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Seeing the false as the false
and the real as the real,
one lives in the perfectly real.
Dhammapada verse 12
As our retreat draws to a close and we start talking again, several
people have mentioned how during the retreat they’ve had to encounter a
lot of fear. Although on the outside there was nothing to be afraid of,
and we couldn’t have been with a nicer and safer group of people, this
didn’t stop fear arising. Amongst all of us here, I wonder if there’s
anybody who hasn’t experienced fear at some time on this retreat? I
wonder what our reaction to that fear was? Was there anyone amongst us
who didn’t ascribe a negative value to that fear; who didn’t say to
themselves that it was wrong to feel afraid?
So who is it that says that it’s wrong to feel afraid? When we
experience fear, and we hear a voice within us saying we shouldn’t be
afraid, who is saying that? This is an important question and I would
like this evening to look into it.
Listening carefully
When we first hear this question, we might hear the emphasis as, ‘Who
says it’s wrong to feel afraid?’ as if we could find out who it is that
says ‘it’s wrong’ and teach them to say that it’s okay. This would be an
understandable kind of reaction. When we find something disagreeable,
our initial reaction is often to try and find the responsible agent. But
what happens if we change the emphasis of the question to ‘Who says its
wrong to feel afraid?’
If we feel afraid, I would suggest that what is called for is to feel it
fully, to feel fully afraid. We need to understand that this same
character who says ‘It’s wrong to feel afraid’ also says that it’s wrong
to feel all sorts of other things. He or she is endlessly judging and
condemning. This is the one that is getting off on the world, consuming
the world, feeding on the world through praise and blame.
The Buddha said that to feed on praise and blame is like feeding on
other peoples’ spittle, on that which is better spat out or vomited up.
This compulsive condemning mind feeds on taking the position of judge,
on judging things as right, wrong, good or bad. Part of us really enjoys
being so superior in handing down this judgement.
This same one starts laying on the praise when things are going well and
we find our experience of life agreeable. A voice says, ‘You’ve really
got it together; you’re doing really well. In no time, all sorts of
people will want to listen to your pearls of wisdom. You’re flying;
you’re on the way home.’ This character feeds on praise and blame, gain
and loss, success and failure. This is the part of us that the Buddha
said was a slave to the world. The energy it lives on is false and
unsustainable.
We don’t need to feel bad when we come across this way of getting false
energy. We don’t need to condemn it. We just need to see it for what it
is. That which sees this false way is itself real. The Buddha said,
‘Seeing the false as the false, we attain to the real; mistaking the
false for the real, we stay stuck in the false.’ When we see ourselves
consuming false energy, which is what we are doing when we are being
judgemental of our fear, we see that tendency for what it is. Finding
identity in judging and condemning is a very limited identity, and it’s
also an exhausting identity. It means always having to try to succeed
and win. We will always have an enemy to try to get rid of. By contrast,
the one who walks the way beyond right and wrong and good and evil
abides as the awareness which sees, which listens, which knows, and
which receives all experience willingly.
Fear is just so
So our practice is a way of moving out of the tendency to indulge in
habits of condemning, of being for or against our fear or whatever else
it is we’re experiencing. Our practice is that of assuming the
disposition of one who receives into awareness that which is, silently
listening, and feeling freely. Fear is just so – no judgement. Fear, in
the beginning means, ‘I feel afraid.’ But if we keep listening to it and
feeling it, the ‘I’ falls away and there’s just feeling fear. Fear. And
there is awareness, a presence in the middle of our experience, not
pushing nor pulling, not accepting, not rejecting, neither for nor
against, neither not for nor not against. But it’s not that I then have
a new-found fixed identity as awareness, because I can’t own this
presence. Any feeling of wanting to own and be secure we can also simply
receive.
Then we start to recognise that our desire and fear go together, that
they are inextricably joined. When we see this connection between desire
and fear we don’t want to get lost in desire any more because we see
that whenever we get lost in wanting we’re building up fear for the
future. Fear is the other side of desire. If ‘I’ am caught in desire,
what ‘I’ don’t see is how much I’m caught in the fear of not getting
what I’m desiring. If we live freely with our feelings of wanting and
desiring and wishing, if we live seeing clearly, knowing accurately,
then the fear of not getting what we want is just that, it’s just so,
it’s not a problem. But when we grasp at the desire to get, we also
grasp at the fear of not getting, even if we don’t see it. We wonder
where so much of our fear comes from. Why is it that more extravagant
people, people who live more opulently, have more fear? Because they
follow desire more. Fear and desire go together. As we work on being
true with one, we discover a more true relationship with the other. If
we want to be free from excessive desires then we need to look at how we
feel about fear. When we feel afraid, we receive the fear into
awareness. If it’s really strong fear, which it can be at times; if it’s
terror even, or panic, at least let’s try and remember to inhibit the
tendency to say this is wrong. We’re not saying that it’s right; we’re
not trying to feel good about it. But we’re bringing into relief those
voices within us that are saying that it’s wrong to feel afraid. It’s
not wrong to feel afraid, it’s not right to feel afraid. When we feel
fear we want to feel it fully, freely, without judgement. We are neither
for nor against fear.
As we open into a broader quality of awareness, and we are able to
receive our experience of fear into that awareness, we can study it
clearly. We can study it deeply, in our own way, not through reading
books or merely through thinking about fear. Thinking doesn’t do us any
good at all when we really feel afraid. We can listen, feel, observe the
whole body-mind contraction that we experience as fear.
Fear is not a thing; it’s an activity. Fear is the activity of
constricting and contracting the heart energy. When we are challenged
with some dangerous physical situation, the blood vessels in our body
constrict and contract, we tense, we get more energy, and we can move
out of that situation fast. That’s what’s supposed to happen, that’s an
appropriate reaction. But often the same thing happens inappropriately
for some imagined reason or threat. We develop very complex patterns of
avoiding the knowledge that we’re doing this fear. We somehow feel a
victim of it. And in our state of helplessness the only thing we are
able to do is judge it as wrong, decide that we’re failing. But it is
possible for us to expand beyond these contracted reactions with our
well-developed radiant awareness, free from judgement and even from the
need to understand. Awareness is simply willing to receive accurately.
When awareness outshines these shadowy reactions of denial and
avoidance, the dynamic activity of fear that we are doing reveals
itself. We feel it happening, we feel ourselves doing this constriction
that obstructs the feeling of life, that obstructs the possibility of
beauty, of intelligence, of love. Maybe we come to see that the
possibility of loving is always here. In fact, it’s the most natural
condition. We see that the only thing that obstructs it is this
contraction of fear that we’re performing out of unawareness. And maybe
if we come to see this for ourselves, we give up trying to become more
loving, we give up trying to not be afraid. It’s a waste of time trying
to be more loving. It’s like trying to make money when you’ve got a
fortune in the bank.
Why pretend about reality?
If we see that we’re obstructing the heart’s radiance, then we can begin
to feel what’s behind that tendency to obstruct that we’re habitually
involved in. If we do this, then that tendency to obstruct is what we
become interested in, not some new improved image of ourselves that
we’re trying to synthesize. A non-judgemental, non-condemning, all
forgiving, radiantly loving, thoroughly acceptable, agreeable, rounded,
nice, improved me appears as a altogether unattractive fantasy; both
unconvincing and uninteresting. What is interesting, what is genuinely
attractive, is the possibility of experiencing the reality of being in
the centre of our own reactions. Not pretending to not be afraid, not
pretending to not get off on praise, not pretending to not dislike
blame. But when for instance we feel blame and we dislike it we receive
it fully. Why pretend about reality? When we’re feeling good about being
praised and appreciated, we know it as it is. When we’re feeling afraid
we say, ‘Yes, I feel afraid.’ We feel what we feel until there’s no
distance, no split within us, and we’re one with what we’re feeling.
In attempting to do this there is the real risk that we tap into more
passion than we know how to contain. And if this is the case then we
must acknowledge that we need to develop more strength of containment,
more stability of character. We humbly recognise it, without trying to
push past, without trying to overcome anything, without trying to bypass
any stages or any experience, without trying to become enlightened or
something. We own up to the limitations that we are experiencing, and we
come back to exercising the discipline of attention, engaging with
interest in the practice of mindfulness of breathing. We want to do this
not because it’s good or it’s right or it’s what some expert told us we
should do but because we want to have the strength and the skill to be
able to surrender ourselves into the reality that at this stage we
intuit is at least possible.
If we approach our samadhi practice with this kind of wholehearted
interest then it won’t lead to fighting ourselves, it won’t lead us into
heedless judging of ourselves when we come across our limitations. It’s
inevitable that, as we intensify the heart feeling through such
exercises as observing silence and focusing the mind, we’re going to
move through areas of experience that we don’t feel so complete in, so
whole in or so safe in. It must be that way. Fear can be a healthy
reaction as we move into dangerous territory. To say that we feel afraid
doesn’t mean to say that we’re inadequate. Ajahn Chah used to say, ‘Well
if you’re going to cross the motorway to get to the other side, you
should be afraid; it’s dangerous!’ So let’s be careful if we come across
reactions in the face of fear such as, ‘You’re wrong, you’re failing
because you’re feeling afraid.’
Let’s see if we can listen with greater patience and deeper willingness.
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© 2005 Aruna Publications |