'How to work with our own fear and what to do when the child experiences fear'
by Venerable Jamyang
Venerable spoke about the emotions of fear and existential concept of suffering and the ways to overcome suffering through the technique of mindfulness. She highlighted the fact that our minds are wired in a way, wherein feeling of fear is expunged and flight response of our brain gets activated and we tend to circumvent this innate feeling. She proposed a method or technique to challenge this tendency, which is both pragmatic as well as theoretical. This method has its root in ancient philosophical tradition propounded by Buddha. In this method, all our emotions and feelings are perceived as ephemeral and impermanent and rather than espousing elusion or escapism one is trained and fostered to confront and experience one’s innate feelings and emotions like fear as they exist. This is called mindfulness, wherein one is expected to deal with suffering and fear through the rational faculty of mind. It is this rationalist approach to reckon with fear that helps in keeping our sufferings at bay. She also posited the fundamental cause of suffering and taking the cue from Buddhist doctrines, affirmed our desires and craving as the roots cause or source of our sufferings. She also concurrently asserted annihilations of desire as sine qua non for the end of suffering.
Apart from aforementioned points, she also highlighted the key difference between animal and human conception and experience of fear. According to her approach, animals are driven by instinct and because they have short memory, they tend to experience fear differently forgets about it the moment it passes away. And because humans are rational beings, therefore we process emotions differently and hence require unique methods to deal with it. She also explicated our tendency to pass off our fear and concomitantly affirmed mindfulness, by asserting this aphorism that, ‘Let fear be felt and not suppressed as what happens to us we can't change or stop it. Life just happens to us.
Few questions asked by facilitators and parents. Following are the responses by Venerable: -
a) How to become fearless? By experiencing and overcoming fear in one self and other and by changing our vantage point about the problem of fear.
b) How to deal with fear of things which might happen or will happen? The best way to let go fear is by allowing the self-experience it. Circumventing or a problem will never solve it, same is for fear.