Ep. 14 - Working with Fear

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk about mental health more openly now, but asking for help can still feel hard. BetterHelp's latest research confirms it. BetterHelp's 2026 state of stigma report surveyed 2000 Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise.

Yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. If you're struggling with mental health, please consider getting the help you deserve. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support.

Start therapy with BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com. That's better. H-E-L-P.com.

Slash Insight Hour. Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour. This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery. Join Joseph as he shares his deep, practical wisdom.

As you have settled into your practice, you probably realize that our Dharma practice, our Dharma path, is really a path of opening. We're opening to our bodies. Going from a sense of the body as being something solid, to being aware of particular sensations that are rising, to becoming aware at times of the body as a fluid energy field without any solidity at all. You know, we're opening our sense doors.

You've probably noticed at least at different times how our sense perceptions can get very refined. We have nuances of color, nuances of sound, of taste. In some way, we're really opening the doors of our senses. We're opening to a certain depth and range of emotions.

You know, both pleasant ones and unpleasant ones. Begin to feel love and gratitude and aversion and irritation and sadness and happiness in the whole range. With different emotions that can arise. We're opening our minds through a release of so many different kinds of thoughts and images and memories.

I'm sure you've had the experience of thinking of things perhaps you haven't thought of in many, many years. I was going to say in maybe 30 or 40 years, but some of you are not yet 30. Maybe you're remembering some past life thoughts. And it's opening to different levels of silence.

You know, really beginning to appreciate and experience. Different levels of silence. I think I may have mentioned that my first teacher, Munindra J, once gave a three hour talk on 21 kinds of silence. By the end of it, I was really sad.

Three hours was a bit too long. So one of the things I hope that you've realized by now that our practice is not a reaching out for different kinds of experiences. It's really a settling back into the moment and allowing us to be mindful, to be aware of whatever presents itself in its own time, in its own way. And as we do this, as we settle back open to all the different experiences in the mind and body, we begin to intuit quite directly the essentially empty, insubstantial, impermanent nature of all of these phenomena, of this whole mind-body process.

There was a phrase that Munindra J used very often. He said it so often it really became embedded in my mind, but it's so characterized the nature of the meditative experience. You would say over and over again, empty phenomena rolling on. Just empty phenomena rolling on.

This whole experience of the mind and body, of the breath and sensations and thoughts and emotions and images, it's all just empty phenomena rolling on. But in this process, there's one very strongly conditioned tendency that we identify with quite a lot that tends to freeze this process. It's almost like a deer that stays frozen in the light of car lights or something, where everything seems to lock up. And this is the very deeply conditioned tendency or mind state of fear.

So tonight I'd like to talk about fear, how it is conditioned in us, how it can be conditioned so strongly, and also how we can transform it into a place of freedom. So as we're walking on this journey, on this path of opening, we really reach some boundaries of what we feel comfortable with, the boundaries of our comfort zone, whether it's comfort zone of our physical sensations, the comfort zone of our mental states. Then when we reach the boundaries, when we reach the edges, that the fears, both large and small, begin to reveal themselves. They become illuminated.

And we reach the edge of what we feel comfortable with. So it might be a certain level of pain. You know, we're okay with so much, then we reach the edge and the mind gets afraid. Or it might be the edge of some difficult emotions, so psychological states.

A certain one's uncomfortable, and then maybe it gets a little too intense. It might be fear of change. You know, or fear of the unknown. And of course a very deep rooted fear for many people is the fear of death.

The problem is that each of these experiences is part of life. They are a fear then of what is true. And so in our practice, somehow we have to come to a way of understanding of how it's possible to open to every part of our lives. So in this way the experience of and the understanding of and the opening to fear becomes an essential part of our path.

Sometimes when I imagine the mind of a Buddha, which is still just one's imagination of it, but in this idea of reaching our edges, reaching our boundaries, and then relaxing and opening further and then opening further. So imagine the mind of a Buddha without edges, without boundaries. If there are no edges and there's no boundaries, there's no fear. And so this is the path really that we're walking on.

So first I think it's helpful to recognize, you know, as clearly as possible, what it is that we're afraid of. What limits us. You know, and then to explore the possibility of going beyond those limits. Second we want to look at the nature of fear itself.

Not only those things which condition fear to arise in us, but we need to look at the mind state itself and begin to understand it. As I'm sure you have realized by now, Dharma is the totality of our lives. There's nothing in our experience which is outside of the Dharma. Because the Dharma means truth, it means nature, it means the way things are.

And so in that sense, whatever arises in our experience is workable, because everything is the Dharma. Although at different times we may need different strategies for working with different experiences. So what are some of the things that limit us? The most obvious, and I think what we all come into contact with quite early, is fear of physical pain or discomfort.

We are mostly conditioned quite understandably to avoid what is unpleasant. I think that's the natural conditioning of our lives. We become impatient, we become fearful, or distressed in the experience of unpleasant feelings. So we can watch, we can watch how this fear manifests when we do experience some pain or discomfort.

So notice just in a sitting the subtle shifts of position. You know, we're sitting and then what's the cause of that subtle shift? Well, there was probably some mild or strong discomfort, and we move to alleviate it. There's a Dharma teaching which really has very interesting implications.

It says movement masks dukkha, movement masks suffering. So just as an experiment, it would be quite interesting to watch all of your activities in a day, and to notice why it is that you do them. You know, you're sitting. Why not just sit all day?

At a certain point the body is going to get uncomfortable. And so there's the urge to stand to mask that dukkha. Okay, I'll stand, they'll stand all day. What happens?

At a certain point the standing gets uncomfortable. Oh, maybe I'll walk. You know, when we go to eat, why are we going to eat? To alleviate the discomfort of hunger.

At one point just noticing how most of the day that I was watching my activities, it was just alleviating one aspect of dukkha after another. That's kind of motivated the whole day, mostly. So then I decided, this was when I was practicing in India. I really got fed up with this.

So I thought, and somehow I don't know where I got this, but I managed to get a thick foam mattress. This was in the hills of India. Anyway, I got this thick foam mattress. I'm just like flat on my back.

Nothing crossed. You know, just arms and legs extended, you know, head resting on a pillow. Great, I'm going to just meditate like this all day. It doesn't matter how comfortable we try to make things at a certain point.

If we're staying still, if we're not moving, the discomfort of the body is going to reveal itself, the discomfort of the elements. So it's just a notice, it's just a notice. And to see what's the mind state, you know, as we do alleviate these discomforts, both large and small during the day. It is to see if fear plays any part of it, if there's any fear.

If we move perhaps before we really need to, you know, out of fear of discomfort. We can notice the fear manifesting very often in relationship to pain. You have that experience when there's a strong pain in the body, and often unknowingly, kind of the mind and body contract or tense behind it, you know, as a very unsuccessful strategy for not feeling it, because it simply creates more tension. So that sense of enduring the discomfort rather than opening to it.

That's a very different mind state. And I think you'll find that sense of resistance or tensing or enduring in the face of discomfort may be coming out of fear or feeling it. There's often fear of anticipated pain, not actually something that we're experiencing in the moment. You know, the actual sensations in the moment may be okay, may be quite within the range of our comfort zone, but then we begin imagining and anticipating, oh, if it's like this now, what is it going to be in 20 minutes?

What is it going to be in half an hour? And so we create a mental picture and then get afraid and then, you know, move or change position or whatever. I have a very vivid example of this. Again, this goes back to my India days.

During the summer months, it gets very, very hot on the plains in India, you know, get up to be 120 degrees. Most of us, when we could, went up to what they call the hill stations, you know, places around seven, six, seven, eight thousand feet. And we'd rent these little cottages and then practice there for the summer months. So one year, some friends and I decided to go to Kashmir, which was then still quite accessible and safe.

But getting there entailed about a 17 or 18-hour Indian bus trip. Now, those of you who've been to India, you may remember, the Indian buses, it was really crowded, you know, and rickety, and we're going up these narrow mountain roads. So the seat I had, I guess we were late in getting to the bus, I was in kind of the middle seat of a bench and was right over the crankcase of the engine. So all the fumes and I thought to myself, 17 hours of this, I'll never make it.

So I developed a certain strategy. I thought, okay, I'm going to just stay with my breath. 17 hours on my breath. Just, I don't want to know about what's going on.

So that's how I started this journey. Well, I did okay, pretty okay for the first hour and hour and half, however long it was. But at a certain point, I was getting exhausted. You know, I was like, okay, it's only the breath.

Out of fear of all of this anticipated discomfort. Well, at a certain point, this is not going to work. And so there was almost like a little mini-sattoria. I realized this is completely the wrong strategy.

Instead of trying to keep everything out, can I let everything in? So then I just settled back, having let go of the fear of all that unpleasantness, I just settled back and opened up to whatever was arising moment after moment. And there was the heat and there was the crowded feeling and there was the smells and everything. And most of it was unpleasant and it was fine.

Because my mind was no longer resistant to the unplacious thing. It was empty phenomena rolling through and mostly it was unpleasant, but the mind was not in an unpleasant state. And so that was really a great lesson. That in the face of discomfort, instead of responding with fear and trying to keep it out, can we respond with wisdom and just let everything in?

It's a much more easeful way of being. We can also see how fear of discomfort feeds into desire. And I call it just in case-mind. So I was on one retreat, this was in England.

Actually it was with the venerable Mahasicida. He was teaching of course there. So every morning, I come down for breakfast and they serve the same breakfast every single morning. And there was porridge and toast and fruit and tea.

So I go down and take my porridge and do a piece of toast and fruit and tea. I start eating and by the end, I realize one piece of toast was enough. I didn't have the second piece. Second day, come down to breakfast, go through the line.

Porridge to be the toast, fruit and tea. Same thing, one piece of toast was enough, the next second piece. Third day, come down, porridge to be the toast. And I know how many days it took me to...

Joseph, why are you taking that second piece of toast? Just in case I might be hungry. You know, that just in case-mind. Now that was a kind of simple example, but how often are we playing that out in our lives, doing things out of anticipated fear.

You know, of deprivation and not having enough. Working with physical pain can be a very strengthening part of our practice. You may have noticed that when there's a strong pain in the body, the mind doesn't want it very much. It can get very concentrated on it.

And it brings us right to the edge of our comfort zone. Right there, so we're playing at that edge and learning to expand our capacity. And so it's interesting to play that edge even for short periods of time. You know, we don't have to be superheroes about this.

But when we feel we're at the edge, there's the pain, there's discomfort, pay attention to what the mind is doing at that edge. Is it tightening? Is it fearful in anticipation? Is it possible to soften?

Okay, okay, can I feel this? Can I relax into this? Can I let this in? And so we learn how to expand our boundaries.

So in this way, these situations in practice actually are providing us with very skillful means. And as we're watching these sensations, these unpleasant sensations, which can be very captivating of our attention, we also, by deepening our insight into their impermanent, selfless nature, it becomes so clear that we're not in control. That was what I mentioned last night. We can't control, we can't say, oh, I don't like you, please leave.

As long as the conditions are there, those sensations will be there. So we're understanding on a deeper level, it's not that we're just increasing our capacity to be with discomfort. We're actually learning something fundamental about the nature of the elements, about the nature of the body. You know, at that point, insight into the three characteristics of impermanence, dukkha, and ungovernability, not self, it's not theoretical anymore.

We are right there in the experience of it. And I also find that working with the fear of gain or discomfort and learning, at least at times in a gentle way, how to open, how to relax, is very good practice for death and dying. I should say dying and death. You know, it's very likely it's going to be uncomfortable.

We don't know, we don't really know how it's going to happen for each one of us, but it's not unlikely that there'll be discomfort, there'll be pain, there'll be all kinds of things going on, weakening of the senses. How will we be with it? Will we be in the habit of tensing, you know, and resisting, and having fear? Or will we have trained ourselves to some extent at least?

This is okay. Can I relax? Can I open? Can I deal with it?

So all of this is a training period. The Buddha would often speak to people who were ill and dying, and maybe whose pain and discomfort was increasing, not decreasing. And he would say to them, even though one is afflicted in body, one remains un-afflicted in mind. So that to me has always been a kind of a pole star of aspiration.

You know, the body's going to go through what it goes through. So even though the body may be afflicted, is it possible to train the mind to remain un-afflicted? Just one little take on this is a beautiful story of the famous African-American tennis champion Arthur Ashe, who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion. You know, it was in the blood.

And at a certain point he was going around teaching about HIV and AIDS. And people asked him how he relayed it to the illness, especially contracting it, you know, in such a way. And he said, if I were to ask or say, God, why me? About this illness?

Then I would have to say, God, why me? About all the good things that happened in my life. You know, and it just showed I think this tremendous understanding, this tremendous equanimity about the nature of birth and life and death. So all of this takes practice.

You know, we can hear these things, but it's not that we accomplish them. You know, all of a sudden we're practicing this ability to come to the edge, in this case, we've been talking about physical pain or discomfort, to come to the edge, and to learn to explore it, to watch what our reactions are, to see if fear is arising, to remind ourselves that's another possibility, to let things in rather than to keep them out. In doing this, it can be helpful to recognize different kinds of pain. Because pain can come from different things.

You know, some pain is a danger signal. If you put your hand in fire, you don't want to just burn in, burn in. That would not be clear comprehension. You know, there's a message there.

This pain is a danger signal that you hand out of the fire. So some kind of pain is like that. And without a llama referred to the response to this kind of pain as wholesome fear. So it's not the fear of anxious contraction.

It's actually the wholesome fear is another word for wisdom, where we understand what's happening and take appropriate action. There's another kind of pain that we experience in practice, and I'm sure you've had a lot of experience with this. In coming to retreat, especially along retreat, and we settle and we open, we start experiencing only accumulated tensions that have been stored in our body. Very often I've begun to retreat, and it's kind of like I can feel my shoulders up like this.

And after some... You know, it's like the whole system begins to relax on deeper and deeper levels. And as the awareness grows, it's as if the awareness becomes the space for the unwinding of tensions. For the unwinding of all the kind of knots and tangles that we've come to, that are being stored in the body, and sometimes it's really deep.

Sometimes it can be old traumas that are stored. One time I was doing walking meditation. I was on the retreat here. I was downstairs in the walking room.

I was just walking back and forth. And all of a sudden I had this excruciatingly sharp pain in my leg. It felt like the bone had stuck out. I actually just got to look down to see.

And just in that moment, the memory came to me of when I was a kid. I was running across a field in a flying kite and watching the kite and running right into a stone bench, you know, a machine bone. As you can imagine, it really hurt. But that was like, I know, that might have been 40 years, 50 years, you know, before that retreat.

That had been stored in the body somehow. You know, and then just as we create the space for all of these things to come up, all of these things start to reveal themselves and release. So there's a huge purification on this level that's happening as you sit, even as you're feeling this discomfort. And so one way that I found to be very helpful, although there's a caution with it, to create a mind space that allows for this purification, is to think of this kind of discomfort or pain that we may be feeling, not the pain of a danger signal, but the pain of the body releasing, really as an energetic unwinding.

When I think of it that way, it becomes much easier to settle back and to allow it, allow it the space to release. But there's a caution here, because we want to understand that there is a release significant and deep of so many of the tensions that we carry, to understand that it is releasing and unwinding, but without making the unwinding the aim, because then it just becomes another kind of desire. So again, I had another strong example of this practicing with Saita Gubandita in Burma. I've been sitting and I've been there for quite some time.

My body was pretty open. I had released a lot and it was quite a free flow of energy except for one place in my neck. And it just felt like it's not, you know, this block. And I kept watching it in order for it to release.

At least already. And days, you know, this was less than days and days and days. So I was reporting, I went into report to Saita and I described my experience, you know, my whole body was just open and this free flow of vibration, but there's this one block. And he got on my case for calling it a block.

And I thought I was describing it objectively. And this is what was interesting. I thought I was just giving it an objective description of my experience, that's an energy block. But he pointed out that even in calling it a block is already desire and aversion in the mind.

Right? Block. Need to open the block or get rid of the block. Really the experience was of tightness.

As long as I saw it as a block, it's like I was watching it as I said in order for it to go away. So there was that tension of leaning into and with desire and aversion. As soon as I could relax back and see it simply as tightness, the tightness did not disappear, but I began to see all the movement within the tightness. And the tightness was removed from my mind.

So all of this can be learned, you know, as we come to the edge of what's comfortable, we see the fears arising and then settle back and so that we coach ourselves. Okay, I can be with this. Let me be with this at least for some time. So meditation is this path of opening, but at different times, and this is where we really need to have a certain kind of maturity in our practice.

At a certain time, there are certain experiences which become too intense. They actually become overwhelming. We do not have the ability at that time to relax, to open, to be with them. And so at that time, we need to recognize what's happening and learn, okay, this is a time to back off a little bit, you know, to move away from it.

Maybe to go to something a little more pleasant, I'll go to sound. So, side of the tasenia, you had some very good words about this. He said, avoiding difficult situations or running away from them does not usually take much skill or effort. Avoiding difficult situations, but doing so prevents you from testing your own limits and from growing.

The ability to face difficulties can be crucial for your growth. However, if you are faced with a situation in which the difficulties are simply overwhelming, you should stick back for the time being and wait until you have built up enough strength to deal with them, scuffly. So, do you see the importance of understanding the nuances really of right effort? You know, when do we stay there?

When do we coach ourselves into relaxing, opening, let me be with this? And when do we realize I'm getting out of balance here? This is too much, I need to pull back. So, understanding the skillful use of both strategies.

So, fear doesn't only arise as we, you know, come up against painful unpleasant sensations. Fear can arise with certain memories, you know, thoughts or images. Maybe it's specific events in one's life that were really painful, you know, and they start coming up as they do in meditation. Maybe traumatic events, you know, are we living it in some way in our mind and that can produce fear?

Well, sometimes there are just archetypal images that arise in the mind. It's like the archetype of anger, by hatred or cruelty. I have had, on retreat, some of the worst dreams of my life. Maybe you're all having nice pleasant dreams all the time.

But astoundingly perverse. It's kind of unbelievable, you know, what the mind can produce in dreams. And, you know, as happens on retreat, they are so vivid and the recall is so good. And it really feels, and to me it was a kind of a sign, even though it may not feel like it, you know, over all these days.

We're really, we're going deep into the psyche. You know, we're stirring a lot of things up and a lot may come up in dreams. And I think a lot are these archetypal forces of unskilled states. So, there may be some very unpleasant dreams.

But that too is part of the purification process. You know, there's a great healing that can take place just through this process of opening to the painful aspects of our mind, the painful images and emotions. When we first started teaching in this country, when I came back, this was maybe 75, 1976. We were teaching, of course, out in the Redwoods in California.

And there was an old friend to a medic in Vietnam. And he came and this was a two-week retreat. And he had to have nightmares. You know, since he had come back from Vietnam, everything he had experienced under the horror of it.

And he's continued, you know, on retreat. And a lot of this material kept coming up both during the day in the sit-ings and at night. But quite remarkably, we were friends. And after the retreat, so him back in Berkeley, he said that by the end of the retreat, those nightmares were completely gone.

You know, which he had been having since he had left Vietnam. But somehow he had created the space to release what was being held so deeply. So there's a great healing power that can take place when we're willing to open, you know, to the difficult aspects of our minds of our emotions. We sometimes have fear of difficult emotions that maybe are not traumatic, or in that case.

But just the emotions that, you know, are part of the shadow side of ourselves. Emotions that we just don't like and don't accept. And in some way, are not willing to be with. We are afraid of feeling them.

They may be feelings of unworthiness or shame or abandonment or failure or embarrassment. We each may have our own particular ones, but for whatever reason of our conditioning, we just try to keep at bay. They're too painful for us to feel what we think they are. The great sociologist called Jung.

He said, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular. It is disagreeable. But that's the process, you know, is making the darkness conscious.

And that's what we're doing here. You know, that's dormant as the path of opening on all of these levels. You know, as long as there's fear and non-acceptance of certain emotions, certain parts of ourselves, so then we're living very fragmented lives because we're split off from part of ourselves. And it often drives us to action or drives, you know, our way of being.

Just, you know, as a way of avoiding. Let me wrench my life so I can avoid these feelings. Now, how much of our time as individuals and as a culture, as a society, just think of all the things we do to avoid being bored. You know, to avoid being lonely.

Those feelings may be unpleasant, they may be painful. We don't like to feel them. We don't like to feel bored. We don't like to feel lonely.

And so we construct our whole lives as a way of avoiding those feelings. You know, how averse are we to taking risks in our lives because of fear of feeling failure? People don't like that feeling of failure. So how much does that keep us?

You know, from taking risks. So one thing I'd like to make really clear. It doesn't mean that our meditation is somehow not progressing unless we're in the middle of some emotional storm. So we don't have to be looking for a great emotional catharsis.

However, when these things arise organically in the unfolding world practice, can we practice opening to them seeing if there's fear of feeling certain things? And reminding ourselves, okay, let me be with this. Let me practice opening to this. Now there are also deeply conditioned fears about impermanence, about change, about loss, about death.

You know, we hold on as we know so strongly to this mind and bodies or aspects of it. You know, as being self or more or less permanent, not recognizing just the moment to moment, arising and passing away of an empty phenomenon rolling on. Something I've mentioned often because it so encapsulates the profundity and simplicity of the Buddhist teaching, whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away. It's amazing how something so simple and so obvious is so difficult to actually let in, you know, in profound understanding.

What is it that we're grasping for? What is it that we're holding onto? You know, and we know that whatever has the nature to arise is also going to pass away. You know, we so look for security in permanence.

Let my body not grow old or die. Let my relationships not change. Let my own little world, let the whole big world stay stable. We don't like these things but it's not the way of things.

It's not nature. It's not the dawn. You know, not deeply opening to the truth of change very often takes root in us as the fear of death. And for many people, you know, this is almost a primal kind of fear.

And although, you know, in some circles and maybe in society at large, talking about death and the inevitability of it, you know, it's not the usual cocktail party talk. This is not people's usual conversation. And at the Buddhist society, I'm suggesting, we should think about this every day. We should reflect on this every single day.

Let's not try and get this beautiful talk. We're getting to open up the understanding of the Lord of the Pandemic and the Origination. One aspect of this teaching, which I love so much because it's so obvious and so overlooked. You know, as the Buddha himself, actually before his enlightenment, he was exploring this, investigating, you know, the causes of suffering in himself and he was investigating this Lord of the Pandemic and the Origination.

He asked himself, what is the cause of death? And he saw that the cause of death is birth. Very obvious, isn't it? One way or another, whatever is born will also die.

So that's just the truth of nature. It is nature. The fact that whatever is born will also die is not a mistake. And it's certainly not personal.

Even though we take it very personally. No expression in that question. Why me? Why is this happening to me?

Because we were born. So we've talked about some of the things which condition the arising of fear. You know, maybe experiences of pain or discomfort or maybe memories or maybe images or maybe strong emotions. You know, different strong psychological states.

It may be fear of change or maybe fear of death. The question then is, how do we work with the fear once it's arisen? Because it will arise. When we get to the edge of our comfort zone, in one way or another, if we're paying attention, we'll see that fear is arising and keeping us from opening.

So our practice then is to recognize the fear, to be mindful of it, and to get okay with feeling it. This is its own challenge because the emotion of fear is itself unpleasant. And just as with physical pain or other unpleasant emotions, the tendency will be not to want to feel the fear. Because fear is painful.

It's a painful emotion. So our practice, it takes a willingness and it takes an understanding to see that when fear is arising from any of these conditions, we need that little inner-darma coach. Instead of pulling back from the fear or running away from it, can we befriend it? Can we really remind us, okay, this is okay to feel it?

When I was, I worked with fear a lot in my practice. I was my primary afflictive emotion. And I worked with it over many, many years and would come up in many forms, sometimes small fears, sometimes excruciatingly primal fear. There were times in my practice when I was afraid to go from sitting to standing.

It was completely irrational. It was just some primal energy of fear that was manifesting, it was astounding to me. So I've worked with this a lot. And one of the big mistakes I made for a long time was confusing recognition of fear with being mindful of it.

And I think I talked about this last week, that we can recognize something and still not be mindful. Because we can be recognizing something and being with it through the filter of aversion or wanting. And that's what I was doing with this fear over years. I would be recognizing it, watching it in order for it to go away.

And I didn't realize that. I thought I was being mindful. And at one point, I was doing walking meditation. I was actually right outside here.

And this is this of a year as a practice. And the fear was coming up very strongly and something shifted in my mind. And the shift was expressed in the statement, if this fear is here for the rest of my life, it's okay. And that was the first moment of acceptance, of genuine acceptance.

If it's here for the rest of my life, it's okay. So it's okay became my mantra. Whenever I feel whatever it's okay, it's okay. Just let me feel it.

It was amazing in that moment of acceptance, that particular block of fear that I didn't present just washed through. It's like something was released. It doesn't mean that fear doesn't arise again, but the whole relationship to it is different. And somehow we have to learn that it's okay.

We can allow ourselves to feel it. I'm doing a quick editing of another half hour into three minutes. When we can relax, when we can recognize and be mindful of fear when it's arising, and we can relax and simply feel it, then fear becomes just like every other arising mind state. It's another mind state.

It's another emotion arising and passing away. And we don't have to be afraid of the fear. And when we're not afraid of feeling fear, then we can act despite the fear. When it's appropriate, and when it's wise.

And this really is an expression of courage. Sometimes people think courage means not having fear. I don't think so. I think courage means being willing to act in the midst of fear.

That we're so okay, we're so comfortable with feeling the feeling that it no longer limits us. And I've had so many examples of this as fear would arise and still go ahead and do whatever I felt was important to do. Developing this kind of courage, not letting fear dissuade us from act, is also the source of so many other kinds of virtues. I just want to read something from the writer and poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, which she was an extraordinary being.

She said courage is the most of all the virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. You can be anything erratically, kind, true, generous, fair, merciful, just any of those things occasionally. But to be that thing time after time demands that you have courage. And what is courage is the ability to act despite fear or with fear and the face of fear, with fear no longer limits us.

And this is what we can be practicing. On this retreat, when we come to the edges, whatever our edges may happen to be. Whether it's with physical pain or different emotions or memories or thoughts or whatever it may be, we feel arising. Take a deep breath, be mindful of the fear of soften, it's okay to feel it.

And then we see a beautiful softening and releasing of the heart. I want to get in one less story, which many of you have heard probably many times, but it's my favorite fear story. So I can't possibly give this talk without telling it. So this goes back probably to the 70s.

We just come back to the states. And at that time, we had begun teaching, but also kind of exploring different teachings. And some of us started going to a couple of the sessions, then sessions of Sasaki Roshi. And he's pretty fierce Zen master, quite intimidating.

And in that form, you know, in Zen, everything's very formal. Everybody does everything together. And there's a guy with a stick making sure you're set up straight. And you go to what's called Sun Zen interview four times a day.

This is the Koan method. You know, where you have a Koan who's supposed to give you a response to the Koan. So I'm there sitting doing the whole thing. First days of the session, go in.

Give my response to the Koan. All Sasaki Roshi would say, oh, very stupid. On a good day, he would say, oh, good answer, but not today. So this was going on day after day, and I was getting more and more uptight.

It's a very tangible, the whole situation is very tense. Tension producing, fear producing. So finally, he took a little pity on me, and he gave me an easier Koan. He kind of backed me up into kindergarten.

He said, how do you manifest Buddha while chanting a sutra? So unlike Brian's great musical career, mine started in the third grade where the singing teacher came into class and said, pointing to me, you just mowed the words. So ever since third grade, this has been quite traumatic. So there I am in this session.

So I understood the Koan. How do you manifest Buddha when chanting a sutra? And we have been chanting every day in your group. So while we say, I'm just rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing.

These couple of lines of the chant. So the bell rings to go, you know, and I wait to be the last one. I'm trying to put it off as long as I can. Finally, I go in, I do my boughs.

I start chanting. I got to completely mess up. I mean, I got the words all messed up. I got the melody.

It was disaster. And I felt awful. I felt completely exposed and raw and vulnerable. And here's this extremely formal, intense situation.

But this grade is a nester. I'm making a total idiot of myself. And so in feeling this totally raw and vulnerable space, and then it was amazing what he did. He looked at me and he just said, oh, very good.

It was amazing. It was amazing because it was not, because I was so open, so completely open and vulnerable. It was just like he could touch my heart. At that point, there were no defenses.

And I mean, this happened 40 years ago, so it's still a vivid memory for me because it was such a powerful moment of the possibilities that happened when we are that vulnerable, when we are that undefended. And so working with fear and getting okay with being with fear, but it's okay to feel it, kind of allows us to drop into that space. And so many things can be learned in it. So I just want to end with a few lines of a poem by Galway Canal, which kind of expresses the beauty that's possible.

He wrote, the bud stands for all things, even those things that don't flower. This is the line that's so particularly beautiful, for everything flowers from within of self-blessing. Though sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing, it's loveliness. I think that's what we're all doing here.

We're re-teaching ourselves all loveliness. To put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch, it is lovely. Until it flowers again from within of self-blessing. Thanks everybody for listening to Joseph Goldstein's Insight Hour.

We appreciate your support and ask you to continue that support by going to MinePodNetwork.com.com. And either use the donate button or bookmark the Amazon Portal, through which MinePod and Joseph will receive a small percentage of whatever you purchase from Amazon. Thank you.