Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm

by Thich Nhat Hanh

The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.

We may think that if we ignore our fears, they’ll go away. But if we bury worries and anxieties in our consciousness, they continue to affect us and bring us more sorrow.

To be mindful means to look deeply, to touch our true nature of interbeing and recognize that nothing is ever lost.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay.

The first part of looking at our fear is just inviting it into our awareness without judgment. We just acknowledge gently that it is there.

Understanding the origins of our anxieties and fears will help us let go of them.

If you make a habit of mindfulness practice, when difficulties arise, you will already know what to do.

We were born, and with that birth, our fear was born along with the desire to survive. This is original desire.

Everyone is afraid sometimes. We fear loneliness, being abandoned, growing old, dying, and being sick, among many other things.

We need to look closely at our relationships to see whether they are based primarily on mutual need or on mutual happiness.

We have a tendency to think that our partner has the power to make us feel good and that we’re not okay unless we have that other person there.

If we are attached to obtaining more and more wealth, fame, power, and sex, we lose our freedom.

“Rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd” (Nothing is created, nothing is lost). Lavoisier

I am life without limit.

Everything that is comes to be because of a combination of causes. When the causes and conditions are sufficient, the body is present. When the causes and conditions are not sufficient, the body is absent. The same is true of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, mind; form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and so on. This may seem abstract, but it is possible for all of us to have a deep understanding of it. You have to know the true nature of dying to understand the true nature of living. If you don’t understand death, you don’t understand life.

The energy of nonfear is the key and the best basis for social action, for actions of compassion that protect people, protect the earth, and satisfy your needs to love and to serve.

It’s the energy of mindfulness that empowers you to recognize your pain and sorrow and embrace them tenderly.

The practice of meditation offered by the Buddha has two parts: stopping and looking deeply. The first part of meditation is stopping.

Even amid the wonders of the present moment, it may be that you have a number of difficulties; but if you look deeply, you’ll see you still have maybe eighty percent positive things to be in touch with and enjoy.

Many people use hurtful words against children. That knife of hurt may twist in a child’s heart every day for the rest of his life. In our family, in our society, on our planet, every day we create more people with knives in their hearts. And because they hold knives in their hearts, their suffering and rage overwhelm their families, their society, the world.

To repent means to begin anew. We admit our transgressions, and we bathe ourselves in the clear waters of the spiritual teaching to love our neighbors as ourselves. We commit to letting go of our resentment, hatred, and pride.

“Breathing in, I am aware of some tension and pain in my body; breathing out, I calm and release the tension and pain in my body.” When tension is released, pain is reduced.

We let go of our wrong perceptions of reality so as to be free. Nirvana literally means cooling, the putting out of flames; in Buddhism, it refers to extinction of the afflictions brought about by our wrong perceptions.

Fear can accumulate in our body, causing stress and tension. Rest is a precondition for healing.

According to the Buddha, a human being is made of five elements, called skandhas in Sanskrit. These skandhas are form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.

“The person who suffers most in this world is the person who has many wrong perceptions, and most of our perceptions are erroneous.”