Fear: Dealing with Disturbing Emotions

12:28
Fear is one of the strongest impediments to achieving anything positive in life. As a confused state of mind, it is based on unawareness, especially concerning what it means to feel safe. With a wide array of both emergency and provisional methods, however, we can free ourselves from fear’s paralyzing grip.

Emergency Methods for Dealing with Fear

In Tibetan Buddhism, the female Buddha-figure Tara represents the aspect of a Buddha that protects us from fear. Tara actually represents the energy-winds of the body and the breath. When purified, she also represents the ability to act and to accomplish our aims. This symbolism suggests several emergency methods of working with the breath and with the subtle energies for handling fear.

The emergency methods derive from preparatory practices (preliminaries) that we do before meditating, studying, or listening to teachings. In and of themselves, these practices help to calm us down in emergencies, when we are extremely frightened or begin to panic. They also serve as the first steps to take before applying deeper methods. We may apply just one of them or practice all five in the following order:

  1. Count the cycles of breathing with eyes closed, taking as the cycle the in and out-breaths, and focusing on the sensation of the breath coming in, going down, the lower abdomen rising, then falling, and the breath going out.
  2. Count the cycles of breathing with eyes half-opened, loosely focused, looking down at the floor, taking as the cycle the out-breath, a pause, and the in-breath, with the same focus as above, and after a while, adding awareness of the sensation of our bottoms touching the chair or floor.
  3. Reaffirm the motivation or goal of what we wish to achieve (becoming more calm) and why.
  4. Imagine that the mind and energy come into focus like the lens of a camera.
  5. Without counting the breath, focus on the lower abdomen rising and falling while breathing and feeling that all the energies of the body are flowing harmoniously.
Top