Freedom from Fear and Anxiety (Part Two)

Let's explore this theme of fear in a little more detail, a little more fully, this aspect of being human that we all know, that we all suffer with. Start at a very simple level and ask a very simple question: what actually is fear? What actually is fear or anxiety? So we all at one level know the experience, but it's worth actually kind of dissecting it a little bit. What goes on? What's the experience of being afraid? Well, usually, there are some body sensations. I touched on this earlier. The heart is going faster or pounding, maybe butterflies in the tummy or knotted in the tummy, or just a sort of fluttering or quivering energy in the body. Can be much stronger than that as well. But some sensations going on at the physical, at the bodily level, generally unpleasant. Generally not pleasant sensations. Unpleasant physical sensations. And because of their unpleasantness, a reaction to them: don't like. A reaction of, basically, aversion -- wanting to get rid of them.

So one important aspect of the experience of fear is body sensations being unpleasant and then our reaction to them. Dividing, in a way dissecting the experience of fear -- not for the sake of being sort of anal or overly petty, but actually because it provides some clarity, and also different approaches, how we can work with this. Instead of fear being overwhelming, we can actually learn to have it be something we can work with. So the body sensations are very unpleasant, and reaction to them. Thoughts often -- not always -- are also part of the sort of soup of fear. Thoughts are often -- have you noticed in relationship to fear -- future-based thoughts. It's often something in the future, even just a few seconds in the future. Often the thinking associated with fear is directed towards the future. So thoughts. And included in that sort of aspect of thoughts is a whole pack full of assumptions -- oftentimes not all seen. I'll go into these later. Thoughts and assumptions often not conscious and not explored.

Again, the kind of thinking that goes on when we have fear is generally not pleasant. It's unpleasant. It's not nice, comfortable thinking. It's unpleasant. Because of the unpleasantness, there's reaction to it, okay? So body sensations, unpleasant, reaction; thoughts and reaction. The third aspect is a little more subtle and a little more hard to describe, but it has to do with the way that the mind feels. So the body feels a certain way, but the mind, too, can feel a certain way. In a sense, sometimes the mind feels very contracted, tightly contracted. It's almost as if our brain has shrunk to the size of a pea. You might have had this if you're performing something, and you suddenly get up there in front of the audience, and you look out and ... [laughs] Everything just -- it feels like you can't think. The actual space of the mind is shrunken, or it feels so inside. There's a constricted mental space. As human beings, generally speaking, we don't like that. We feel that as unpleasant. Mostly we like a relaxed, open, spacious kind of feel to our mind. So a little more subtle, but I'm talking about the texture of the mind itself, the texture of awareness. It's something we can learn to notice. So constricted mental space, and again, it's unpleasant. Because of that unpleasantness of the constriction, we react to that.

Okay. So there are these three aspects and their related reactions. How can we work with fear? How can we work skilfully and really helpfully with fear, to really begin to kind of chop down this sort of poisonous tree and really do something about it in our lives? When there's fear -- something to point out, and I'll go into this in more detail -- we're usually afraid of fear. We usually have fear of fear, and that turns out to be very significant. I'll come back to it. What it means is that oftentimes we don't take the trouble, we're not particularly practised at really just being with fear itself and being with the textural experience of fear itself. We're not very practised. We're not even that interested, usually, in just feeling the vibration of fear in the body, giving mindfulness to the sensations of fear. This is the place that we start.

But actually, to take one step back, when there's fear around, often it has this uncanny tendency to take up all the space. So it feels like, in the body, that everything is consumed with fear. Or perhaps we don't think that consciously, but it's as if we get sucked in a little bit to the whole experience of fear. Very worth taking some moments or even minutes to deliberately put the attention somewhere in the body where we're not feeling fear. So there are typical places where we usually feel fear in the body -- the tummy, the heart area. But there are other places that are less typical -- earlobes? [laugher] I don't know. Someone has yet to tell me they feel fear in their earlobes. I'm sure it can happen. In the middle of the fear, actually put the mindfulness, put the attention somewhere there isn't fear. Just rest there and experience the absence of the sensations of fear, just for a little bit, partly to kind of reassure the being that the fear is not taking over everything. It's not like it metastasized.

So that's really, really useful. Toes, maybe, end of the nose. Somewhere where there's not fear, just to kind of calm down the cycling of the process a little bit and see that it's not everything. But then the flip-side is also true, as I said, and we need to learn, really learn -- it really is a skill -- how to bring this bare attention of mindfulness, this simple attention, and meet the actual unpleasant sensations of fear themselves. We don't really want to go there, because they're unpleasant. What would it be to just hold them in mindfulness, to just meet them with mindfulness? What does it actually feel like? And this mindfulness of the sensations of fear in the body. Now, as I said, we're not really practised at this, so this is something that we do practise, and slowly, slowly, gradually, we develop our capacity to do that. We develop our capacity to be with and kind of accommodate the sensations of fear in the body. This is something that we can get, in a way, more and more skilful at doing, more and more able to do.

So when there's fear, that's kind of the first port of call, really checking in with the body and just being with the bodily experience of it, allowing the bodily experience, but really interested in what it feels like. I'll go a step further, and I'll say sometimes when there isn't fear and you're sitting in meditation, perhaps quite calm, to actually sometimes deliberately sacrifice your hard-earned calmness and drop a couple of pebbles in of what it is that typically brings up fear for you. Why? A couple of reasons. One is the clarity of the calmness enables a clearer seeing, of course. We can kind of see it begin to ricochet in the being and have its effect in the sensations. But also, sitting in meditation is what we could call a safe space. I don't have to do anything when I'm sitting in meditation, I don't have to perform anything, I don't have to look good, I don't have to act on anything, I don't have to decide anything. It's a safe space. So using the calmness and the posture of meditation to begin, deliberately, sometimes, trying to practise with the mindfulness of the sensations of fear. Okay?

[9:51] We don't need to act when we're sitting for half an hour, forty-five minutes. I don't need to act. All I need to do is sit there and see if I can suffer a little bit less. That's kind of a description of meditation. All I need to do is that. I don't need to act.

One thing that we're lacking with fear, generally, most people, is confidence in the face of fear. We're afraid of fear. Fear comes up, it goes like this, and we go ... [gasp] Quite uncommon for someone to really feel confident with their capacity to just open up and accommodate those unpleasant sensations of fear. But we can develop a real confidence with fear so it's just not so much of a problem, it's just some sensations, just some sensations. So very important, this mindfulness of the sensations, and really deliberately working on our capacity to do that.

A second aspect that I want to go into -- this is really, really pivotal -- is what is our relationship with fear when it arises? What is our relationship with fear and anxiety? So usually -- in fact, almost always -- we are aversive to the experience of fear. We want to flee the unpleasantness of the experience of fear. We're afraid of fear, we don't like it, we want to get rid of it, we want it to go away. That's our relationship typically, our typical sort of unpractised and unexamined human relationship with fear. Very normal, very understandable. Unfortunately, we can't quite just see that and say, "Okay," and kind of get away with it. This fear of fear, this aversion to fear, the fleeing of the fear actually is not an innocent bystander. It makes the experience of fear increase. It's like throwing gasoline on the fire. It's not a neutral thing. To have that kind of relationship with the experience of fear increases it, snowballs it. It makes the experience of fear increase, and it also makes it feel more difficult. We could say this aversion to the experience of fear is part of the constellation of fear itself. It's not like there's fear and there's something else which is my relationship to it. It's part of the whole snowballing effect, part of the whole mechanism of the fear. This is really, really important to understand.

What happens when we flee is the thoughts associated with fear actually gain momentum. Here's the anxiety sensations in the body, the unpleasantness, the tummy churning and fluttering and all this; don't like it. I flee it. Where do I go? Upstairs into the head. The energy goes up here. Thoughts are already spinning, because that's part of the fabric of fear. I've just injected a whole lot more energy into the thinking, and they just spiral around faster. The kind of thoughts that are spiralling around anyway, as we said, are not particularly helpful, and I've just given them an extra dose of energy by fleeing the bodily sensations. And the whole fire of fear just [whoosh] becomes more. So the reaction we have is part of the anxiety. It's not that they're two separate things. If I can learn to take away the reaction, to drain the energy from that reaction of aversion, I will see that fear cannot support itself. It cannot support itself without my reaction of being afraid of it or aversive to it. Now, some people are nodding. For some, that might be, you know, "I'm not sure about that." Not just to believe me because I said it, but we can actually explore this in our practice. What happens to fear if I withdraw or quieten, even, my reaction of aversion and fleeing and fear of it? It cannot support itself.

So always in the Dharma, the relationship that we have with things ends up being really crucial. We might also be, in terms of the aversion, putting a pressure on it to be different. We're just putting a pressure on the fear to be different: "I don't want it to be this way." We may be judging ourself. This is very common. "I shouldn't be afraid. I'm X years old. I've been doing meditation and therapy and sauna and ..." [laughter] "For decades, and I shouldn't have this. I shouldn't." There's a self-judging. That self-judging, again, is not neutral. It's a pressure. It's like putting the fire of fear in a pressure cooker. It's putting pressure on ourselves, and it will fuel the whole thing more.

So often, when I have fear, to look carefully: what am I assuming? Am I assuming that the presence of fear in this moment means something about me or about the level or status of my practice? What am I assuming? "I've been meditating for X years and there's fear, so it means that I haven't got anywhere, or it means I'm going backwards, or it means I'm ..." whatever. What am I assuming the presence of fear means about me or my practice? Remember, the story I started with, completely innocuous-sounding story about the Buddha meditating in the forest, etc., and had a bit of fear but worked with it. It's like, "Okay, big deal," but then you remember, according to the story, this guy was -- it doesn't say exactly when it happened -- so this guy was somewhere between six years and a couple of days from complete, unexcelled liberation. So the presence of fear, even quite strong, doesn't mean so much about where we are, or doesn't mean what we think it might mean.

So really important with this is to watch the judging mind. Is it possible that there can be kindness, that there can really be some kindness in relationship to ourselves when there's fear around? Many of you know the practice we have of loving-kindness, of wishing well to all beings, but including ourselves -- wishing health and happiness and peace and well-being. This practice of loving-kindness, interesting -- can we, when we do that sometimes, when there's fear -- and actually originally the Buddha first gave the practice of loving-kindness as an antidote to fear. But oftentimes a person is giving the loving-kindness to themselves and it's almost like me, separate from the fear; me, when the fear has gone. Can we actually see that fear is part of our humanity to a certain extent? In that moment, the me that I am giving loving-kindness to is the afraid me. It's the me with fear that's part of me. It's as much a part of me as anything else. You could say it's not me. You could also say it's part of me. There's nothing that's more me than the fear. It's part of my humanity. Can I make sure that if I'm giving myself loving-kindness, I'm actually including that part? So me with fear.

[18:22] But even, again, to go a step further slightly. Is it possible that we can practise and actually learn to practise giving kindness, offering kindness, so to speak, to the fear itself? Not to me with fear -- we do that -- but actually offering kindness and acceptance to the fear. What would that look like? How would that translate? This, I think, is one of the most powerful ways of working with fear. We talk a lot about mindfulness in this tradition, about being present with, about clearly noticing: what do the sensations feel like? Where are the sensations in the body? What's their texture in the body? A lot of emphasis on clarity and precision of noticing. What if, as a practice, we explored emphasizing the welcoming aspect or the accepting aspect of mindfulness? So not emphasizing so much the precision of noticing what the sensations of fear feel like, but actually seeing if it's possible to emphasize, overemphasize, emphasize in a quite extreme way the attitude of welcoming? Here are some sensations of fear, and it's like opening up the space of awareness, letting them be there, letting them be there, letting them be there, welcoming, allowing, accepting as fully and completely as possible. Now, that sounds counterintuitive, and maybe some people are thinking, "That can't be right." But it's a very powerful practice.

What's happening? If I'm doing that, and I'm emphasizing the welcoming, then I'm actually undermining, I'm taking away energy. I'm not feeding this rejection, this aversion of the fear. I'm actually emphasizing, in my practice, in the moment, a different approach, and I'm working on softening the aversion, softening the rejection, welcoming, welcoming. Does this make sense? Yeah? Very, very powerful. As a meditation technique/approach to working with fear, extremely powerful. It's a practice, meaning we can develop that as an emphasis or an approach in practice. It's something we can really develop. I remember some years ago I was on a personal retreat at Gaia House, and I wasn't that well physically; I had some health problems. I had a ticket to go to India and to actually visit the leprosy community of this Baba Amte that I told you about earlier. I was doing this personal retreat and I wasn't that well, and I just noticed -- it was just a background apprehension: "How's my health going to be when I go to India?" I had been to India twenty years before, just once, when I was a teenager actually, and got very ill, and actually never really been the same physically, never totally got better from it. And just this background sort of gnawing of apprehension: "Will it be okay? Will it be okay?"

This was a few years ago. By that point, I'd been meditating a lot of years, so had developed quite an arsenal of meditative sort of kung fu tactics to zap it. I was going through my arsenal, and nothing was working, until it dawned on me: I'm basically trying to get rid of it. I began just seeing so clearly, "Okay, embracing, embracing this apprehension. Really, really allowing it." It was interesting. As soon as I did that -- it really didn't take very long -- but the whole thing just began to kind of unravel a little bit, soften. It was as if before that, the fear had strangled any sense of curiosity or joy or aliveness about going to India again and kind of exploring this other culture a little bit. That's what fear does -- it strangles the life and the love out of our lives. It had done that in the moment. Just doing that, it was a little bit like the image metaphorically inside -- the fear was still there at first, and it was like me and my fear who was this sort of little boy who was a little bit scared about getting ill again for a long time. It was like we were going to go to India together, and sit there and check it out. It was much more inclusive, quite lovely. After that the whole thing just crumbled.

Okay. So we build fear through aversion to fear and through fear of fear. We build that. And that's something that we can learn to play with. There's another aspect of the way we build fear, and I want to touch on it. We have some sensations in the body, and then we label those sensations -- consciously or unconsciously, we label them fear. So this is what the mind does. It puts labels on things. But then we react to the labelled package. Someone earlier in the question and answer period was saying sometimes fear is very close with excitement. I've worked with a few people that actually, after a while, they're feeling into the sensations, working with the mindfulness of the sensations, and at some point they wonder, "Is this fear?" There are some sensations, but something happens when the mind, in its habit of doing, this is part of the function of the mind, slaps a label on -- "fear" -- and we react to that whole package, the newly labelled fear package. To begin to see the effect of that. It's something that we can play with. As the mindfulness gets more steady and more strong, in a way, we can begin to actually look at the sensations of fear and just notice this labelling going on, and just see them as kind of two separate things: the sensations and the labelling. Sometimes just withdraw the labelling.

So are the sensations, we could say, inherently fear? Is it really fear, or does it need me to label it as fear to be fear? Or, in Dharma language we say, is it empty? Is it something the mind is actually concretizing? It takes a little bit of practice, but all this that I'm talking about is available to us as avenues in meditative practice to really begin exploring. How can I move towards not believing fear so much? Because that's the problem. Fear comes and we believe it completely: "Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir."

I talked about these aspects of fear, and one of the aspects being this mental constriction. The space of the mind feels shrunken. Very normal part of a human being -- actually consciousness, not just humans having fear. So something about this. This is a very interesting aspect of fear and I want to go into it a little bit.

Sometimes in our lives -- and I know this very well from the past, and I see it in other people, and people tell me -- we go through periods that unfortunately can be quite long periods where anxiety becomes a habit. The energy system of the being, the body and the mind, keeps slipping very, very easily into a kind of rut of anxiety. Sometimes, even, it's as if the mind just goes there, the body just goes there, the energy system just goes there, and very quickly afterwards we say, "I must be anxious about something. That is what I'm anxious about." If you watch, you can actually catch it. Sometimes anxiety has become a habit in quite a strong way. Other times it's more subtle. But it's quite common. Now, I want to say a little about that. There are a few conditions that kind of make that a lot more likely. One of them, the simpler one to start with, unfortunately, is over-busyness. We all know this, including Dharma teachers. In stretches of time where we're over-busy, the mind is really fertile soil for anxiety, to kind of fall into that U-shaped groove of anxiety. It just falls in there. Something to do with being over-busy.

Sometimes, you know, we look at our life, and there's nothing we can let go of. It's just full, and we just have to find ways of working with that. But sometimes we look at life, and something has to go, because what it's doing is feeding the anxiety as a habit. But there's something a little bit deeper than that, a little bit more to it than that. Oftentimes I've noticed -- and this really isn't the whole story, but I think it's important to mention -- oftentimes I've noticed with people, and again, in the past I've seen this in myself, anxiety becomes a habit for a long period or a stretch of time when there is a climate of self-judgment, an ongoing climate of self-judgment. Again, that's the perfect soil for anxiety to become a habit. This is quite interesting, and I see this -- meeting, obviously, with hundreds and hundreds of people, talking with them and listening to them -- I see this over and over. There's some relationship here. Not to say it's totally, completely the whole picture. But it seems significant enough to go into a little bit. We wonder, what's going on here? Why is it that when there's a climate of lack of self-love, of self-judgment, self-criticism, anxiety as a habit seems very commonly to be married to that? What's going on?

[29:31] Loving-kindness, this aspect of mettā that I mentioned briefly, loving-kindness has the qualities of being calming, soothing, also of being spacious. As we deepen in this practice of loving-kindness -- that we don't even have time to do today, but -- as we deepen in that, we notice the qualities of loving-kindness are spaciousness and calmness. The qualities of anxiety, as we said earlier, are the opposite of that. They're definitely not spacious. There's this aspect of constriction to it. And it's, by definition almost, not calm. Self-judging thoughts, self-critical thoughts feel to the consciousness cramping and oppressive: "I'm a failure. I'm rubbish. I can't do this. You're always messing up." The actual consciousness cowers. It feels burdened. It shrinks in reaction to that. They feel oppressive and cramping. So can you see with that kind of climate going on, it's setting up that same kind of constriction of the mind space, the contractedness of consciousness? An element of that element of anxiety is already present when there's a lot of self-criticism going on. So it's just a small, little movement into anxiety.

So this has a lot of implications. Just to expand it a bit more. I've also noticed -- and again, for myself, and I see it in lots of people -- certain kinds of fear and certain very painful kinds of fear arise when there is a shortage of self-love, when there isn't enough self-love, self-esteem, self-respect, self-kindness, self-worth -- particularly the fear of being a failure of one kind or another. It goes right on the heels of that, fearing being a failure. Even more deeply painful, very, very painful, is the fear of discovering that we're bad somehow inside, that something inside us may not really be okay, may be bad, even evil. Something deep. I'm talking about a very deep level of kind of existential pain that some people can experience. And again, I know this from the past. I've known this from the past. Those kind of fears are very, very powerful, and very, very painful. And they go with a lack of self-love. So all this to say, just to point at how crucial and necessary developing love is and developing these practices of loving-kindness and compassion. On the path to free ourselves from fear, they're absolutely central. They're really a big part of working with fear. As I said, when the Buddha first gave the practices of loving-kindness, they were as antidotes to fear.

So this constriction of the psychic space, this mental constriction, sometimes what we need to do when there's fear is do something that opens up the consciousness, actually deliberately don't pay attention to the object of the fear. So this goes opposite to what we usually teach in terms of mindfulness -- it's very much about drawing close to what's difficult, being willing to touch it and to connect with it. Sometimes there's such a thing as skilful avoidance. Just don't go there. Just put it down for a while. I live at Gaia House, and at the moment -- well, actually for a while, on and off -- the craze is badminton. A whole group of us play. Some people are very, very good, and some people are not so good. [laughs] If you're on the other end of the court, the other side of the net of someone who is very good, and they've got you running all over, it's very hard to be anxious. Something's taking your mind off that thing. Very skilful. Also with this mental constriction, very helpful because when there's fear, the mind shrinks, as I said, and it seems as if fear takes up everything. Very, very skilful to just open the awareness, the visual awareness and even the kinaesthetic awareness to a sense of space. So right now in this room, it's a fairly large room, and letting the awareness go out to space, the corners of the room, the ceiling, the floor. Take in the space of the room. Just take it in. Can you feel the mind opening up a bit when you do that? Yeah? [laughter] Are we still here? Okay. I'll take that as a yes.

So there's something about that, because when there's fear, the mind shrinks. It gets wrapped up in the fear itself. Everything contracts. Giving the mind the sense of space opens up the context of that fear. So here are these sensations in the body -- they're just one thing happening in the space. Again, we're going against the natural movement of fear, which is to contract. That contraction snowballs the fear. So we're doing something that moves in the opposite direction. Really, really skilful. Again, it's a practice. One can get very attuned to the sense of space in meditation, actually deliberately cultivate that. Then it's there. It's there all the time. It's something that one can call on as a resource.

Okay. So there's a lot of work to do with mindfulness and awareness and seeing how the fear gets built in situ, in process. Oftentimes in our life, we also unfortunately have a habit of being dictated to by fear. Fear says "do this," and we do it. Fear says "don't do that," and we don't do it. So we believe fear and we follow its kind of orders. A part of working with fear, a part of Dharma practice, it doesn't just happen on the cushion, is actually being willing to challenge fear by doing, by doing what it says not to do in our lives. So we challenge it by doing. Because fear is so widespread, its tributaries run through the whole of our lives, we can find all kinds of situations and possibilities of doing this, opportunities of doing this.

Sometimes being on retreat, when people come on retreat for a week or so, it's a really, really good space -- you begin to see, "Oh, this is just fear of what if I don't get enough sleep tonight." You see this fear operating around how much sleep we get. It's very interesting. Are we willing to challenge that? What would it be, just one day say, "I'll take two hours less, three hours less," whatever? Just -- what the hell, you know? Sometimes practice needs a little cojones. Do you know this word? [laughter] It's not just about being mindful. Sometimes we actually need to do something with a little bit of oomph, a little bit of -- it's like standing up to fear.

So sleep's one thing. Food's another; already talked about food. What would it be to just not eat one day, or miss a meal or a couple of meals, just for the sake of shaking something up? Fear has a way of solidifying the status quo, as I said at the beginning, in ways that we don't even realize in our life. It's operating. It's running through, the stream's running through the life. So much is controlled. We could shake it up. We see it in relationship to money, as I said. Money's a very common one. For instance, in our tradition we have this principle of dāna, a lovely principle of offering dāna. Most people -- again, understandably -- there's a fear of giving too much. A figure comes into your head, and one just kind of subtracts a little bit. I once remember working with someone who had the opposite pattern. It's interesting. Fear can push us any way. I was working with her, and she would give me a lot of dāna. I mean, it was really like, wow, this is very, very generous, which was lovely, but after a couple of sessions I just kind of went into it and said, "Where's it coming from?" I don't mean like where is it [the money] coming from, but ... [laughter] It turned out that she was really afraid of being perceived as stingy. It was a very, very strong fear, so she over-gave, to the point where she was then unsure of her own finances, etc.

So fear can operate anywhere. It doesn't care. We get it too with sitting practice or walking practice. We get used to sitting for half an hour, forty-five minutes, and "that's what I do," but what about just kind of saying, "What the hell? I'll just sit longer. I'll just go longer"? And again, it can work the other way, and we can be sort of fearfully attached to sitting. I remember being in France, and a group of Dharma friends was sitting round, and one friend, Dave, was asking people whether they sat every day, going around, "Did you, didn't you?" He came to me, and I said yeah. This was some years ago. He said, "Do you sit twice a day?" "Yeah, I sit twice a day." And he said, "When was the last day you didn't sit?" And I remembered it was the day that I was under general anaesthetic. [laughter] It made me reflect a little bit. It's like, actually there's a little bit of tightness there. It's like I'm hanging on to something precious.

So fear can work anywhere. But the thing is, are we willing to shake it up? Go a day without a sitting, if that's the tendency. Give more or give less. Push the envelope a little bit. Not about 'shoulds.' It's about exploring and breaking the ice. So we challenge by doing. We can also challenge through the thinking, through the reflecting mind. How much, what am I believing? What goes unquestioned in my life? What assumptions go unquestioned and then am I reacting to without questioning, about myself, about a situation, about another person? This is colossal. There's so much running through our life that goes unquestioned.

[41:22] For example, one of the things I struggle with periodically is Crohn's disease. I have Crohn's disease. It's a -- some of you will know this -- not very nice disease which modern medicine hasn't yet found a cure for. I get periods when I'm really fine, really no problem. And other periods that you get a flare-up that's really quite nasty. And when you get ill, at least in my case typically, it seems to last at least a year. It's quite a long-term thing. If you're ill, it's quite a thing. There's a period of a sort of week or two where you're kind of in between, and it feels like you're getting ill, but you might go back to being okay again, or it might just snowball and then get worse. That period is very interesting. It's very interesting. I began to notice some while ago that actually there was fear coming in at that point, in that "I'm not sure if I'm ill or not yet." I began to -- what's going on here, and what am I perhaps assuming? I noticed that there were a lot of assumptions here. I assumed that if it was to go ahead and be a full flare-up, that it would stop me then for a year, year and a half, whatever it is, working, stop me travelling, stop me socializing, stop me having intimate relationship, etc. That was a kind of not even conscious thought. It was like a belief system that was operating until I just stopped, turned around to it, and actually began to say, "Is that even true?", and began recalling all these periods I had been ill and actually I still did work. It was slower, but I got a lot done. I still did travel. It was more inconvenient, and again slower, etc., but I still did. Still had a social life and I still had intimate relationship. But somehow it was operating, and I hadn't even realized it was operating.

So sometimes it's almost like we need to go to the end of the thought chains that are operating. It's like fear says, "Don't do that, because ..." It just says, "because, dot-dot-dot," and we don't fill in the dot-dot-dot. Oftentimes we don't do something, or we don't say something, or we don't do this because they'll think I'm stupid or because whatever. Sometimes it's like we have to turn around and stare the fear in the face and question. It's like, so what? So what if you think I'm stupid? So what? So what if you think I'm not handsome or I'm ugly or whatever? So what if I fail? Actually go to the end of the thought chain and ask these questions. Because it's operating as if. So what if I'm tired tomorrow? So what if I get sick and I lose weight a little bit?

Sometimes a person is so fed up with living under the tyranny of fear, it's almost like, "So what if I die?" I actually remember, I was living in Boston at the time of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 9/11, and as you know, some of the terrorists flew from Boston. A few days after that, there was -- well, I don't know how it was over here, but a day after, a couple of days after, it was mayhem, a madness of fear in Boston and probably lots of places in America. Complete -- all the army/navy surplus stores sold out of gas masks in like twelve hours or something. Food was going off the supermarket shelves. The whole culture was gripped by this fear. I don't think it was the same here; I don't know, I wasn't around. But it was intense. And a group of us, part of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, decided to hold a peace vigil. It was two days afterwards or something. The day that we picked for our vigil, it was -- you probably didn't have this, either -- but there were different levels of alert for prospective terrorist attacks that day. So we picked that day, and then it turned out to be a red alert level for Boston. And where had we picked our peace vigil to be? After the tallest towers in New York came down, we picked a patch of green directly underneath the two tallest towers -- this was all coincidence! -- in Boston, which incidentally are insurance buildings, which says something about fear and big money. But anyway.

It was this sense like, "Actually, I don't care. I really don't care." It's almost like, do we really want to live so much under the power of fear? Or it's like, "I'd rather actually die than be caught up in this kind of madness." So a lot of assumptions. A lot of assumptions going on. Sometimes -- in fact often -- the assumptions we have have to do with what we think or we believe we need to be happy. This is absolutely huge. What I believe I need to be happy. I remember -- I think it was in the New York Times quite a while ago, I remember reading this article. It was about a high school in New York, in Manhattan. It was a very pushy, academic high school. I know because I went to one too. And they interviewed some of the boys who were about -- I think it was 9 or something, quite young. They had these exams to stream them for A stream, B stream, C stream, etc. They interviewed some of the boys, and the level of stress that these poor little beings were under was unbelievable.

They interviewed one boy in particular, and he said something like, "If I don't do well on these exams, I won't get into the A stream, and if I don't get into the A stream, I won't get good exam results when I graduate from high school, and if I don't get good exam results when I graduate from high school, I won't get into Harvard," which is like Oxford or something in America. "I won't get into Harvard, and if I don't get into Harvard, I won't get into Yale Law School," which is like the Cambridge. "And if I don't get into Yale Law School, then I'll be on the street." [laughter] He just traced it step to step to step. Now, for him, because of culture and upbringing and family, who knows, it was a completely logical train of ... We laugh, but the thing is, we have those steps too. They don't add up. A does not lead to B. And we need to stare it in the face, and actually find that place, and see this does not lead to this. This does not lead to this.

So this question of happiness and what we need to be happy is actually huge. It's really, really huge. Why is it, as human beings, why is it that our fear in relationship to the approval of others has so much power in our lives? There's so much fear and anxiety about what others will think of us, how we perform, what we do, what we look like, whether we're intelligent or not. So much fear around the approval of others. Why is that such a huge force in this culture? It's complex. It's very complex. But partly we're so kind of like beggars for the approval of others because we don't have enough inner happiness. The resources, the reservoirs of inner happiness, inner well-being and peace, are actually not quite developed enough. They haven't gone deep enough. We haven't cultivated them enough and deepened them enough and so we're beggars. When, through practice, through dedicated practice, we actually do deepen that inner reservoir of well-being and happiness, no question about it and no question about it being a really, really important part of practice, as that deepens we become more confident as human beings. It's not a kind of cold, "I don't need anyone," that kind of thing. It's just that we're more naturally confident.

[50:24] So where does that happiness come from? It comes from cultivating beautiful qualities of mind and heart. So we talk about generosity and loving-kindness and compassion and mindfulness and insight and equanimity and all these qualities, patience. We talk about them. They are qualities that bring happiness. They are qualities that bring happiness. That's what deepens our inner reservoir of happiness. Taking care of, learning how to cultivate those qualities, immensely significant over a lifetime, immensely significant.

So earlier I just mentioned briefly that in relationship to fear, the thinking associated with fear is often future-based. Fear is often future-based: how will it be for me? Will I be okay? All very normal and understandable. But a question. Do I, as a human being, do we, as human beings, really, really know, really deeply in the marrow of our being, know how to really take care of the future? What does that mean, to really take care of the future? Do I know how to do that? Do I know what it is that will provide for me my future happiness, my future well-being, my future sense of security? Do I know what leads to happiness? Do I know how to go about cultivating that? It's all those lists that sound so boring that the Buddha went through. These are the qualities. It's our best possible -- what's the word? -- investment portfolio. This is really the security. This is the security.

It can sound -- I know, I know it sounds that that's naïve. It sounds that that's flimsy and has got nothing to it, especially in the times of the credit crunch and all that, and it seems like, "What's going to happen?" and da-da-da-da-da. It takes a real maturity of practice, quite a rare maturity of practice to really know and understand deeply -- not just like a nice idea -- that this is the best thing to cultivate, this is the best thing to invest in, these beautiful qualities of mind and heart. That's the best possible investment. It's very rare for someone's practice to have that kind of clarity. And even rarer for a person to live that, to live from that, because they're so clear about it and so sure about it that they're living that.

So how do we take care of the future? It's through that cultivation, cultivation of the beautiful qualities of mind and heart. And also through our relationship to the present. If the relationship to the present has interest and care and kindness and wakefulness, those qualities, investigation, mindfulness, then it's -- we're taking care of the present, and the present unfolds, and the future takes care of itself. If those things are there, then one really sees in one's life, one really, really sees in one's life there is a long-term draining away of worry and anxiety in one's life. Really truly a draining away of worry -- worry about money, how will it be, will I have enough; worry about security; worry about maybe being lonely, or will my partner leave me and get fed up with me, will they die on me, what will happen. These kind of fears -- normal, taken for granted human fears. They begin to dissolve from the life more and more as we have this investment.

Okay. I want to finish with something. I think it's almost time to end. I want to finish with -- there were a few things I wanted to say, but I don't have time. All fear needs this sense of self, this sense of ego. All fear is in relationship to the ego. So seeing what we call in Dharma language the emptiness of self ends up being very crucial. I just want to put that to one side. I'm just mentioning that. That's always a very central part of deepening Dharma practice. I want to talk about another kind of emptiness. We tend to believe that there is a thing or a situation or an event that's coming up or about to take place or whatever, and then there's fear. Like, there's that thing over there, and there's the fear. We tend to believe that they're separate: there's the thing, and here's the fear. We believe that they're separate and kind of independent. But that's not actually the way it is. It's not really the case, for all things, that there's an object that we're aware of and then my reaction or relationship to. They're actually mutually interactive and mutually dependent. We can see this with fear. It's interesting.

We notice how fear colours our perception. It colours our perception and our thoughts about a situation, about an object, about an event. So the presence of fear is colouring the perception. You can see this -- it's dark and there are some shadows, and you see a monster and a big, nasty thingy. [laughter] The fear is colouring the perception. So that's obvious, in a way. It should be obvious. But we need reminding of that. But it goes deeper than that. It goes much, much deeper. The same principle goes much deeper. The mind is always colouring and building the present moment. It's always colouring and building the present moment. This present moment is always being seen through the mind, and that mind is always in a certain state of mind.

So the mind, in any moment, is always colouring, building, shaping the present moment. If I believe that there is a present moment that exists somehow outside myself as something real and independent of the way the mind is looking at it, if I believe in an independently, inherently existing present moment, just that belief will give rise to fear of the future. There will be fear of the future, to borrow the Buddha's analogy, "as sure as the wheels of the ox cart follow the ox that pulls it." It can't help, if I believe in the present as being something real, there will be fear of the future. I have to really look into this deeply. The present, we say, is empty. It's always being coloured, built, shaped by perception, always. The past too. I think back about my high school -- "Great, we had such fun." Or I think back, "Oh, it was so oppressive." Or a very good one is relationships, past loves. You think back, "Ah, she was really lovely ..." [laughter] in one mood. In another mood, "What was I thinking?" [laughter] And vice versa. The past is empty. It's empty of inherent existence. It depends on the mood, the mind, the state of mind, the way perception is working in that moment. The future is the same. The future is the same. The future is only going to become the present, which will become the past. It's the emptiness of what we call present, past, and future. It doesn't exist independently.

The more I see that, the deeper I see that, in a way that's like chopping down the roots of fear, the root of this poisonous tree. I'm chopping it right at the base of the trunk. When I really see that very deeply, that this world of appearances doesn't exist in the way that it seems to -- I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but it doesn't exist in the way that it seems to -- then I can't really believe in fear. The whole mechanism, the whole basis of what fear is resting on, I can't really believe in it. Sometimes we have fear in life because we see life in this very solid, very real-seeming way, and that's normal, that's part of the human predicament. But then I start -- and that's all I see of life, and I start, of course, trying to make deals. We make deals with saṃsāra. We make deals with this world of appearances. And I look for my contentment, and I look for my perfection, and I look for my happiness within the world of appearances and the seemingly solid world of appearances. I haven't seen beneath that and known something else. Then I just let go of a lot of that investment, and a lot of the fear [whoosh] just drains away.

I'm going to stop there. A lot of approaches. Obviously there's more. But many, many threads to pick up on here, lots of different levels and angles and ways of approaching fear. The beautiful thing for us as practitioners is they're all available. Fear is something that we can really learn to work with actively in our practice and see it lose its grip over time. Okay. Long talk. Thank you for your patience. Let's have a walking period now, and then Gary and I will debate as to the end. [laughter] You'll hear his bell.