samsara, embrace our own weakness, we may wake up now to the reality that the very essence of what was frightening us is made of nothing but clear vast mind.

A single flower blooms, five petals open,
and fruit ripens by itself.

Invistigate Dogen s Flowers in space, have a look at it. Well worth the reading. Wonderful stuff. Very challenging for a dull head like mine. A life long study :P .

[AlanLa]

Re: Fear

One of the truly greatest pieces of advice I ever got in my whole life was told to be by a Native American woman, so it's not Buddhist related (or is it?). What she said was to lean into fear. When you find fear, lean into it. Don't run away, and don't dive into it. Just lean. This is the middle way. I have found this small/huge bit of wisdom incredibly helpful. What I find when I lean into fear is.. well, lots of things that were not the thing I thought I was afraid of in the first place.

[zeta]

Re: Fear

Taigu - perhaps fear is exactly the doorway that some of us need to go through to see through the illusion of 'i-me-myself'. Will look up Dogen's 'Flowers in Space'.

AlanLa - thanks for the tip. It's interesting how sometimes the mind can use 'zen' as an excuse to avoid confronting it's fears, i.e if I stay with the sensations for long enough, the sensations will go way. i..e we are staying with the sensations with a certain expectation.

Perhaps what we have to do is stay with the sensations, but notice our expectations. Consciously manipulating our expecations really doesn't work either. The Middle way - leaning into fear sounds exactly right. If you can expand on what you said, I'd love to hear it.