Fear.

a few days ago a I posted about fear, and how it was coming up for me more and more as I got deeper into the practice.

It's gotten worse. I mean all-consuming kind of bad. And it's not that I'm afraid of everything--it's that I am starting to see clearly how utterly pervasive fear and aversion are in my life. Almost everything I do is touched by it and/or a reaction to it in some way.

Some of these fears are big , like death, suffering, etc.--and some of them are so minute that they are barely noticeable, like rocks in a fast flowing stream.

You may see some of them--the really big ones that actually break the surface-- but what affects the flow of that stream the most are the thousands and thousands of unseen rocks, from boulders to pebbles, that force the water to change course and pick up speed. And the faster the water moves, the less you see.

Of course the flip side of that is that over the course of time, the water always wins. It will always wear down the rocks. Unfortunately, that takes millions of years in some cases.

The Buddha often spoke of his teachings as going "against the stream"; he warned his intial followers that the way he taught was not easy, and that it required constant effort to avoid being swept along with the currents of the mind. But he also spoke of "entering the stream" as the first level of consicious awareness--the state of becoming aware of the nature of suffering and the impermance of the self.

I know that for me, floating along is the easiest thing to do. It requires barely any effort--just enough to stay afloat. And in the good times, it's so easy to fall into--after all, who wants to go sit on a meditation bench for a couple of hours a day when the sun is shining and everything is hunky-dory?

But the truth is those rocks are still there. And we almost never float facing downstream, with a clear view of what's ahead. Even if we do, by the time we realize what's happening, we're usually already deep into the rapids, without a raft or even anything to hang onto. In those cases, all I've been able to do is tuck and cover and hope I don't drown.

And that's one of the things I'm afraid of--more suffering. But mostly I am simply overwhlemed by the contant nature of suffering and the role of fear in creating it. I see it everywhere--in me, in others, in the world at large.

Last fall I had a similar experience of being able to see suffering clearly--my own and others. It was not fun, but very enlightening. At first I felt like everything was slightly out of sync; like I was a little out of step with the rest of the world.

Well, I've always felt that way. :) But this was different. I could see the suffering in people's faces, in their walk, in everything they did. Big suffering--the suffering of obvious physical or emotional pain--and the small kind, the little disconnects in conversations, the walls we put up around parts of ourselves, the isolation I think most of us feel to some degree or another.

And likewise, now I see fear. I see fear of death, fear of rejection, fear of pain, fear of loss, all of it, on large and small scales. I see it in myself in all it's endless forms. I see it in others, too. Or at least I think I do.

Fear is one of the roots of suffering, in Buddhist thought. It's aversion to what is really present in the moment, and it's a sign there is something we need to work with. It can also be the result of clinging to something that is pleasant--an experience, a relationship, an idea of "how it's supposed to be." Aversion and clinging. The two roots of all suffering.

hm. It just occured to me that this is (hopefully) a progression; from the awareness of suffering to the awareness of one of it's causes. That makes me feel good, like I am moving in the right direction.

On the other hand, that means an awareness of desire/clinging is probably the next step. Ugh.

See? There's that aversion/fear thing again...lol. I'm terrified of more awareness...oh, irony. Hilarious.


Stephen Levine once said "If you can't be bored, you can't be Buddhist." I wholeheartedly agree.

But I think a healthy appreciation of irony helps too.