Coping with fear means overcoming our attention problems and lack of love. Anyone who focuses firmly on the here and now, filling their soul with compassion, will hardly feel fear.
Last update: July 16, 2020
For Buddhism, facing fear is an inner work that revolves around perception. This feeling is considered a perceptual error which results in fantastic and terrible images that end up taking over our minds. The danger is not outside, but within us.
Buddhists claim that fear finds fertile ground in those with a loveless heart. Resentment, envy, and selfishness are all harmful ways of relating to others. They are forms that contain the germ of war. And whoever is at war feels fear.
Broadly speaking, Buddhists say that the best tool for dealing with fear is the flood focus on the present moment and compassion. These factors lead us to be and to feel stronger and, therefore, to feel less fear.
"Better than a thousand empty words is a single word that brings peace."
-Buddha-
Fear and rejection of suffering
Buddhists argue that the fundamental essence of fear is the rejection of suffering. They also claim that pain is inevitable, while suffering is optional. The first has to do with understanding fear; the second, with acceptance.
The fear of suffering arises from the rejection of unpleasant sensations that originate in losses, conflicts and the lack of coincidence of our desires with reality. On the other hand, it is not compulsory to suffer from all of this. Suffering is just one of the many answers available to us.
We take it for granted that pain must make us sick, but that's not necessarily the case. To cope with fear, you also need to know how to cope with pain. It loses much of its strength when we accept it and let it flow. And even more so when we seek and find the teaching contained therein.
To deal with fear, attention must be paid to the present
One way or another, fear moves between the past and the future. In the past, when we remain linked to the experiences that have caused us fear and left a profound mark that we continue to retrace. Here it hovers she fears that the same thing will happen to us again.
A similar thing happens with the future. It often frightens us because we imagine or speculate that it will bring us difficulties or painful situations. We feel small in the face of tomorrow and this scares us.
This is why Buddhism insists that one of the ways to deal with fear is to stay in the present, in the here and now. Awareness prevents our mind from filling up with fantasies that end up feeding useless fears, at all times.
Attachment is the source of fear
Peace of mind and spirit is the opposite of attachment. For us Westerners it is difficult to understand, since all our logic revolves around having. Term that refers not only to material goods, but also to emotional or spiritual goods. We also speak of "having" love or "having" peace, etc.
Buddhism is a philosophy of detaching from having through non-attachment. In other words, to understand that nothing belongs to us, not even our own life. Everything that comes into our life and everything we are is just a transitory reality.
When this is not understood, attachment is born and with it the fear of loss. It is one of the strongest fears because it feeds a vicious circle. More attachment equals more fear; and more fear, more attachment. Letting it flow and accepting that everything is transitory makes us much less fearful.
Escape is never a solution
For Buddhism, everyone is a master of himself and mistakes are part of the teaching. When things are not received in this form, the spirit begins to fill with fears and anxieties. It's like having a perpetually unfinished business.
When an error is ignored and you don't learn from it, the situation that generated it will tend to repeat itself. And it is in this case that one experiences a kind of lack of control over one's life. This, of course, brings out the fears and the feeling of weakness in us.
Buddhist principles for dealing with fear translate into complex exercises to learn with practice, patience and continuity. In large part, they clash with many of the Western schemes and that is why they are not easy to assimilate. But if you find yourself in a condition of frequent fear, it could be very useful to delve into them.
