Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life (10 page)

I began the third stage of working with fear in my early thirties, when I officially became a Zen student. For the most part, I put aside my direct assault on fear and instead came at it indirectly. I learned how to focus on the breath and how to develop strength in the area below the navel called the
hara
. I think I had the hazy, somewhat idealized notion, so typical of many meditation students, that if I sat long and hard enough, I would somehow become free from fear. After all, since fear is just delusion, why bother with it? If I simply concentrate on the breath or the mantra or the ten thousand bows, fear will take care of itself. Yet these practices, despite their seductive appeal
and obvious effectiveness in some areas, still do little to address the nature of fear itself.

I experienced another version of this third stage of working with fear several years later at a month-long intensive practice period during which there arose a situation that produced a great deal of fear. The practice that I started doing then was to breathe the energy of my fear directly into the hara. I was trying to transform my fear, trying to turn its energy into strength. In fact, my hara became very strong, in a particular way. However, even though this practice helped me get through a difficult month, I was still not really dealing with fear; I was still trying to get rid of it. Like the other practices, this one was limited because it did not help me see through the notion of my fear-based identity.

Several months later I became severely ill. For about eight months, I was dealing with a whole new realm of fear. As the illness progressed, with the possibility of there being no cure, my fears began to multiply. First was the fear of discomfort, which I clung to, projecting into the future the fear of escalating, uncontrollable pain. Then there was the fear of being dependent on other people as well as the fear of being isolated and alone. Beneath the layers of self-pity and depression, there was the fear of the helplessness of the loss of control. In addition, I was afraid of losing my life as I had known it. I was changing from a healthy and active person into someone who might no longer have the capacity to be physically active. My practice of bringing awareness to the breath and into the hara was of no use because I didn’t have the energy or the strength to focus my attention. At this point I spent most of my time wallowing in fear, with little clarity about how to practice with it.

Feeling desperate, I decided to call Joko Beck, whom I had met a few months earlier. After listening to my story, she said something like, “Ezra, I know that this illness isn’t pleasant and that you don’t like it, but what you have to see is that it is your path.” This one remark somehow turned everything
right-side up. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt willing to allow the fear in, to just let it be without pushing it away. This is the beginning of the fourth stage of practicing with fear, which is to stop seeing it as the enemy or obstacle, but to willingly let it in.

However, as I recovered, this process was still not clear to me. So I began to return to my former way of meditating—focusing on the breath and trying to achieve some tranquil state. This tranquillity was not to be, for as I returned to a somewhat stable physical condition, intense feelings of fear began to arise. Now I was studying with Joko on a regular basis, learning what was to become a very different orientation both to practice and to working with fear. She asked me to look at the fear as a scientist might, with the curiosity of just wanting to discover what it is. The practice, whenever fear arose, was to ask simply, “What
is
this?” The answer always lies in the physical experience of the moment.

Because the emotional agitation from fear is painful to experience, we have an aversion response. Who wants to reside with pain and discomfort? We try to escape it, overcome it, or smash through it. At the same time we often add a whole new negative aspect, experiencing anger and shame at ourselves for feeling afraid. But what about seeing the fear as just another aspect of our conditioned mind? It’s not that we’re bad people because we experience fear. Fear is simply what is happening as a result of our conditioning. And since this is what’s happening, we could decide to really look at it by asking “What
is
this?” The “what” of fear, as with all emotions, has two main components: thoughts and bodily sensations. Just the willingness to stay with the fear, to be curious about the fear, is a big step from pushing it away or trying to overcome it. Cultivating the willingness to be with fear is a step toward learning the willingness to be with our life as it is.

Upon asking “What is this?” we begin to hear the fear-based thoughts that scream through our minds: “I can’t do this,” “What’s going to happen to me?” “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” “Please stop.” We hear also the voices of self-condemnation: “I’ll never be good enough,” “I’m hopeless,” and so on. The practice is to see these thoughts as thoughts, even though they seem so solid. Then we drop into the bodily experience of fear, with all its unpleasant sensations: agitation in the stomach and chest, narrowing of perceptions, tightness in the shoulders, rigidity in the mouth, queasiness, weakness.

By allowing ourselves to be afraid, we come to realize that this horrible feeling of dread is just a combination of some strong physical sensations and some deeply held beliefs about ourselves. The problem is not so much these sensations and thoughts, but our resistance to feeling them. Our desire to avoid fear, our negative attachment to it, is what makes us feel so awful. This is the tight fist of fear—we hold on so tightly to avoid feeling fear that we close off our hearts.

When we are willing to let the fear in, relating to it as a “what” instead of as “me,” it loses its juice. We see that even though we may feel terror, there is no real physical danger. Instead of fighting fear with panic or pushing it away, we let it in. We give up our fear of fear. Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is and grows out of the willingness to experience fear. This is where the tight fist of fear begins to open—and we reconnect with our hearts.

The experience of residing in fear is never a clear-cut progression. For me, during intense periods of fear, it was a moment-by-moment struggle. One moment I would want to run away, to push away the fear; the next moment I would want to smash through it. There would also be moments of surrender, when I could say “yes” to it and almost embrace it. Finally I began to see that fear is not solid, that it is nothing more than strong sensations and disabling thoughts based on our conditioning.

When we are willing to let fear in—which is the fourth stage of practicing with it—we discover that we can have fear but not
be afraid. When fear arises, instead of “Oh, no!” we learn to say, “Here it comes again. What will it be like this time?” And what happens? The solidity and power of our fear gradually dissipate.

When we can willingly stay with our experience of fear without suppressing it, expressing it, wallowing in it, or judging it, our awareness becomes a wider container. Within that still container, fear’s thoughts and sensations can move through us. That’s how the practice of awareness can release and transform the frozen mass of emotion-thought that we call fear. As we become familiar with our fear, compassion naturally arises, lightening the whole struggle. It is here that we bring a sense of heart into our practice.

When fear is experienced in the present moment, minus our beliefs and judgements about it, we will find that it is rarely unbearable. In fact, when we really stay present with the physical experience of fear we might experience a deep and pervasive peace, sensing the spaciousness and love that flower as fear transforms on its own. As the solidity of fear becomes porous, life’s intrinsic essence simply flows through.

The price we pay for opening up, of course, is the risk of facing exposure to some perceived danger. Although we’re not always willing to pay this price, in this fourth stage of practice, our willingness to be with fear becomes stronger. We can practice with all levels of fear, from the big one that arises when we get bad medical news to the midrange fear we feel when we have an unexpected expense to the small, almost unnoticed fear we experience on making an unpleasant telephone call. We start to notice more and more where we just seek comfort or escape, and we slowly learn to see each instance of fear as yet another opportunity to practice.

This is the fifth stage of practicing with fear—seeing it as a signal to look at where we’re stuck, where we’re holding ourselves back, where we can open to life. For example, can we see the degree to which fear plays a part in our achievements, where we’re trying to avoid the fear of feeling unworthy? Or if we examine
our relationships, can we see how often we are trying to avoid the fear of rejection, or of being unappreciated or unloved? Can we use these situations to willingly move toward our fears, which will certainly require being open to the unknown? To really experience what fear is, we can’t still simultaneously wish for it to go away. We can’t even call it “fear”—which is just a conceptual filter between us and our experience.

In the fifth stage of practicing with fear, we may choose to confront our fears. In fact, we may even seek them out. But no longer will we hope to overcome or be free from them in the conventional sense. Rather, we will aspire to simply know the truth of fear, to come to know what lies beyond our protective cocoon.

Frequently I devote one day where I commit myself to the practice of saying yes to fear. What this means is that upon feeling even a hint of anxiety, I practice moving toward the fear, not with the heaviness of “my suffering” but rather with a certain lightness of heart that comes from seeing fear as nothing more than the human conditioning to which we all are subject. Without this lightness of heart, how could we ever step beyond the protective cocoon?

The transformation of fear does not mean that we no longer have fearful responses. It means that we no longer believe that those responses are who we are. This is what practice is about: learning to stop believing that our deep-seated reactivity is who we are. Who we really are is much bigger than any of our fear-based conditioned responses. When we can really experience fear, we see through this false identification, perhaps even glimpsing a vaster sense of Being.

My own practice path with fear continues. I certainly am not free from fear, nor even from the belief that I should be free from fear. But for the most part, I no longer live from the lifelong tunnel of fear that was running me. That tunnel seemed so real for so long, I don’t think I ever really believed I could be free from it. Considering the length of time I’ve been working with this, I guess I’m a slow learner. But I’ve also been a persevering
one. Looking back, I now see that there were no mistakes: the clouded understandings and the misdirected efforts are all a necessary part of the practice life.

When fear arises for me now, along with the mind’s desire for it to go away, there is also an almost instant recognition of what is going on. Do I try to let it go? Rarely. That would be just another way of trying to get rid of it, of trying to avoid my life. Instead, I breathe into the heartspace, inviting the fear in with a willingness to feel its texture, its whatness. But at the same time, I know that it is not me. My heart could be pounding and my stomach feeling queasy, which are simply the conditioned responses to perceived danger. But there is also a lightness, a spaciousness, through which the conditioning of fear can be experienced. With awareness, the solidity of fear becomes porous. And what remains? Simply life itself, with an increasingly vast sense of being.

10

Practicing with Pain and Suffering

J
EAN
-D
OMINIQUE
B
AUBY
, the former editor in chief of the French magazine
Elle
, wrote a book called
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
. This man had lived a very active and creative life, until one day in 1995, when he was only forty-three years old, he experienced a massive stroke that resulted in a rare condition called locked-in syndrome. While his whole body was totally paralyzed, his mind was completely functional. After lying in bed for months, he discovered he could still flutter his left eyelid. With this discovery he devised a form of communication, whereby the number of movements of this one eyelid would signify the different letters of the alphabet. This is how he spelled out each word, each sentence, of his book, poignantly chronicling his thoughts and feelings as he lay locked in his body. He died two days after the book was published.

In the one-page chapter entitled “My Lucky Day,” the author describes how the alarm clock connected to his feeding tubes was ringing continuously for half an hour. The intensely piercing
beep beep beep
sound jackhammered into his brain. As he began sweating profusely, the sweat unglued the tape over his right eye, loosening his eyelashes to scratch his pupil. Then his urinary catheter fell out, leaving him soaked in his own urine. There he was, lying in the drenched bed with the piercing sounds and the irritated eye. At that moment a nurse came
in and, oblivious to him, switched on the television. What he saw on the screen were the bold letters of a commercial asking, “Were you born lucky?”

The author relates this story without a trace of self-pity. It’s primarily a description of his thoughts and sensations. To really appreciate the story, all we have to do is imagine ourselves in the same situation. What would our reactions be?

In general, we don’t want to have very much to do with pain. Most living creatures share this aversion. It appears to be a natural and even intelligent part of the evolutionary process. Yet human beings seem unique in their ability to contort from their pain into the state that we commonly call suffering.

Suppose my mate leaves me. There is a hole inside—unmistakably painful—heavy with fear and longing. The beliefs go spinning around: “No one will ever be there for me.” “Why is life so hard?” “What’s the point, anyway?” And of course, my natural impulse is to resist residing in the painful hole of rejection and loneliness. Unmistakably there is suffering.