Hindrances: Fear

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so good morning ah
he don't have to say anything
i'd rather actually that you be so still inside and there wouldn't get nearly anything to say anyway
when i'm
there really is profound there is profound silence all around anyway
but when we are in touch with it
we really don't have anything to say at all
we just respond
very quiet
very still
mary a heart open

not even happy
just
available

i'm here we are again sitting i don't know if you can
tell but i love this practice
just walking in here and doing their them all forms and than demo chan can
and then just seeing the shaft of light in through the window
stopping long enough being stopped long enough
these seven days
to be able to just appreciate by
is such a gift you know
it doesn't really matter what we do with it whether we have a good time or a bad time or this kind of time where they are kind of time
which is just a gift we have given ourselves a gift each one of us and for each other her gift of being able to just simply stop all and the extraneous anyway distractions as much as possible
and give herself a moment after moment after moment
opportunity to simply be alive
what a relief
after all that

so i'm there are many approaches we make up many approaches zen the buddhism does as well as in our own minds we make up things to keep us interested
and
a wanting to give up being busy for a little bit and pay some attention to our own life
so some approaches to simply being present are working with cohen's
being involved in concentration states
investigating the teaching in contemplating the teaching excuse me i don't mean to be sarcastic
i try to change my tone of voice
but it is kind of funny don't you think that we human beings need to be coaxed you know i need to be interested need to have some carrots put in front of us simply to notice
a miracle of our existence
it's just that we make it so complicated so unnecessarily complicated
so i know it at this time during session i often talk about the hindrances because it is it is the hindrances that get in the way initially anyway of are simply being able to be present
and the entrance is the traditional hindrances are
did you just repeat them yourself and your own my i hope he did i hope you that familiar with them
grade grasping after something
grasping after you know the answer to the co-owner that particular mind stay too
whatever it is a version
criticizing yourself and everybody else he does things the way they do them
sleep you know torpor just another way from
preventing us from being present and awake
restlessness
being excited about the practice
even
and the other one is doubt that's my favorite one
because that was my biggest hindrance so i know something about it it's very
i respect it very respectful hindrance if you have that one
chris all of them were
we flow through all of them just some of them are are may are kind of weekly we major and certain ones easily
i majored in doubt
but there's another one that actually i keep i always say when i mentioned the five hindrances i always slip this one in it's not really one of the traditional ones and i've never really talked about it but i always mention it because i actually think that it's underneath the other hindrances and it's the one thing
that we really it's down there all the time and we don't really ever talk about it
it's not sex which we don't also ever talk about that
and it's not power you know although we should talk about that when more
it's fear
basically being afraid

i've been living off of liquids you know the past
seven days or something like now
great
fear is really interesting and it may be for you one of the things that this week or today or
he might take a look at it might come up for you or in fact it might be hidden but actually in there somewhere because if you have the hindrance of grade or of aggression or anger in particular the what is underneath that very frequently is fear
fear of being hurt
so maybe for you anger
hurt
fear
based on the delusion that were separate course
now usually when we talk about fear we talk about i am afraid of commitment i am afraid of satiating which is a good thing i am afraid of failure i'm afraid of blob popova whatever it is and then when we study we use
shirley study the object of the fear in other words we study the content of our mind rather than the process so i would like to take us a little bit away from the content whatever it is you think you're afraid of
and settle down and look a little bit at the fear itself like you know roseville said it's something about something about it's only
but fear itself and that's very good we have nothing to fear but fear itself that was very good

we are even afraid actually of being present
his true were afraid of being present
we're also fundamentally many of us afraid of being who we are to be once and i didn't mention that actually in they're huge
and so some things about fear when the main thing about fear is is that it keeps us stuck because what actually happens when we're afraid when we're afraid what it means is that we've come right up to something that we think is of his of of
is we think of as anyway our edge
and over that edge is something that we don't know about which are mind
in the future says it's problem maybe we'll get it maybe we don't even know maybe or maybe we do know we're gonna get hurt
anyway we don't know fear is always have the mind
and fear is always in the future always
those of you who have actually had something to really be afraid of will know that when you're really face to face with something that you really need to take care of like you know a dog with it's coming at you or something like that you are not thinking that in the future this dog is going to bite me know you are actually
involved with taking care of not being bitten by this dog
then later you're just
panic in a later you really afraid fear clicks in after
or like if you're afraid of dogs and you walk down a street you may think oh yeah i know a dog is five houses down and it's an offense but as a come close to the fence and really oh my heart starts pounding and sense of it because in the future i may be bitten by the dog
just like future or past but it's never really present
is of the mind
so
when we walk up to what we were afraid of were walking up to what is unknown
but it it it is actually this unknown that is the womb of our rebirth
so for example there is a stage of practice when we want to let go of all of or a certain part anyway of what we're studying some kind of behavior that we know leads us to something that causes are suffering
so we meticulously study that by being present and watching the pattern of that
am i making sense
we meticulously study that and then we get to a place where we know for sure
three you know patterns back three things back on this pattern that i'm not going to do this over here because i know it ends up with this over there and i'm not going there anymore i don't want to suffer that way so you don't do this but in this situation
you have no idea you know you don't want to do the old pattern but you have no idea what you are supposed to do you just know you don't want to do the old thing so you feel like a complete you know many you feel very young you feel like six
thirteen or fifteen or whenever it is how old you were when that pattern started to click in that went awry you go all the way back to feeling bad age
and then you just stand there feeling like know sixteen
breathe breathe breathe way to see what actually you do when the thing happens and you really respond to it instead of responding out of an old pattern
so it is out of this unknown that we birth
who we really are

so fear prevents us
from taking that step into the unknown
huh
now some people
in that place of not knowing what to do fill it up with mental activity
ideas of control and manipulation or i'm going to do this for i'm not gonna do that or whatever
i would suggest to you that during this time of unknowing that you allow yourself to fall back into the heart
because the heart always knows fundamentally that we are connected that we are not separate from what we think we are afraid of
that we are one with of so-called object and we are one with a fear if you go from the heart
you can step over that edge
if you stay in the mind the mind will continue that sense of separation which is its job
and you will have a lot of difficulty walking into the unknown are staying in the unknown
my brother before says she asked i always call my fair i was called my brother actually now my family's very reduced
yeah
so basically now i'll have my brother call
but i used to call my family and i always still do actually i call my family before i do us a shame because
they know now that when i'm in session i don't call them and i want them to call me and so i always tell them when that is so they don't get you know don't get worried or whatever
and i say hello and i kind of and i say goodbye
so this time when i called my brother he said this terrific thing
he said
dear
give up everything you know this is how he's cocky to me
tear give up everything you know everything you think every idea you have who you think you are completely give it up get rid of it
and this will actually what he said was be somebody different by the end
the
ah
group but anyway what he meant was
but he read this a with wonder who you're being at the end just let everything go it's like you know

legs suzuki roshi beginner's mind that's what he's talking about
in beginner's mind there are many possibilities in experts minuses agility and an expert's mind there are no possibilities because you already know everything
so it's not so much that we ah
want this beginner's mind really in order to grow something it's really not exactly the right word it's the beginner's mind so that we can release every thing that prevents us from actually being who we actually really are which is who
we are all the time anyway
it's just we're not comfortable in it
and when we talk about freedom i don't want to confuse your little bit so maybe i'm being tangential so but anyway when we talk about freedom we're talking about being free of the condition the karmic conditioning that is the building up of all of these things that sims
lee prevents us from being present and were just afraid to give up this stuff that's all
because we may be fear you know we just fear to be who we are as the truth of it
we fear to be the karmic the result of the conditioning the karmic conditioning that we ended up being were afraid to be that person

but you know like i'm that book of premature shogun start where you are we have to actually start where we are all along the path you keep finding out who we are you know at a deeper and deeper level all the time we always have to start eggs and accept exactly the person we are right
so when we sit that's the person
we opened to that's the person
we sit with
and it's not the content of the person we're interested but the process of mind with which we look at that conditioning
awareness really is everything not the awareness that is the identified you know conscience the dualistic conscious awareness
but the boundless awareness
that is not me personally but that just exists as it is already
there there is no fear
now
no
so in buddhism there five traditional fears
see
the traditional ones are loss of livelihood loss of one's reputation unusual fear of unusual states of mind fear of death and fear of public speaking
to which
why is that funny
okay
i can add few huh
you want that list okay i'll give you even more to read a list of things to be afraid of you can pick your pick your fear loss of livelihood this is the five traditionalist loss of livelihood loss of one's reputation unusual states of mind day
yes and public speaking then there's fear of not being loved fear of not being able to love fear of being hurt fear of being unseen fear of our strong emotions some people have fear of any emotions at all
fear of change fear of financial ruin fear of consequences of our behavior fear of sex fear
why stop there actually
anyway there are dozens more it actually again doesn't matter with the object of the fear is forget that look at study the fear
itself
so it's not so much why i am afraid but what is fear
and i might say that when we study it was study it gently because we really are afraid and i would suggest to to put yourself in a situation put yourself in the situation that brings up fear for you
i know this seems like an odd thing to do but it
sometimes in center helps you with this kind of thing
put your cell phone when i was thirteen i used to i should hurry up actually but and when i was thirteen
when i was actually younger than thirteen when i was about nine my father took my brother and i and my mother to a movie picture was the first three day picture i think it was called it came from outer space and my father was in advertising and i grew up i grew up loving advertising actually been
cause it's an art form as an art form but anyway a universal was one of his clients so we used to go to these movies and it came from outer space was a universal picture so we went and and we put on these glasses and you know within ten minutes i spent i immediately underneath the seat
and i spent i basically spent the entire rest of the movie underneath a big my brother loved it through difference between my brother in mexico i was really scared you know it was effected me i really thought it was coming from yeah the fish
but anyway when i was older around fifteen i think another movie it's i didn't see a scary movie until i was older and i thought well okay i can take this and i went to see when i was a teenager i went to see i was a teenage werewolf scared to death
i was so scared really scared me i i believed everything i still to this day i can't see scary movies because i believe him
so a friend of mine mickey my used to be oh friend
lived i lived here's a street and who is another street and i live kind of at the end of history anyway it was right diagonally across from mickey's house and at night i used to stay over at her house till really late at night we talk about you know philosophy and literature you know teenagers do
two boys and things that well into the night
and so i would go home like two o'clock in the morning and it be dark and totally safe where i grew up but anyway i would be really scared and i would make myself not look behind me because i knew behind me was the world of
and i made myself walk really slowly across the street
to see if i can face fear my fear
anyway so put yourself in situations where this comes up for you and study the mind of fear
in a gentle
way
hi right
and the reason is to study fear is because fear i think is under most of the hindrances and it is the main way that prevents us from being present and being present is what we're about
so the opposite of fear is not to develop courage the opposite of fear is to be familiar and to be close to fear itself

so learning about love
is to study what isn't love
to learn what is non-self we study the self
to learn what is fearless we study fear

so how do we study
ah
the same way we study everything else you've heard it from me anyway hundreds of times
here are a number of ways to study
first of all you have to stop
you can't run by yeah the thing that you're supposed to be studying you actually have to stop and know that whatever it is
that your that your that you have vowed to stay
your therefore
stop be present
acknowledge that it actually is there for some people that might help to label it
feel it as sensation in the body
don't identify it as you
he might want to ask questions about it like what happens before i am blank afraid or whatever particular state of mind you're studying
what words come up who am i when i feel that way
investigate
and you know i'm saying this i guess it's because it's his second day of session
so maybe still i think for many people there still are these hindrances
but if we really are attentive and surrender
fundamentally surrender let go of the self over and over again by simply coming back over and over again to the present to the body to their breath
eventually of course these ways of practicing are not needed
because as we settle more deeply to simply as as in simple awareness at the present moment just presents itself we're not doing these practices we do practices when we're not present
when we are in trouble when we're suffering when we're obsessed by something then we practice
until finally we can just surrender let go and be present
so my brother said
letting go of all that we know and simply being aware
getting close to fear or whatever it is that prevents you from imagining that you're not already present and home anyway
we have to pass through whatever it is called drop away whatever it is
so i brought upon her dana
she likes this poem
and i think it fits so i'm gonna read it

anybody who speaks italian please forgive me the first little bit of the poem is in italian and i don't spend besides it's old italian it's from dante
from the poor purgatory or for the area
quando mi v they start report fear of my douro to the bar to un poco de se
or fee the fee glue three beatrice ha questo modo
that's the beginning of it in the poem is
and you will come at a turning of the trail to a wall of flame
after a hard climb and the exhausted dreaming you will come to a place where he whom you have walked this for will stop
will stand beside you on the treacherous steep path
and stare as you shiver at the moving wall the flame that blocks your vision of what comes after
and that one who you thought would accompany you always who held your face tenderly a little while his hands who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass and washed from your cheeks the soot the tear track
six
he is telling you now that all that stands between you and everything you have known since the beginning is this
this wall
between yourself and the beloved between yourself and your joy the river swaying with flowers the shaft of sunlight on the rock the song
will you pass through it now
will you let it consume whatever solid nurse this is you call your life and send you out a tremor of heat a radiance
i changed flickering thing

so
we have given ourselves this gift
this gift of sashaying please
for yourself and everyone and i'm sure you will because that's what we're here to do

we will all you know do our best
passing through whatever year particular or particular wall of flame is
to the unknown being
the boundless
joy that we each truly are

thank you for doing it's create him