Fear and Fearlessness - dedicated to my breakti trainees today

The crazy wisdom approach to fear is to not regard it purely as a hang-up, but to realize that fear is intelligent. It has a message of its own. Fear is worth respecting. If we dismiss fear as an obstacle and try to ignore it, then we might end up having accidents. In other words, fear is a very wise message.

You can’t con fear, or frighten fear. You have to respect fear. You might try to tell yourself that it’s not real, that it’s false, but such an approach is questionable. It is better to develop some kind of respect, realizing that neurosis is also a message, rather than garbage that you should just throw away. The whole starting point for working with fear and other emotions is the idea of samsara and nirvana, confusion and enlightenment, being one. Samsara is not regarded as a nuisance alone, but it has its own potent message that is worthy of respect.

Fear contains insight as well as the panicky blind quality we often associate with it. The element of panic has a deaf and dumb quality—you know: doing the best you can, in spite of your fear, hoping everything will be okay. But fear without hope seems to be something very insightful. If you give up your hope of attaining something, then tuning into fear is tuning into its insightful quality. Then, skillful means or action arises spontaneously out of the fear itself. Fear can be extremely resourceful rather than representing hopelessness. It is the opposite of hopelessness, in fact.

-Chögyam Trungpa

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“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”

Chogyam Trungpa (via zenhumanism)

(via aokigaharadreams)

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So much on my mind that I can’t recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can’t take it y’all, I can feel the city breathin
Chest heavin, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving

Black Star, Respiration

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basava:

I Live Under Your Sky Too is a massive (32-feet wide) installation by artist Shilpa Gupta, erected by the sea on Carter Road in Bandra, Mumbai.

The installation features the text “I live under your sky too” written in three languages — English, Hindi and Urdu — using LED lights with the individual words intermixed. The lights go on and off, highlighting the sentence in each language alternately. Read between the lines and the message is one of religious, national, political, class, and gender harmony.

(Source)

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This Very Moment. My Friend, Zoe.

“…Life is just a moment in time
And we go round and round
(if you’re listening)…  ”

 - Pharcyde, Moment in Time

 I went home recently to visit one of my dearest and oldest friends, Zoe, to check in with her and support her as she courageously fights stage four breast cancer.  There is no one I know who embodies and embraces life more than Zoe, and to honor her fearlessness and zeal, I am beginning to rethink the way I live and work every day.  Consider it a matching pledge drive; as she dedicates herself to raw food, juicing, and natural healing modalities in the face of a very scary disease, I will dedicate myself to my work, relationships, and life in general with more fervor, courage and compassion.  When something scares me or makes me worry, I think of her and it moves me to be fearless.  When I feel myself harden and close off in reaction to discomfort, I remember Zoe’s open heart and free spirit and it moves me to be more compassionate and open.

Zoe has been through cancer before, and when she was diagnosed this time, back in the fall, she felt very strongly that she did not wish to go through all the chemo, radiation and surgery that she had to endure through the last episode.  While it was a very hard decision to make and share with her loved ones, I recognized her unbelievable bravery in the face of this disease and in the face of all of the people who supporterd her but hoped she would take a different route.  She has made amazing strides in her journey, converting to a raw food diet, juicing, supplementing, reiki, acupuncture, biofeedback and more…  and what is most amazing is that she has done this all through the support of loved ones and even strangers.  Zoe works for herself and did not have the money to do this on her own, but through fundraising and the immense generosity of everyone from her neighbors to her healers, she has been able to make this journey.

Zoe’s story embodies two tenets of buddhist thought that I hold dear to my heart:  compassion and interdependence.  Nothing, NOTHING, not one thing can exist independently on its own in this unvierse.  We cannot experience our life in a vacuum, and our interdependence in life is part of what makes it so amazing and grand (and scary).  Without the support of others, we would not exist.  And without supporting others, we negate the natural flow of life.  This is the law of interdependence.  

Compassion can be a tricky word.  Sometimes it seems too touchy-feely.  Sometimes we cannot muster up any tenderness in the face of the horrible things that go on every day in our world, our country, our city, our block.  Yet compassion is innate within us, it is our basic nature.  When we know someone close to us who is suffering or we hear stories about people like Zoe, it touches our heart.  It awakens this innate capacity for fearlessness and love and draws it up from within us like water from a deep cool well.  

Zoe’s journey to heal herself through diet and natural medicine has been supported through the interdependence of her many friends and loved ones, and those inspired by her story.  The compassion of many has united for the cause of one.  This moment is the perfect one to draw up from your well and engage with your life in a way that honors these tenets of compassion and interdependence.  I invite you to help me in my pledge drive, matching Zoe’s courage and absolute love of life with your own.  Care to join?  Now is the time.

 I’ll finish with a quote from one of my favorite authors and Buddhist teachers, Pema Chodron. 

“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”

(this was excerpted from my newsletter.  if you’d like to read more, please click here.)

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