Fear

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Zeta,

Thank you for your patience.
Alanla suggestion sounds great to me. But please, don t make it a tip. Our path is not made of tips.
Manipulating expectations when they actually manipulate you? Of course not. Dropping expectations is needed. Noticing them is a good start but not enough. How do you do it? Who is doing it?
It is funny to read that you will look up Dogen s Flowers in space, seems you ll do some sightseing. Enjoy the view, then. What I am talking about is not a holiday trip, or a collection of tips, it is the practice of a lifetime.

gassho


Taigu

[Jundo]

Re: Fear

Ezra Bayda, a student of Joko Beck, has an article in a recent Tricycle that I recalled. It is very much on this theme ...

We’re often not aware of the extent to which fear plays a part in our lives, which means that the first stage of practicing with fear requires acknowledging its presence.

...

Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know that they are only beliefs, and not the truth about who we are.

...

When we can feel fear within the spaciousness of the breath and heart, we may even come to see it more as an adventure than a nightmare. To see it as an adventure means being willing to take the ride with curiosity, even with its inevitable ups and downs.


http://www.tricycle.com/insights/the-th ... page=0%2C0

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Thanks Jundo, excellent article. Sure, Zeta, fears can be the doorway, the portal, the gate. Great doubt is part and parcel of our practice, and becoming friend with the fears I had about many things is a great inspiration. So i am not saying we should not stay with fears, I am just telling you what is the outcome of my butt touching the cushion for a few years and the discovery I made, nothing extraordinary really but because i wrote it already, I have no intention to sound like an old man :roll: .
And really, Flowers in space is mind blowing account of the nature of delusion and clarity.
Take care

gassho


Taigu

[Rich]

Re: Fear

"Flowers in space is mind blowing account of the nature of delusion and clarity."

I will read this again. Thanks.

"Dropping expectations is needed. Noticing them is a good start but not enough. How do you do it? Who is doing it?"

This is my practice. How? don't know how but just do it. Who? don't know but its different than I-me-my.

"The Middle way - leaning into fear sounds exactly right. If you can expand on what you said, I'd love to hear it."

Noticing, feeling, accepting, dropping, over and over and over moment to moment, breath to breath.....
Just keep trying, that's most important.

[zeta]

Re: Fear

Thanks Taigu, that's exactly what I needed to hear. I have a tendency to seek out 'catch phrases' and use them for my practice. It's actually a mind pattern now. A disturbing thought comes up. Almost as if in cue, I'm conditioned to bring up a slogan, be it 'be here now' or 'lean into fear' or 'bring attention to the current moment' or whatever. All I do is sit and notice the slogans that come up, dropping them as well.

I haven't found a suitable source for 'Flowers in Space' online. If there's anything you'd recommend there, let me know.

thanks again.

[zeta]

Re: Fear

Jundo, thanks for the article. Enjoyed reading it.

thanks again.

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Hi zeta,

Thank you for your kindness. You ll find a very fine translation of Kuge just here:

http://www.numatacenter.com/digital/dBE ... 3_2008.pdf


Nishijima Roshi and Chodo Cross joined forces to make Shobogenzo heard in the West. Anzan Roshi's version is great too.

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/ ... lowers.htm

Carving slogans is great practice, letting go of them is even greater.
Thank you for your patience.

deep bows


taigu

[AlanLa]

Re: Fear

Leaning into fear can be a slogan or a practice. I advocate for it as a practice, but whether it is practice or slogan, or both, is up to you. In any case, you need to find your own way to lean into your own fear.

A generic silly example: If you fear the shower water is too hot you don't jump in, nor do you avoid taking a shower. Instead, you test it by putting a hand or foot in there to find out the temp. Then adjustments are made and you take your shower. A more serious personal example: I, like many people, used to be afraid of people that are mentally ill. What I, like most people, knew about them from the news and media is mostly pretty scary, so I avoided them. Then one day my boss signed me up to work with a mentally ill caseload. Yikes! But I tried it, I leaned into the new job and the new people. It turned out to be one of the best professional (and personal) experiences of my life. If I had jumped into that job all its difficulties would have had me jump right back out again, thus reinforcing all that negative stuff about the mentally ill I had been silently accumulating. Leaning into the job of working with these wonderful and deserving people was the only honest way for me to proceed. It was good for me, and maybe more importantly, it was good for them. So, in this case, behind fear was a Great Experience I would not trade for the world, all because I leaned into it. Leaning into fear has not always lead to great experiences for me, but it has always been better than the standard fight or flight options. I always grow from it somehow, someway.

Finally, sitting with fear during zazen could be a way of leaning into it, but unless you take that practice OFF the cushion and out into real life, there is no point. I could have sat with my fear of mentally ill people forever and it would have made no difference. What made a difference was the physical/emotional/existential, etc. act of leaning.

[will]

Re: Fear

Thanks for the link Taigu.

Gassho

[zeta]

Re: Fear

thanks for sharing your experiences, AlanLa!

[Brock]

Re: Fear

"Let yourself be in the emotion, go through it, give in to it, experience it. You begin going toward the emotion rather than just experiencing the emotion coming toward you. A relationship, a dance, begins to develop. Then the most powerful energies become absolutely workable rather than taking you over, because there is nothing to take over if you are not putting up any resistance. Whenever there is no resistance, a sense of rhythm occurs.....

Nothing is rejected as bad or grasped as good. But everything we experience in our life-situations, any type of emotion, is workable."

- Chögyam Trungpa

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Thank you Brock for this great quote of Trungpa Rimpoche. He is, although I have never met him or received any direct teaching in his lineage, one of the major teachers in my life. As everybody might guess, this is very advanced practice, by advanced I really mean tricky, sitting on the razor edge, and it has a definite tantric taste to it. Yes, I often see through emotions and obeserve them, sometimes I dance with them but then they may make me dance too :lol: ... There is no rule, but a set of techniques and practices that can be very handy. Shikantaza is the king of Samadhis, and we can also do Tonglen, observation and a bit of rock and roll here and there. Whatever we can work with.

The very core of Trungpa s teaching is that one should meet whatever comes and that the emotional mess at its core is nothing but a beautuiful field of playful wisdom. Basically you may look at emotions in three different ways...as poisons, pointers or wisdom itself. To take the metaphor of a cloudy sky, the dark cloud obstructs the blue, emotion as poison, make the blue really blue and noticeable, emotion as a pointer, is part of the sky itself and therefore another form of the very blue expanse where it originates and returns. To be almost caricatural, it boils down to Trungpa s vision of the three Yanas, Theravada is aiming at controling and getting rid of emotions, Mahayana is caring and loving, watching and listening to the fied of confusion, bearing witness to the core of suffering, Trantrayana is embracing, making love with confusion and transforming it. The three yanas are valid, none is better, and they can all be practiced. In a tiny nutshell...

[Jinho]

Re: Fear

Hi Zeta and all in this wonderful sangha,

I wanted to express how much I appreciate all the kindness expressed on the list (from everyone to everyone).

All the posts are lovely although my little brain has trouble with so many words!

I had a very useful experience a few years ago. I noticed that just because I am afraid, it doesn't mean that there is something for me to be afraid of.

That being said, if I am feeling something, first I look to see if there is a phenomema/situation that needs to be dealt with (often when I am afraid or angry there is a situation that needs attention and/or more overt external action).

I think maybe fear for me might be different than for other people who have posted (at least from what has been expressed). I live with mild post traumatic stress disorder. Which means that I live with fear all the time. There are no breaks. This is fairly exhausting and probably leads to other minor physical problems. I shake all the time, and going to work (which is a very difficult situation for me to deal with, since my physical existence depends on it) each day is very tough for me.

I will eventually live a life of leaving home (not the pseudo leaving home of a monastery but the real leaving home of living outside). Buddhism has (and continues to give) me a foundation, a warm pull-over and sleeping bag - that of being a wandering monk. I have occasionally expressed that zazen is all I really have and is the only thing which can never be taken from me.

So I sit with impermanence which is what we all sit with since it is all there is (I want a NEW smiley that is smiling with it's eyes closed so it looks like it is sitting zazen!)

gassho,
rowan/jinho

[Taigu]

Re: Fear

Jinho, hardly any words left. Brother-sister brokenhearted monk...

[Jundo]

Re: Fear

Well, I hope that you always feel safe here, Jinho. Please do.

Gassho, J