Today is Halloween, and here’s the chilling secret: Buddhism loves ghosts. And not just the hungry kind. Demons, spirits, and other supramundane creatures abound in the Buddhist canon, and they continue to play a role in the lives of many Buddhist practitioners today. 

To some skeptics, all those ghoulish beings are just psychological tropes, mere projections of an unenlightened mind. But like any good teacher, the things that go bump in the night have a way of upending our notions about what we hold to be real and unreal.

So, fill your oryoki bowls with mini Milky Ways, and descend into the hellish and haunted realms, with these seven articles from our archives that highlight the mysterious roles that monsters, specters, ghosts, and zombies played in Buddhist traditions throughout history. For the easily frightened, we also include a selection of articles about overcoming fear through meditation and Buddhist teachings. Happy Halloween! 

Buddhist Halloween Horrors

• The Monsters of Buddhism—Inside and Out by Julia Hirsch
  An abridged guide to Buddhist monsters and the lessons they hold about the possibility of transformation—such as the child-eating Kishimojin, who eventually purifies her karma and becomes the Buddha-endorsed guardian deity of mothers and children. Alternatively, a horror movie with a happy ending. 
• How to Watch a Thai Ghost Movie by May Cat
  A Thai cinephile writes about the karma-fueled haunting of the 2009 Thai horror flick Novice. A young man ordains as a novice monk, but is tormented by the misdeeds of his past. In the end, the monk gets his due, and the hungry ghosts doom him to life as one of their own. 
• Ghosts, Gods, and the Denizens of Hell by Donald Lopez, Jr.
  Buddhist studies scholar Donald Lopez Jr. provides an introduction to the six realms—including the less than desirable sectors of existence. “There are eight hot hells and eight cold hells, four neighboring hells, and a number of trifling hells,” he writes, reminding us that even though human existence is tough, it’s still the best (and only) shot we have at freedom from samsara. 
• Treasury of Lives: Halloween Edition by Harry Einhorn
  Tibetan cosmology is populated with interesting paranormal creatures, like deloks—people who died, visited the lower realms, and returned to warn those in the human realm about the punishments that awaited them unless they started walking an ethical path. Also in Tibetan Buddhism is a model of fear-facing Buddhist practice in the female master Machik Labron (1055–1149), who encouraged her students to do chöd, tantric practice in burial grounds and other spooky places. 
• The Old Human Demoness by Chokey Dolma
  This haunting tale by Chokey Dolma showcases the richness of Tibetan ghost stories. Once upon a time, a young monk disobeys his teacher’s order to buy meat only as given without asking for more, and he becomes marked by evil spirits. To avoid becoming demon food, the young monk travels to Lhasa and requests the aid of a mysterious old woman. Although she agrees to help hide him from the demons, the young monk eventually discovers there is more to this woman than meets the eye. 
• Bringing Hungry Ghosts Out of Hiding, Andy Rotman in conversation with Julia Hirsch
  Andy Rotman, a scholar of South Asian religions at Smith College and one of the few academics researching the history of hungry ghosts, explains what the most wretched beings of the Buddhist cosmos can teach us about greed, suffering, and the dharma. 
• Into the Demon’s Mouth, by Aura Glaser
  Through a modern retelling of the Buddhist story of the great Tibetan saint Milarepa and the demons who inhabited his cave, Glaser invokes Carl Gustav Jung, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and others to illustrate how remaining present among difficult life situations can help us to work with problems and to even learn from them. A parable with elements of horror, Glaser’s writing opens up the story so that we can learn to face our fears with clarity and kindness. 

Fear

• Harnessing Horror Through Meditation by Biju Sukumaran
  After getting stuck on Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride as a child, Biju Sukumaran has had a phobia of heights and small spaces. Recently, he started drawing from the Buddhist practices of vipassana (insight) and Tibetan chöd meditation to face his fears of flying, horror movies, and, yes, even roller coasters. 
• A Safe Container for Fear by Josh Korda
  What does fear feel like in the body? Approaching feelings of unease, anxiety, and social discomfort with questions like these, Josh Korda suggests, can help untangle the web of fear we weave for ourselves. 
• Facing Fear by Lama Tsony
  Coming back to the focal point of meditation (the breath, posture, or a visualization) can help us practice and move through our fears, Lama Tsony writes. Taking refuge or seeking guidance from a spiritual teacher or friend offers the support we need as we explore the uncomfortable zones of our minds. 
• The Terror Within by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
  In a meditation on the different ways fear has come up in her own life and practice, Zen priest, author, and artist Zenju Earthlyn Manuel uses lessons from the Heart Sutra and the Buddha’s teachings on the five hindrances to provide steps for breaking out of cycles of anxiety and to acknowledge the roots of our fear as a conditioned state that is accumulated over a lifetime. By providing steps for breathing into these feelings and releasing them, Manuel invites readers not to hide from their fear but to embrace it as an act of liberation.

 ⧫ 

This article was originally published on October 31, 2019.

The post Scare Yourself Awake appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Since I could think, I have struggled with an intense fear of rejection. This fear can play out in a whole range of ways—and at times it takes on rather comic forms. For example, attending a party where I don’t know anyone fills me with dread. Professional networking events, Super Bowl parties, holiday parties, birthday invites, you name it. I still go most of the time, maybe out of a sense of obligation or the belief that this time it will be easier.

Either way, when I do go, it often looks something like this: I arrive and immediately make a beeline for the bar. Everyone else standing around in small groups seems to know one another, and the last thing I want to do is “intrude.” After all, my fear of rejection leads me to think that none of these people will want to talk to me. The bar seems like a legitimate place to stand, but only until I receive my drink. I squeeze my glass of sparkling water tightly, not knowing where to go next. I reconsider the possibility of joining a group of strangers but reject that idea—it seems too high stakes. By now I feel ultra-self-conscious: I have been standing at the bar for what already seems like an eternity, all by myself. I am convinced now that everyone in the room has taken notice: “Who is this weird loner at the bar that no one wants to talk to?” Did I hear little murmurs? Seconds now feel like hours—tick-tock. All I want to do is disappear at the bar, maybe fall into a secret hole or something. There’s usually no happy ending to this: I awkwardly stand around, make a few clumsy attempts at conversation, and then make for the nearest exit. 

I have tried to work with this fear in different ways over the years, with some success. At a cognitive-behavioral training for therapists, I let the trainer convince me that I needed to do something he called “shame-attacking.” “By doing the very thing we feared most,” he explained, “we would realize that it wasn’t ultimately that bad, and so overcome our fears.” He suggested I find a coffee shop, go in, and yell at the top of my lungs, “I feel very lonely. Is there anyone here that would like to go out with me?” which is precisely what I did. I was so scared that for a second it felt like my heart might stop beating. But after the tsunami of fear faded, I did feel a sense of relief—I was still alive. Still, this exercise didn’t make my fear of rejection go away. 

I have also worked with skilled therapists on understanding where this fear of rejection comes from: an old and deeply held belief that I am not OK. That being my full self would mean people would not love and accept me. And while those sessions helped me to cultivate greater empathy toward my fear and feel less ashamed of it, going to a party full of strangers still feels scary to this day.

I began practicing Zen in my teens (around the same time I started going to parties), partly in an attempt to deal with the pain of not feeling truly OK and the confusion around who I authentically was. One of the Zen sayings that stuck with me early on was by the 13th-century Zen master Eihei Dogen: 

To know the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things. When actualized by the myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others drop away.

What did Dogen mean by the myriad things? “Actualize” means “make a reality of,” and the “myriad things” are nothing other than the very things in front of us right now. Whatever that may be at that moment. So making the very thing in front of us a reality is the same as forgetting ourselves. In Zen, “making something a reality” means dedicating ourselves completely to that very thing. And by dedicating ourselves to it—by looking at it without any interfering thoughts, ideas, or concepts—we free it from the ideas we have about it, thereby making it a reality. 

In zazen, this usually means dedicating ourselves to our breathing. We allow ourselves to be actualized by the breath by practicing to be 100 percent with the breath. A Zen saying goes: “When we completely hand ourselves over to the breath, nothing remains between heaven and earth except the weight of a flame.” When we manage to completely focus our attention on the breath, all sense of self drops away. Just breath remains, with no one breathing it. This is what Dogen is saying. Of course, the myriad things do not have to be the breath. Anything and everything can be the myriad things—the dirty dishes in your sink, the email in your inbox, your overbearing boss—but the practice remains the same. We surrender to what arises in the now, thereby releasing the constant notions we create about things and ourselves.

So what about the party guests? After nearly three decades of Zen practice, why do they still scare me instead of actualize me? Several months ago, I was invited to a professional mixer. When reading the email invite, I realized that I never thought to actually use these parties as a practice ground. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking Zen is something we practice mainly on our cushion. In reality, every moment of our lives is an opportunity to practice, an invitation to awaken. But how do we practice at a party we dread, a meeting we fear, an encounter we try to avoid? How do we forget our self during those moments?

It starts with setting the intention to practice. We say to ourselves, “I am going to use this next thing as a practice ground.” That little shift in our approach already makes a big difference. Effectively, we are saying, my focus is on how I approach this situation, rather than the outcome of this situation. Instead of focusing on an imagined future, which is always an idea (“They will think I’m intruding”), my focus remains on the present moment (the very word a person says, the sensation of the handshake, and of course the ever-changing sensation of breath).

I usually feel a great amount of self-judgment and shame for my lack of self-confidence at a party. Through my practice, I can increasingly allow all of this to soften a bit by unconditionally accepting whatever is arising. What is present right now? Fear of rejection. Where do I feel it? In my heart and gut—pressing and pounding. What else is there? Judgment. What does the judgment say? You are a joke, Matthias—it’s ridiculous that you feel like that during a party. All of it is OK. The fear is OK, as is the shame about the fear, as is the judgment. In Zen practice, we shift from a participant in the drama of our mind to a simple witness. The witness simply witnesses what is—it doesn’t control, interfere, or try for any particular outcome. It just shows up. And when our mind judges and controls, we witness that too. 

I can fast-forward to tell you that my attempt to apply my practice to the professional mixer wasn’t without its challenges. After the elevator doors to the event popped open, my intention to use the event as a practice ground and to accept whatever arose immediately vanished. Nope! I saw small groups of complete strangers scattered across a huge hall—my general nightmare. There was that deep fear of rejection rearing its head again. But one of the wonderful things about Zen practice is that every moment is an opportunity for a fresh start. So I took a deep breath, refocused on my posture, and simply walked up to the first small group I could see. I used the short walk toward the group to practice walking meditation, focusing my attention on each step (although I tried not to make it look like anything special—just mindful walking). 

Once I arrived at the first group, I reached out my hand and said, “Hi, my name is Matthias. What is your name?” Another rush of fear showed up in that moment (“They sure think I intruded on their conversation”), but my conscious focus remained on the breath and the very act of reaching out my hand. “Jamal” was the answer from the first person. And then something wonderful happened. Just as our focus can be completely immersed in the breath during zazen, my focus was now completely immersed in Jamal’s words. I listened to him deeply and intimately, and for brief moments, there was only the present-moment experience of listening and talking. No Matthias left, no Jamal, no fear of rejection. There were brief moments when self-consciousness flashed up, like when the time came to move on and meet a new group and I could hear my mind say, “Oh, no, what do I do next?” I thanked Jamal, took a deep breath and a few steps, and reached out my hand to the next group with the intention to pay complete and utter attention to whatever would arise. 

Just as Dogen said, I forgot myself. I forgot myself by being actualized by the various party guests, the words, handshakes, looks, etc. In a way, you could say that for stretches of the experience, I was not there at all. No one was. It was free, unbound, intimate, and completely new. 

Has the experience healed me from my fear of rejection? No. In fact, a few weeks later, I attended a holiday party, where, although I knew a few folks, I didn’t know most of the rest. I completely forgot about my intentions and fell right back into old patterns of feeling and thinking, wanting to leave the very moment I arrived. You don’t graduate in Zen. Sometimes practice can be pure grace: everything suddenly clears up and we are free. But often, Zen is simply grit, and we must remind ourselves to practice again and again and again in ever new domains and areas of our life. With the myriad things. Even when the myriad things are party guests.

The post Forgetting the Self at a Party Full of Strangers appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The origins of the practice of loving-kindness and the Metta Sutta are recorded in the commentaries to the Suttanipata. As the story goes, a group of monks went off to meditate in a forest. There the “tree spirits” or devas resented the monks’ intrusion into their space and set about spooking them. These devas managed to terrify the monks and completely disrupt their concentration, sending them running back to the Buddha for help. I’m not sure that I believe in tree spirits (though I think trees themselves are spirits), but I can relate to how scary it can be to sleep out in the woods.

This is when the Buddha taught the monks the Metta Sutta, telling them that it would both help them to concentrate and protect them from any demons. When the monks took the sutta and its practice back to the forest, the devas were so moved by the love radiating from the monks, that they not only accepted them sitting among their trees, but actively took care of them while they meditated. 

Whether taken literally or as myth, the story has the same meaning: love is the antidote to fear. It protects us. When we are able to respond with love, fear is conquered.

How does metta address our fear? 

Metta is the practice of openness and non-separation. It asks us to risk letting down the walls, thinking of the welfare of others instead of ourselves. In short, it tells us that protecting the illusory self is not the way to freedom. Metta is not only a practice to cultivate fearlessness, but an expression of the wisdom of fearlessness. Understanding metta means understanding the truth of interdependence and the insubstantiality of self.

How, then, to practice fearless metta? As with all Buddhist practice, the starting point is mindfulness, in this case, mindfulness of fear. Our tendency is often to avoid feeling difficult emotions or addressing them head-on. Instead of being with our feelings, we tend to either react to them or try to suppress or overcome them—fight or flight. 

Buddhism offers a third way: awareness, openness, investigation, and acceptance. These are the key components of mindfulness. With fear, this means a willingness to first and foremost feel the uncomfortable quality of this emotion. In practical terms, this means allowing the fear to arise and flow through our body and mind without resistance. The breath anchors us in the present moment and helps the fearful energy move through the body. As we become more intimate with this feeling, we bring an attitude of caring and kindness—metta—to the feeling itself. We try to soothe our own fear with this attitude. Soon we may find that we are able to let go of many of the common manifestations of fear in a natural, effortless way. 

If it’s true, as the title of the seventies self-help book proclaims, that Love Is Letting Go of Fear, then that must mean hate is clinging to fear. As simplistic as this formula may appear, it holds a basic truth.

I learned this lesson many years ago when I worked for a delivery service in LA. The days were long and stressful driving my beat-up Subaru down crowded boulevards and highways shuttling documents and packages to law offices, banks, and other businesses around the city. One late afternoon coming down the Hollywood Freeway after my last delivery, traffic tight but still moving fast, a car weaving across lanes suddenly cut in front of me, forcing me to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid an accident. The driver kept right on going, while I felt a rush of anger grab hold. Exhausted, caffeinated, and edgy I jumped on the gas and went after him. Caught in the grip of my rage, I came up on him and did the same thing he did to me, swerving in front of him and narrowly avoiding an accident. He leaned on his horn and cut across lanes again, disappearing amid the mass of cars approaching downtown LA.

My heart pounding, my head swimming now, I pulled off the highway onto the shoulder, still holding fast to the steering wheel. I sat there taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. What was I thinking? I could have gotten killed? What if that guy had a gun? I knew I’d been terribly foolish, but I didn’t really understand why I’d reacted that way.

When someone cuts us off on the highway, they are endangering our lives. Even though we may not think of it that way consciously, our body and our nervous system know it. That danger triggers fear. What our bodies and minds often do with that fear is turn it into anger. Our survival instinct tells us that if we are in danger, we need to protect ourselves, and that very often means we need to fight. As though we were being attacked, we go into an aggressive mode. We are operating a large machine that can be a violent weapon, and we are in a sense trapped on the road. In the logic of fight or flight, there’s no real room for flight, so fight it is.

This process plays out in many ways that have broader implications than a dangerous moment in our cars.

Fear of change, fear of “the other,” fear of losing power or wealth or land, these are all drivers of hatred, the motors behind war, oppression, and exploitation. Human history is littered with the rubble of these fears, and our own era continues this tragic pattern. The roots of these horrors lie in the fear and hatred that live in the human mind. As we as individuals hate, so too do our communities and nations. No amount of treaties or international agreements can eliminate the roots of war.

Only the transformation of human consciousness will change the larger human culture. It is this transformation that Buddhism seeks.

Practice: Breathing With Fear

To practice with fear we need a strong willingness. Our instinct is to avoid, so we need to be committed to the process. The practice focuses on body sensations and experiences, avoiding entanglements of the mind. Try applying it next time you are anxious or afraid. 

Start with several deeper breaths and relaxing the body.

Feel the fear as sensation and energy in the body.

Give space for those sensations, releasing any tendency to suppress or hold back

Keep breathing and releasing.

Relax the facial muscles, jaw, forehead, eyes. 

Relax the shoulders.

Relax the belly.

Continue to feel the energy, noticing any tendency to tighten or resist.

Continue to relax and breathe.

If anxiety starts to get stronger, take more deep breaths and slowly exhale, releasing tension.

Notice the thoughts behind the fear and recognize their emptiness.

You are alive; you are breathing; trust that you can hold these feelings with kindness and wisdom.

⧫

From Living Kindness: Metta Practice for the Whole of Our Lives by Kevin Griffin © 2022. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

The post Practicing Fearless Metta appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In his book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us: 

We may think our agitation is ours alone, but if we look carefully, we’ll see that it is our inheritance from our whole society and many generations of our ancestors. Individual consciousness is made of the collective consciousness, and the collective consciousness is made of individual consciousness.

Like much of his work, this reminder is prescient, especially as we continue to navigate ever-changing coronavirus protocols, the escalating climate emergency, and deadlocks in American politics that halt the possibility of true progressive, human-centered policy. In juxtaposition to these extremes, we might feel that we are standing still, not making progress on our path, or that we have been left without a choice on how we get to exist. 

These times don’t have to be a disruption. They are an opportunity to acknowledge impermanence and recognize the roots of our suffering.

From the small moment of testing a new recipe to the larger moment of asking a love interest whether they’d like to be exclusive, states of not-knowing live on the same plane of existence. Herein lies that danger that Thich Nhat Hanh warns us about regarding the collective consciousness. When we’re bombarded with the public discourse of our “unprecedented times,” no matter how big or small the issue, we are susceptible to getting lost in the narrative of what we believe about our suffering. We allow external influences to drop us deeper into the worldly truth of our thoughts and feelings instead of recognizing that in these liminal waters of uncertainty, fear and helplessness will be intensified.  

Recognition isn’t an easy task. 

This past summer I built an intimate relationship with fear and helplessness. I’ve struggled with depression since I was a teenager, and this particular season of heaviness had me contemplating the fact that I might never “get better.” The fear of looking down the road and finding myself consistently in the grip of depression was present. So too was the helplessness of my mind’s storytelling that “this is everything, this is all-encompassing, this is all that will ever be and you have no choice.”

These thoughts are mental formations, or chitta samskara. Anything that is made of something else—be it a plant or our fear and helplessness—is a mental formation, and, much like unpredictability itself, these formations are present at all times. They are aspects of our consciousness that come from wholesome and unwholesome seeds (kleshas), which will be watered and fertilized differently, depending on our current state of affairs and our individual life experience. Outward triggers will “water” these seeds and allow them to take root. Our current societal conditions, for example, have “watered” and fortified our fear, helplessness, and uncertainty to the enhanced states so many of us feel today. I suffered from these effects during this summer’s episode of depression, but the feeling has always been there. The not-knowing of this time amplified the feelings. I would venture to guess that whatever your particular seed of suffering is, the same has happened to you. What gets left out of the conversation is that this is actually a dynamic space to be in.   

The dharma invites us to embrace these often painful energies as teachers. When a feeling from an unwholesome seed rises to the surface, we have to witness it with gentleness. That alone takes strength. Allowing yourself to be a person experiencing fill-in-the-blank feeling may require a certain degree of release. When our suffering is running deep, this invitation may feel even more difficult to navigate, the heaviness too burdensome to bear. Whatever the feeling is, however, allowing yourself to go to its depths can help you touch the emptiness of the emotion. 

If we can recognize and accept our pain without pushing it away or clinging to it, we’ll be better able to see that joys and sorrows are truly the same. Through letting go and touching emptiness, we can then choose a compassionate response.

Consider the uncertainty, fear, and helplessness seeds that have taken root and sprouted to the surface in yourself. With gentle curiosity, you can ask: What does this seedling look like? How does it move in your body? Can you give it a sound? If you could touch it, how would it feel? This intimacy can lead you to see what actions you take in response to these seeds, and to know your habitual responses. With creative wisdom, you can investigate your unwholesome seeds and note: “This one drags me to the bottom, but here is bodhicitta too.” 

Once spotted and identified, the seedling needs to be properly tended to. This is calling in right diligence. With diligence, you can regain your agency. Instead of this unwholesome seed being an unwanted suffering or vulnerability where we might collapse in on ourselves, we can recognize what this pain looks and feels like and how we can move toward a skillful and compassionate response. 

This is the joy of being amidst and leaning into disruption. It is from this place that we can choose to take the next steps that anchor us along our uncertain paths. 

The post The Not-Knowing of Our Time appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Bears swish when they walk. Their legs are chubby, with thick fur rubbing smoothly as they amble along. I didn’t know bears made this particular sound until one happened upon me at a meditation retreat as I sat on a bench atop a mountain knoll in North Carolina. My memory of this encounter is based almost entirely on sound alone. I saw the bear for only a moment when I turned my head at the noise, expecting to see a fellow retreat attendee emerging from the woods to join me. Instead I saw her (I am not sure, but I think of the bear as her), head heavy, sunlight flowing down the soft slope of her forehead to the bridge of her nose as she bowed towards the earth. 

*** 

Earlier that morning I lay with my back against the wood of the meditation hall, eyes closed as our instructor Cindy led us through a visualization meditation. She’s a spritely, slight woman, with a cheerful Southern accent and a ready smile. Cindy began in a familiar manner. We were discussing compassion that day, and I expected Cindy to follow the natural course of a metta, or lovingkindness, meditation. 

“Bring to mind someone you care deeply for,” she said.

I imagined my mother.

“As we follow this person, pay close attention to how you feel physically in your body,” she continued.

I looked forward to that warm feeling metta provides—the comfort in sending good thoughts towards others.

“Now, imagine you see this person surrounded by fire. Hot flames all around a hell realm, if you will.”

Not quite the comforting visualization I was expecting.

“Imagine they are burning and there’s nothing you can do,” she continued as I struggled to imagine my mother in hell, a concept foreign to me, having been raised in an agnostic household.

“This person who you care so much about is now in an ice realm. They are freezing to death…”

Jesus!, I thought.

The rounds of the visualization continued in this way, without relief. Hell realm, ice realm, my mom going blind and wandering close to a steep cliff-edge. Behind me I heard a woman begin to sob. Distracted, I wondered why I did not have tears as well. I love my mother, so why couldn’t I feel much while envisioning these horrible situations?

Cindy’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Now, imagine this person in the human realm. But they are weak, diseased, and dying. You must watch them suffer and know there is nothing you can do to help them.”

My mother has joked before that when she gets old, too old to stand or to be trusted on her own, that my sister and I just have to park her wheelchair in the woods and she’ll be happy the whole day long. Watching rabbits jump over one another, ruby-throated hummingbirds suspended in the air, feeling a warm breeze on her papery palms. Though I was meant to imagine her struggling, this peaceful scene came to mind instead. It’s what she wanted, what would happen. I felt calm. The woman behind me shook quietly.

***

Since childhood I have looked for bears on those rare occasions when I was in a place where they actually exist, and during the retreat, as I was in bear country, thoughts of these primal, shaggy creatures had crossed my mind several times already. So perhaps it was not a true premonition when I walked up to the bench on the grassy knoll that afternoon and thought, Wouldn’t it be cool to see a bear? I almost felt like, at 22 years of age, I should have seen one already. Memories of missed chances floated across my consciousness as I walked: hoisting a cloth bag of beef jerky and oats high into a tree in the Sierras while backpacking; gazing out the car window on annual trips to Maryland when I was a girl, searching between flashes of pine for a stubby snout. On the first day of the retreat the staff had gone over the local natural hazards, black widow spiders and cottonmouths and black bears. They advised us to write down where we were headed and at what time on a white sheet of paper pinned to the communal cork board, and before heading out I almost didn’t put my name down. The map indicated the knoll was only a 15 minute walk—what could happen? I unlaced my hiking boots outside the sala and went in at the last minute to scribble my name on the list.

I had thought about seeing a bear the same way anyone thinks of seeing something dangerous and awesome—abstractly, almost as fantasy. In my imagination I would perhaps be up on the crest of a snowy hill, peering down to a creek or river and see a bear approach the flowing water and bend down for a drink. Or maybe I would be on a wooded trail like ones I walked so often in Ohio, and spot a bear far down the path in front of me, both of us staring at one another for a moment before darting off. I tried to remember what I had read about what to do in a grizzly bear or black bear encounter—for which species did you back away, make yourself bigger, or curl into a ball? The only bear tip I was certain of was to make noise as you walk, but it would seem overly precautious for me to follow that rule on this silent retreat, as I walked past the quiet wooden cabins of the dharma community.

A clearing on the hill opened as I left the woods, like a painting being created all at once. The grass spread wide, the sky unpeeled overhead. In the center of the knoll a bench overlooked far away mountains that rippled, slate-blue, as if freshly risen from the Earth’s core. I sat almost giddy in the silence and hot sun. I was there for some time before I heard the footsteps approaching behind me, quite close. I turned with a smile, expecting a fellow retreatant, and then I was standing and I couldn’t tell you what emotion my face was showing. For a split second I thought the bear was a dog. It was less than ten feet away and walking through the tall grass straight towards me.

“No, no, no!” I heard myself saying, almost as if I was mistaken. It couldn’t be.

Without thinking I grabbed my backpack from the bench and ran across the field, diagonally opposite the bear, in a dash to get off the knoll and back to the trail. I glanced over my shoulder in pure prayer that I wouldn’t see her chasing me, and I saw in a moment that she had also run from me in the other direction, both of us rustling into the woods at the same time. My entire body felt like stone as I shakily sought to calm my breathing, without success. I remembered the tip to make noise to avoid startling bears, and though I knew it was a little too late for that I started to sing, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember a single song. I assigned a small melody to a strange yodel that popped into my head, too afraid, apparently, to recall lyrics. A “Yodel-lay-hoo-hoo!” emerged awkwardly as I hurried down the path and back to the retreat grounds. On the way I saw another retreatant heading up the path and broke the silence to warn her about the bear up ahead, and to my embarrassment I found it a struggle to hold back tears while issuing my warning.

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, I could not calm down. Even at the evening meditation I had to fight the urge to open my eyes and turn around. In my mind, she was still behind me. As I lay in my small bed at the end of the day, I noticed my shoulders and back ached from being clenched. I closed the cloth curtain to my room, finally finding the privacy to cry. I didn’t want anyone to see a reaction that I barely understood myself. I was ashamed. Black bears aren’t even particularly dangerous, and I was safe, so why did I still feel afraid hours later? All the times I had thought about seeing bears seemed to mock me. I had always envisioned myself feeling gracious, awe-inspired, invigorated by a bear sighting. I had never felt fear in my fantasies.

***

This retreat was new for me, a yoga retreat connecting movement and poses (asanas) to the Four Immeasurables, a Buddhist conceptual framework I knew nothing about before signing up. Cindy, our trusty guide, described the Four Immeasurables as boundless qualities that exist without end both within us and in the world around us. These qualities are equanimity, joy, love, and compassion.

At first, I doubted these qualities related in any real sense to yoga, which I had practiced mainly as a form of exercise. The connection became clear, however, as the days passed. Cindy led us to notice how it specifically felt, physically, to embody the Immeasurables through meditation and movement. Was there a similar buoyancy in your chest after a meditation on joy as when you arched your low-back in a crescent lunge? Did the same constriction in your throat you experienced during an unpleasant visualization also appear when you became frustrated by failing to force your body to fit an idealized yoga shape?

During the brief session at the end of the day for discussion and dharma talks, several of my fellow retreatants recalled how painful the visualizations of suffering had been. How, they asked, was envisioning loved ones in the hell realm or the ice realm connected to compassion?

In response Cindy referred us to the slips of paper she had handed out that listed the Four Immeasurables in a table form, with categories for “close” and “far” enemies of each Immeasurable. Compassion’s far enemy, which I interpreted as its opposite, was listed as “fear.” Cindy described how the far enemies of the Immeasurables act as blockages that prevent the flow of the immeasurable quality from being felt.

Cindy, perched before all of us on our cushions peering at her with eager eyes, explained that the fear blocking compassion could take many forms. You could fear that a person you love who is suffering could come to depend on you for care, or you might fear the attachment awakened in you by watching someone suffer—but generally, the fear comes from identifying yourself in their pain. Imagining yourself in their situation, fearing pain, prevents you from empathizing fully with the other person and feeling true compassion. The point of meditating on painful visualizations, Cindy explained, is to observe what the fear of suffering feels like in the body. 

I realized that all of what I was unable to feel during our meditations came pouring out of me after my encounter with the bear. Because of her, I recognized how much I fear suffering, and the possibility of suffering. Perhaps it was natural for me to shut my negative feelings off during the meditation. Who wants those sensations in their body? But my avoidance prevented me from reckoning with even the hypothetical possibility of my mother’s suffering. What would happen when direct physical suffering afflicted my mother? Would I be prepared?

*** 

This past Thanksgiving, months after the bear sighting, I stood on the front porch of my aunt Jenny’s house, my parents and I saying our goodbyes after dinner. My grandpa Mickey was leaving as well, escorted by my uncle Todd who lived just one house over. Frail but still chipper, even in his 90s, Mickey leaned onto Todd’s bent elbow as they slowly approached the stairs before pausing.

“Chris, help him down,” my aunt told my dad.

My dad tried to go to Mickey’s other side, but Jenny, whose career has been devoted to elderly care, stopped him.

“No, no, you have to go behind him and hold his belt up.”

As the words left her lips, I saw that what she meant related both to Mickey’s center of gravity and his dignity. Leaning tremblingly over the top stair onto my uncle’s arm, Mickey’s pants had sunk down a few inches, exposing the naked flesh of the top part of his rear end. I looked to my dad and saw, if only for a moment, something that resembled fear flash across his face before he stepped forward and looped his fingers through Mickey’s back belt-loop and the three of them carefully descended the stairs.

As my parents and I walked to the car, I felt ashamed that I had felt ashamed. My first instinct had not been compassion, but rather a recoiling, a burning embarrassment at what I perceived as pathetic. Though we didn’t discuss it, I wondered if my father had been embarrassed as well before stepping in to hoist up the pants. My dad does not work with the elderly as his sister does, and he will sometimes express relief that his more knowledgeable siblings live close to Mickey.  My dad will admit he does not feel prepared to care for an aging man.

I understood that my reaction on the porch stairs served a clear but obstructive purpose—my embarrassment masked my fear. My fear that eventually the elderly man would be my father, and I will be the one expected to not feel shame, but to step up and help him, even, or especially, in situations that our culture construes as demeaning. My fear that I wouldn’t know what to do, or how to help him. And the fear that eventually, I may be the one relying on someone else to lift my pants up and help me down the stairs.

I rarely imagined seeing my parents age, and when called to do so, I clung to the fantasy my mother gave me, of her happily parked in a wheelchair in the woods, reading a good book. With luck, maybe it will all be just like that. But now I remember the bear. Our encounter on the knoll was not at all what I had for years imagined. The reality was terrifying, my response confusing. 

Perhaps we can’t really be prepared for suffering, but we can approach fear of the suffering in a different way. Fear, with its shoulders of stone and pounding heart, deserves to be met with kindness. And, with kindness, it might yet show us a path toward unending love and compassion should we choose to look for it. There’s an awe in living with bears, an awe of sunlight cascading down the soft slope of her forehead and the bridge of her nose as this creature of such power bows, humbled, to the earth.

The post Living with Bears appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When I was a kid, my parents took me on Space Mountain in Disneyland, and the ride got stuck right before the first major drop. I remember the fear rising up like a wave, the terror building for what felt like an hour. I squeezed my eyes shut once we got moving, and afterward I was so distraught my parents never took me on a roller-coaster again.

That childhood fear manifested as constant worry, perfectionism, and shyness. As I reached adulthood, it morphed into acrophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of tight spaces), and that towering fear of failure that paints the sky with a nameless anxiety. And while many of my friends get excited by a brush with danger, I’m the one you leave behind when going to theme parks and scary movies.

Over the years, my meditation practice has become a balm to my depression, so I decided to try to tackle my fears as well. I started with flying.

I travel a lot, and particularly annoying is my fear is of turbulence. When planes hit a rough patch, the shaking immediately sends me into a panic. A few years ago on a work trip to Canada, I boarded a tiny ten-seater, piloted by two shockingly young pilots. They giggled, took selfies, and alarmingly turned their map this way and that as though lost in the midst of our two-hour flight.

The turbulence was the worst I’ve experienced. And while larger planes will jerk up and down, this one pivoted on all axes. An animalistic hysteria overwhelmed me immediately, and I returned to my long practice of single-pointed concentration. The fear retreated, giving way to a sense of bodily bliss, a jhanic calm that endured despite the jolting. For once, I was relaxed and smiling.

On a recent trip to California, I faced another fear, my lifelong adversary. My girlfriend’s family are theme park connoisseurs, the type of people who want to go on all the rides twice, and they asked me to join them on a trip to Disneyland. Remembering my brief moment of self-mastery on the plane, I vowed to attempt every ride they took. This time, I used Vipassana (insight) meditation. On Radiator Springs Racers, I focused on the effect of acceleration on my body. On the Matterhorn, it was the rush of the wind, the flickering of light and dark. And even on my old nemesis, Space Mountain, I tracked the way my stomach seemed to rise and drop precipitously.

Unlike in my childhood, my eyes were open, welcoming the minute details of experience in an exploration of consciousness. I felt happy. It wasn’t the same happiness apparent in the shrieks of delight around me.. Rather, it was the triumphant exhilaration of wholeheartedly welcoming discomfort and enjoying it.

Related: Fear, a Special Section

“Dead men tell no tales…” the spectral voice intoned on Pirates of the Caribbean.

As our boat sailed silently into the dark tunnel under a grinning skull, I thought there would be no better place to attempt chöd, an esoteric meditative practice that taps the power of fear.

The most succinct description I ever found was an article in Tricycle by Dr. Alejandro Chaoul. Practitioners summon images of demons and hungry ghosts, Chaoul explains, and visualize their own bodies being butchered, cooked, and eaten by them. By openly calling our fears to the table and generously serving them our most precious possession, our bodies, we dissolve both fear and our clinging to the self. Tales of practitioners had them chanting at midnight in cemeteries and charnel grounds, where the dead were exposed to the elements.

Disney has a surprising problem with

While Pirates isn’t exactly the spookiest ride, the skeletal iconography helped dredge up my own fears, honed to an edge since entering my middle years. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, but despite my gory imagination, I felt oddly serene as we got off the boat. And when we rode it the second time, I welcomed the opportunity to practice again.

I didn’t jump right into practicing on the rides, however. Before our trip, a friend convinced me to check out a new Netflix series, “The Haunting of Hill House.” I found it to be the perfect occasion to battle fear from the safety of my couch. Horror movies don’t have to be as restrained as Disney, and they hit my fear receptors from another angle. It’s not just the jump scares, or the gore, but the profound sense of forboding that gives me the willies, which follow me the rest of the night. I used Vipassana to skim across that sense of eeriness, noticing how it arose in my chest and tightened in my jaw and shoulders. For the first time, I began to enjoy horror, bingeing all ten episodes across a few sittings. And instead of disquiet, I found that thrill and freedom that I would later enjoy on roller- coasters.

When we finally got back from Disney, I was thrilled to learn that Dr. Chaoul was not only based near where I live in Texas but was also offering a retreat on the chöd through the local branch of Ligmincha International. I joined for the preliminary lecture and the second full day of practice, attempting to pronounce the long Tibetan chant correctly, laughing while we all attempted to keep tempo on the chöd damaru—or traditional double-sided drum. The resident monk tested several dangling, a trumpet made of a human femur used to ritualistically inviting demons to feast. The levity came to a momentary halt as an older student asked with trepidation, “What if we summon real ghosts?”

The class grew silent. The instructor answered, “We are going slowly. There is no need to rush. We’re not just going to jump into visiting a cemetery!”

The class laughed.

Naturally, I ditched the last session to go to a cemetery.

I happen to live in what used to be Houston’s cemetery district. The Glenwood and Washington cemeteries are around the block, two of the oldest in the city. I walked past graceful angels, Confederate and Union soldiers, and beautiful trees swaying in the wind. I passed the tomb of Howard Hughes, and finally found a small bench with a view of a large swath of family plots. It was a beautiful day, far, far away from Tibetan mystics in charnel grounds at midnight. But that was OK. I carry my own demons.

In my version of the ritual, I had no drum or thigh-bone trumpet. I self-consciously chanted in English, shuffling the printed handout from class and quieting to a murmur when I spied a couple walking their dog.

In my mind I rang a chuck-wagon triangle—I am in Texas after all—to invoke fear and depression, anxiety and sadness, a host that hunkers down around me, hungry to dine.

A snippet of the previous day’s seminar came to mind.

“When the demons of the self are satiated, it’s like any group of guests that are full,” said Dr. Chaoul. “They’re ready to listen. And then you share the dharma with them.”

At Disneyland, I could only sustain Vipassana on back-to-back roller-coasters for a day. The next day, the family went to Universal Studios. I was supposed to face the Tower of Terror and its accelerated random drops (imagine having the lines randomly cut in an elevator again and again), but I balked.

It’s now October and scary movies and haunted houses abound. I’m not ready. I have little bits of progress, but I am still that scared boy stuck on a roller-coaster, eyes squeezed shut waiting for the panic to end.

But in the cemetery, I feed my demons everything I have—all my bones, all my flesh—and as the breeze moves serenely through stately rows of white headstones, an acorn falls on my shoulder and drops to the bench, as though in some inscrutable cosmic lesson.

For a moment, the clamor inside me stills. My ghosts are finally ready to listen.

The post Harnessing Horror Through Meditation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I come from a part of the world where ethnic and religious minorities must navigate extremist elements, geopolitical instability, and limited resources. We know about uncertainty, survival, and fear. I’ve seen many of my own friends base decisions on fear; I’ve seen communities torn apart by it. I’ve seen fear creep into different crevices of peoples’ lives and politics. Fear thrives in the absence of mutual understanding and diversity, and it is a poisonous weapon. But there is an antidote: compassion. Compassion combats fear.

In my religion, we believe in karma. Many people misunderstand the concept of karma. Karma is not a pre-determined destiny. Karma does not mean we accept injustice or inequality. Karma just means cause and effect. Karma means we are empowered to be part of the solution. Karma gives us a method to combat fear, terror, injustice, and inequality. Karma means that we are not defined by our situation but rather by the choices we make. 

As a believer in karma, I encourage the world to choose courage and compassion. Far too often we wait for leaders and governments to bring us peace. But think about it: it is individuals who build peace. And when individuals build peace, it is strong, it is lasting, and it is genuine. That does not mean that we sit nicely on a meditation cushion and enjoy our own inner peace. Peace requires action. Peace requires a real sense of urgency. Peace requires courage and hard work. Peace means that each and every one of us has an obligation to build mutual understanding and an obligation to reject fear. Peace requires us to not only accept but to celebrate the differences among us. Fear needs us to reject differences. Peace encourages us to embrace differences.

Related: Facing Fear 

The nuns of my lineage, often known as the Kung Fu Nuns, are great examples of that courage. In my part of the world, nuns are not afforded much opportunity for education or leadership. However, the nuns of the Drukpa Order take on real leadership roles and responsibilities within our community. They learn to work with each other even though they come from different countries and speak different languages. The nuns are learning Kung Fu as a means to instill physical and mental confidence, breaking centuries of tradition. After the Nepal earthquakes of 2015, for example, the Kung Fu Nuns delivered medical and relief supplies to some of the hardest hit regions. They traversed mountainsides and river-rafted to help Nepalis of all religions and backgrounds. They rejected fear and chose courage instead.

In light of all the violence in the world, the Kung Fu Nuns and I have embarked upon a bicycle journey from Kathmandu to Kashmir to celebrate diversity and build mutual understanding. In Ladakh, where many of my nuns come from, there is a long history of diversity. Located along the Silk Route, the people of this community celebrated different religions, languages, ethnicities, and traditions. They know that these differences do not fracture us. Diversity strengthens us. Diversity is not something to be tolerated—it is to be celebrated. We should welcome it with curiosity, delight, and joy. This is what fear fears. While cycling is a small gesture, I hope we serve as an example of how women, religious leaders, and individuals from all communities have a role in peace building. You also have a role in peace building. Some of you have a large platform and can speak out for others who are not heard. Some of you are not in public service, but may make a big difference in your work place, in school, or at home. Every one of us can create an immediate impact and can build peace.

(These remarks were given by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa to the Bucerius Summer School on Global Governance in August 2016.)

[This post was first published in 2016]

The post How to Combat Fear appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

As a girl of 10 years, satin ribbons in my hair, and wearing a freshly starched dress, I had a special seat in church each Sunday next to my father, Lawrence Manuel, Jr. With my younger sister and mother on the other side, I sat close to him, appreciating our special relationship around the word of God. On Saturday evenings, in the rush of Los Angeles where I was born and raised, I would read my father his weekly Sunday school lesson. As I read, he would make symbols of his own in the margins that represented the sounds of the words. He did this because he was illiterate. A sharecropper‘s son born in 1898 in Opelousas, Louisiana, he spoke mostly Creole, making his English difficult to understand. Even though he couldn’t read, he didn’t let that get in the way of his participation in Sunday school. With the symbols he had developed, he would “read” a portion of each lesson out loud to a class of older black men. I would never have been brave enough to pull off such a thing. But my father was a talented and courageous man; raised in the backwoods, he learned to do whatever was necessary to survive. He was what I called “fearless,” and, as I sat next to him at church, I prayed to be fearless just like him.

On the other hand, it was also in church where my deepest fears emerged as a child. How was I going to negotiate my young life with God so that I would not go to hell? I was terrified. 

The stories my parents told of the South and race relations brought even more terror. And on an unforgettable night in 1966, right in Inglewood, California, a cross was burned on our front lawn. Why do I mention these things? I share them to demonstrate how fear and anxiety can accumulate over a lifespan. Most of us are unaware of the extent of the fear that we carry. Fear builds upon itself, or more precisely, fear creates more fear. As a result, our accumulated fear becomes a deep-seated terror that is challenging to uproot. If we view fear as terror—as a pervasive human condition rather than one bound to singular events, and incidents—we are more likely to feel the urgency of attending to it. We constantly speak of terrorism in the world, but we don’t necessarily acknowledge the terror that has invaded our inner worlds. Instead, we present ourselves as brave or courageous.

Related: The Gift of Fear 

Many of us are afraid of fear, and afraid of admitting, even to ourselves, that we feel it. We push back the visceral body experience of fear so effectively we think we have eliminated the fear itself. However, if we look around or within, we find that fear is often hidden and masked: the person who appears to be the center of the party might well be a person who fears her own invisibility or rejection. Perhaps the person who conducts eloquent presentations at the workplace is in fact afraid of losing his job. The person that espouses to be an ally may be conquering some kind of fear within. The longer we mask our fear the more we experience the terror of our inauthenticity—perhaps creating chronic anxiety and despair. An ongoing red alert sounds off in response to threats that the terror we mask might be exposed. We might even say that the terror, as in the outer world, can become systemic within us. We become our own terrorist. 

We try many strategies to eliminate this feeling of terror by rearranging our external lives like furniture in our house. If I changed the way I look, I’d be less afraid; if I had more money to maintain a particular appearance, I’d be less afraid. If I live in a particular city or neighborhood, I’d be less afraid. But all of these strategies are bound to fail. At some point we need to confront the terror from within.

In my experience of following Buddha’s path, first we need to unmask the fear; we need to let go of pretending we have no fear. If we pretend to be unafraid, we look as if we are disinterested or disconnected from everyone and everything. A spiritual teacher demonstrated for me what it looked like to pretend not to feel anything. The deadpan expression on her face was strange and uninviting. She went on to remind me that fear was a part of being human. I had a profound experience of her teaching.  

Once I was getting ready for a television interview, the very first of many about a book I had just published in 1998. On my way to the studio, fear rode my back like a monkey. Thoughts ran rapid, and each one amounted to “I am not enough.” In the guest room, I met a famous civil rights attorney waiting for his time to be interviewed. He smiled and assured me all would go well. Clearly, he had seen my lack of breath and stiff movements. My terror was visible, and I was embarrassed. I realized in that moment that for most my life I had made great efforts at appearing calm while being completely terrified. Luckily, it turned out that once the cameras began to roll and my interview started, I found myself speaking from the heart about what was important to me; the adrenaline subsided and I was no longer afraid. Of course, when the cameras were turned off, the fear resumed. This time, it was a different fear—the fear of what I had said instead of what I was going to say.

What had allowed me to release the terror, even for those few moments? I suspect that when my mind was focused on what was in my heart instead of all the fears from my past, I was able to experience myself as an unencumbered non-suffering being. 

Related: Difference and Harmony: An Interview With Zenju Earthlyn Manuel 

How can we continue to release terror? Surely, it doesn’t work to try to unload the entire mass of fear inside at once. We can release terror moment by moment, bit by bit. In meditation we learn to cultivate and stretch the moments of being unencumbered, those places of non-suffering. We can experience the state of non-suffering with each breath, moment by moment, breathing in and breathing out. In meditation we feel the fear without having to do anything about it in the moment. We simply breathe. There is no past or future. We are not harming or being harmed. The terror within is being attended to in a gentle way. There may be tears or trembling. We are alive.

When I first chanted the Heart Sutra, I was stunned by the profound phrase within it that states: “without hindrances there is no fear.” These words said to me that there was something in my mind that gave fear its power. Certainly, I knew the external experiences but I was curious as to what internal mental conditions had fueled the terror within my life, and I sensed that fear also fueled particular mental conditions. In his teachings on the Five Hindrances, the Buddha taught that there are five primary mental conditions that can impede our practice of meditation or mindfulness. My study of these conditions shed light on unacknowledged fear in my life. I could see that fear is embedded within each hindrance: 

1. Sensual desire: Living with parents who were considered poor, I promised myself never to be poor. Therefore, my intense desire for material gain was expressed at the expense of my true happiness.  The fear of “not having,” and striving to “have,” fueled an illusionary fear of never having a satisfied life. The very quest for riches contributed to the inner poverty and loneliness that terrified me. In meditation, both the hindrance of desire and the attendant dissatisfaction are easily accessible. With a single breath, we can notice the fear that arises with sensual desire. On the out breath, such a fear can be released with care and gentleness. Each breath decreases the intensity of the fear.
2. Ill will: Most of my life, the exclusion based on race, gender, and sexual orientation has brought forth rage. To say the least, I have had an enormous share of not being the chosen one. For many years I found it much easier to be enraged than to go beneath the rage to the fear that I would not ever belong or fit in with others in this society. A rage fueled by my very embodiment separated me from others, causing a cycle of more fear, alienation, and rage. Through paying attention to the breath in meditation, I was able to pause the cycle. What I saw of myself in the pause was that I had embraced emotional wounding as my identity—as my true nature. In other words, I was a “hurt” person. A fear of being trapped by my embodiment turn to rage. As I continued to breathe in and out, I knew that the body was not a trap but rather a container in which I could heal and transform. In seeing the body as the fiery path of enlightenment, my identification with wounding lessened, along with the fear and the rage.
3. Sloth and torpor (lifelessness): In a dull-minded state it is almost impossible to detect fear enmeshed with the dullness. Within the cloud of what Buddhists call sloth and torpor there is often the fear of taking action or the fear of not succeeding if one did take action. For years, I regretfully worked for others for fear of not being capable of manifesting my own dreams and visions. I remained on jobs while experiencing boredom and feeling constantly “tired.” In the slowing down and stillness of meditation, I saw my unacknowledged fear. I could see that I was afraid that others would not be interested in what I had to offer. In breathing in and out, I could begin to release the illusion that I was an inferior being (or superior one for that matter). In such a letting go of illusion, the entangled fear inside my lifelessness was released giving way to enthusiasm and clear visioning for my life.
4. Restlessness and remorse: When I am restless, I meet life fearing that there is constant danger ahead, as if everything is a crisis or something is happening out of my control. Fear is enmeshed with restlessness and remorse. If I act on the restlessness, then remorse—compounded by regret and self-loathing—is guaranteed. When I’ve spoken from such restlessness, anxious to prevent some imagined harm, I’ve said words that have sometimes harmed others—I’ve found that I cannot be both restless and skillful. In meditation, we are invited to still the waters of our lives. We quiet the mind, releasing conjured stories and fantasies. When the waters are still long enough, we see our reflection. Once I’ve seen my restless and remorseful self in meditation, I can begin to release the restlessness and entangled fear, lessening the likelihood of later remorse.
5. Doubt: Doubt is a distrust of what we sense in life. Distrust creates fear. When I attended my first meeting in the Nichiren tradition, I doubted that Buddhism could satisfy my spiritual hunger. But when I began to chant, I was moved in the same way as I had been when I used to sing in church. Despite a sense in my body that said, “You are home,” I still doubted the Nichiren path. Over the years, I continued to chant and to practice Buddhism, holding the tension between the feelings of doubt and being perfectly at home. Eventually, I noticed the liberation occurring in my life and the fear of my new path washed away. Once I understood and trusted the teachings, I had something on which to build conviction—something to stand on during life’s inevitable waves of fear.  

While working with the hindrances, we may not eliminate fear. But it is possible to reduce fear by first recognizing it as part of the make-up of living beings. In my own life, once I understood that it was okay to be afraid, the healing began. The wisdom in my bones came alive and I became aware in the midst of fear and anxiety that the mind and body were begging to purge the terror within. With this awareness, the waters of my mind stopped whirling and I could at last begin to see my reflection. I began to express the fear through my own creative process of writing as my father had when he made symbols for the words in his Sunday school lesson. I am sure that after 20 years in the same Sunday school class, the men must have known that my father could not read. Yet, they understood that Lawrence Manuel, Jr., was standing upright in the face of his own terror of having never learned—or more accurately having never been allowed—to read as a sharecropper’s son. He was a true Christian and he would have made a wonderful Zen Buddhist student. 

Six years after my father’s death, I entered Buddha’s path. I walk on the path fully equipped with all of the emotions of a human being. Meditation assists me in seeing the roots of the emotions, and that all emotions are old. When I notice terror rising to the surface, I note, “I am in the past.” Then, I ask, “What is going on here, right now?” When I am angry or enraged, I know to say, “I am terrified of something.” I refrain from being ashamed of experiencing these emotions. Only through acknowledging and releasing blind emotions can I experience the inner unencumbered and harmonious being that is always present despite the suffering.

We cannot fully practice any call for liberation without our lives being fully exposed. There is no hiding. 

♦

Learn more from Zenju in her Dharma Talk: It’s Beyond Me: Freedom from Managing Your Life.

Reprinted by permission from Inquiring Mind, Fall 2012 (Vol. 29 #1). © 2012 by Inquiring Mind.

[This story was first published in 2015]

The post The Terror Within appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

The post Faulkner and Fear appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.