Hello everyone,

I'd be interested to know how zazen might have transformed your relationship with fear. And what kinds of strategies you've found useful in your practice to cope with fear.

For me, fear has been one of those 'big' issues to work with. Here are some of my key learnings so far:

1. For a long time, I was 'conditioned' to either fight it or run away from it. This has a number of inherent judgements within it - primarily that fear is something that's 'negative' and has to be removed. Of course, one cannot 'get rid' of this conditioning, but I just notice it, notice that it's there.
2. One can work with the branches or work with the root itself. There is fear of various objects (branches), and then there is 'fear of fear' itself.
3. All the so-called emotion states that we have - 'happiness', 'sadness', 'fear' etc are all part of the same continuum. They are just different bundles of thoughts & sensations. Judging one to be particularly 'good' or 'bad' creates problems. Thus, judging 'fear' as 'bad' usually leads to me judging some other state as 'good'.

Thus in a certain sense, to 'solve' the problem of fear, I realize i have to work with literally every other emotion state that's out there, i.e. as long as 'being happy' is judged as 'good', 'being fearful' is judged as 'bad'. As long as I continue to categorize my experience, the 'problem' continues to exist.

Anyways, I'd love to hear your thoughts!