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Key insights from
Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting
Through the Storm
By
Thích Nhất Hạnh
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What you’ll learn
Thich Nhat Hahn (1926-2022) was a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist
who, for decades, promoted personal peace and world peace, so much so that
he was banished from Vietnam for denouncing the Vietnam War and Martin
Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. As Hahn
saw things, we reflexively flee our fears, but we would do better inviting
these feelings up from our inner depths, looking at them plainly and
compassionately and befriending them. In Fear, he invites us into
the present, where life is perennially ready to welcome us back from the
fear-packed poles of past and future.
Read on for key insights from Fear.
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1. Original fear
was born when you were.
None of us were ever safer than when we were in our mother’s
womb. In Vietnam, they call the womb the child’s palace. The baby is at
rest, its needs taken care of. Mother breathes and eats for the both of
them while the baby curls up, nestled inside its palace, warmed and soothed
by the sound of mother’s voice. And then, nine months later, this Garden of
Eden experience is ruptured when the baby is ushered into a world that is
big and full of noise, bright lights, cold, and hunger. The baby has
seconds to learn how to breathe on its own or it will not survive. Though
only at the level of unconscious instinct, the baby learns fear and
immediately forms a desire to survive. This is the first fear that follows
us during childhood and into adulthood. Just like in our first moments in
the light, we continue to wonder: Will our needs be met? Will we stop
breathing, be exposed to cold and hunger?
Each of us loses touch with that moment of birth, but so
many of our actions as adults are attempts to find security in light of
this powerful original fear. Our current fears and longings are tied to
that first fear we experienced as infants. The yearning to connect with
someone and be in relationship springs from a desire to assuage this
original fear.
To overcome fear, it is essential to reconnect with that
original fear and the child “you” who experienced it. To reestablish
communication with your child, try this exercise:
Set out two cushions or chairs. Sit in one of them, and
imagine yourself in the other seat as your young wounded self. Speak from
that child’s position: If fears and pain come up, welcome them. Hear
younger you out. What pain does he or she express? What needs and fears?
Once you have heard your child out, switch seats and speak as an adult to
that little child. Reassure your child: “You’re safe here. Your needs will
be met.” Learning to speak tenderly to younger you is critical to soothing
yourself. When you feel the fear creep in, begin by telling the child in
you that you are older now, still alive, healthy, and capable. You have
arms that are strong and capable of holding that younger “you.”
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2. Fear inevitably
takes us into the past or future; mindfulness returns us to the present.
One young American came with a group of tourists to the Plum
Village Monastery in France where Nhat Hahn lived and taught for decades.
When the group was encouraged to write a letter to a parent, living or
dead, the young man could not bring himself to commit pen to paper, so
vivid were his feelings of fear toward his late father. Even in death, his
father had the power to petrify.
We all have fears from the past—bound up with our
families—that yank us around. It is important to make peace with those who
came before us. Imagine all your ancestors as far back as you can go.
They’re in you still, in every cell of your body. That’s not just a
metaphor either—it’s genetics. Try as you might to cut yourself off from
previous generations, they are always with you. For your own sake and
theirs, it is better to embrace them than to reject them. To reject them is
to reject yourself.
Forgiveness for others truly begins with acceptance of self.
Once you accept yourself as you are right now—with your strengths and your
limitations—you can do the same for your ancestors: grandparents, parents,
even older siblings. If you can see them as people who did their best
despite their shortcomings, your compassion for them will grow, and the
anger and rejection will dissipate. They had strengths and problems just
like you do.
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3. Fear will pull
you away from the here-and-now, where all the treasures of life and peace
originate.
It would be convenient if our fears truly went away when we
pushed them away, but even when buried underground they continue to bring
us sadness. Being present in the moment is the beginning of the path to
confronting those fears without being ruled by them. Those who experience
mindfulness are able to get in touch with their truest nature.
If we don’t acknowledge our fears they rule us from our
untapped depths and we can attract trouble and danger without realizing it
or intending to. Some people get stuck in the past. Others tend toward the
future with all its anxieties.
Knowing where the fear comes from will give you the
opportunity to turn it into something magnificent instead of just covering
it up and waiting for it to explode later. Many of us forget that many of
the pieces needed for happiness are already present in our lives. You will
only have eyes to see them if you stay in the here-and-now.
Take a moment when you feel frantic and internally
"fast" to remind yourself "I have arrived. I'm already
home." When you stop running you can return to life. This is the
present moment, where you find the kingdom of God or The Pure Land of
Buddha. Jesus compared the kingdom of God to buried treasure that a man
found. The man then sold everything to buy the field where the treasure was
hidden. If you want to find that buried treasure, you have to seek it in
the present.
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4. Trying to
control emotions with intellect is like trying to survive a thunderstorm in
a rowboat on open waters, instead of on land.
When we get caught in an emotional storm system of fear, our
common response is to stay in our heads and try to resolve matters via
intellect. This is dangerous and ultimately fails us. Emotional storms will
sweep us away if we stay in our heads. It’s like trying to brave a squall
while in a rowboat instead of on land. What you need is solid ground.
Begin breathing and pay attention to the rise and fall of
your abdomen. Move your focus from head to guts. By focusing on belly
breathing and simply observing your abdomen rhythmically rising and
falling, you watch the storm pass from the safety of a shelter. By moving
our focus downward away from the head and into the belly, we tether
ourselves and find the grounding we need to outlast the storm.
In the moments they desperately need to remember it, most
people forget they are more than emotions. We stay in our heads and try to
consciously resolve the emotions. Imagine yourself as a tree in the midst
of a storm. Bring your focus to the tree’s trunk. This is like focusing on
your abdomen, moving your awareness toward your own trunk. Sometimes the
trees seem vulnerable; there's no way they will survive the stormy winds of
fear. Though branches may break, the tree stands strong. Bring your
attention to this image when fear starts to intensify. A tree deeply rooted
can’t be blown over.
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5. For most
people, “I think, therefore I am not present” is more accurate than “I
think, therefore I am.”
The French philosopher Renée Descartes is famous for his
declaration cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” But if we
ponder everyday experience, would it not be more accurate to say, "I
think, therefore I am not here right now"? More often than not, our
thoughts cut us off from the present. You don’t naturally meander into the
present. It takes practice to continually return to the present. Breath is
a vehicle that can bring us there. When you are in the present, you are in
touch with your environment: the people around you, nature, the food you
are eating, and so on. You are transported to the immediacy of life and you
feel more alive. You live more deeply and fully, and attend to things
differently.
Here are a few meditations to consider that will help you
reconnect with your emotion and your body:
One simple practice is to sit in a chair, plant your feet
firmly on the ground, and track your breath—in and out. In your mind, say,
“Breathing in, I follow my in-breath all the way from start to finish.
Breathing out, I follow my out-breath from start to finish.” Your breaths
in and out can be as long as you like, but the goal is to trace the flow
seamlessly. Following our own breath augments powers of concentration and
frees us to be aware of what’s happening in the immediacy of the
moment.
Another exercise is, “Breathing in, I am aware of my entire
body. Breathing out, I am aware of my entire body.” This exercise helps us
restore the mind-body connection that we lose when we fearfully flit
between past and future. Bringing them together, every part of you is
present. You are present for yourself and you can be present for others.
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6. The fears you
keep shoving down can attract the fears of others—and all the dangers that
brings.
When Thich Nhan Hanh lived in Vietnam during the Vietnam
War, he had a tense moment with an American soldier on the tarmac. He asked
the young soldier if he was afraid of the Viet Cong, the communist forces.
It was a clumsy conversation starter in a war-torn Vietnam, where American
soldiers had been trained to view anyone—including children and monks—with
circumspection. They could be Viet Cong, too. The very word made the
soldier bristle, and he put his hand on his gun, and asked if Nhan Hanh was
a Viet Cong soldier. The monk took deep breaths to rein in the fear, and
gently reassured the young American that he was not a soldier, that the war
grieved him, and that both Vietnamese and Americans were victims.
Your own fear can attract the fear of others. If Nhat Hanh
had responded to fear with his own fear, he would have been killed by a
scared young American holding a gun. Instead, he chose to see the soldier
with eyes of compassion, and soothed his anxieties.
The best way to ensure your own safety is to care for the
safety of others. Fear breeds fear. Violence begets violence. Fear is at
the root of our violence. Consider how people treat each other in the
aftermath of a terrorist attack: Society is so filled with fear and
everyone around you becomes a terror suspect.
Communication is essential to safety and to alleviating
fear. If you don’t speak with those around you, you lose connection and
lose trust. This is true of neighbors and nations. Most nations rely on
weapons and barracks and armies to feel safe. But defense systems fail to
get to the root of our fears. The United States of America has a powerful
military and some of the most sophisticated weapons technology in the
world, but many Americans are still trapped in fear. The strong defenses
haven’t assuaged our fears like we’d hoped.
It’s never written up in the will, but pain is often an
intergenerational inheritance that gets passed along. When we don’t know
what to do with fear, we bottle it up until it explodes. The shrapnel of
these fearful explosions lodges in the hearts of children who then grow up
and mimic the same patterns they saw when young, passing on fear just as it
was passed on to them.
When you practice weathering storms of fear and remain
standing, you become a settling fearless presence in the lives of those you
love. Simply observing your disposition will give them courage. Without
saying a word, your presence can communicate, “It’s okay. Navigating life’s
emotional storms is possible.”
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Fear here. And since we get a commission on
every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.
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