The beginning of Pema Chodron’s book, Places that Scare You, has a teaching that was given to the Tibetan Yogini, Machik Labdron, by her teacher, which goes:

There is a wonderful website called "Access to Insight" whose address is www.accesstoinsight.org. It has an English translation of the Pali Cannon, which includes all the early Buddhist suttas and sometimes with commentary. It also has indexes for finding suttas on particular topics. In early Buddhism or Theravadin Buddhism, loving-kindness is considered both a method of meditation as well as an antidote to fear, but it is also considered to function as a kind of formula for protection. Acharya Buddharakkita, one of the translators, said, "Metta is seen as a thought-force which acts as a healing power to safeguard oneself and others. The mind of loving-kindness ‘promotes welfare’ and makes one a pure font of well-being and safety for others."

Buddha taught the Metta Sutta or the Sutra of Lovingkindness as a practice for his monks after they had been frightened while meditating out in the forest. There is a whole story about this and to my mind, as an American Zen practitioner, it seems kind of superstitious. The story is that the monks found the perfect place to meditate which had nice, even ground in an open center surrounded by large trees so that each monk could sit under his own tree. But when the monks arrived and began meditating under their trees, the spirits who dwelled up in the trees didn’t want to be above the ordained monks, so they moved out of their trees which were their homes. But as the monks continued to practice, the spirits grew tired of being displaced so they scared the monks by creating frightening sounds and repulsive, overpowering smells in order to get the monks to leave, which they did. When they returned to the place that Buddha was staying, he taught them loving-kindness meditation and after they practiced loving-kindness for awhile, they returned to the forest and the tree spirits found their vibes so pleasant, they wanted the monks to stay so they treated them better. Personally, I take this story as a metaphor for working with the state of fear, internally, rather than removing something external that is dangerous. Danger and fear are related but they aren’t the same. For example, lions may be dangerous but when I go to the zoo, I’m not afraid. When we know something is dangerous, such as an icy road, we can decide to take steps to protect ourselves. The state of fear may or may not accompany danger, but in either case, it creates contraction in our body and mind, and it is usually a hindrance.

Sharon Salzberg said "...a mind that is saturated by loving-kindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind." Have you ever noticed yourself feeling open-hearted, relaxed, and full of warmth ... while you were afraid? I think loving-kindness and fear must be mutually exclusive. We can’t be afraid – in a state of tightness, coldness, numbness or anxiousness, and be warm-hearted at the same time. The Vipassana teacher, Bhante Gunaratana who founded the Bhavana Society in West Virginia, described loving-kindness as "a warm wash of fellow-feeling; a sense of interconnectedness with all beings." I had never heard this phrase, "fellow-feeling" and thought it might be some kind of mistake. So I looked it up in the dictionary and found that a "fellow-feeling" is the "feeling of community of interest or mutual understanding." One way of looking at loving-kindness is the wash of warmth we feel when we share the feelings of others.

A common fear in zazen practice is the fear of letting go – the fear that if we completely let go of our thinking and our orientation in time and place, that we might vanish into the void or into a dark abyss and not be able to return. We all have our own ideas about the unknown, but often it is felt as an empty, dark, nothingness, a place where we have no control. In the process of dying, clinging to those we are attached to is an impediment to letting go and allowing death in. But the fear of letting go is also a major impediment to allowing the process of dying. I’ve heard that other animals have a much easier time not resisting death than we human animals do. Charlotte Selver brought a practice to America that she called "Sensory Awareness." Charlotte led workshops at the San Francisco Zen Center for about thirty years. One of her students told a story of Charlotte leading a small group in her home five months before her death at age 102. On this night, Charlotte said, "I could weep...I could weep at the joy of letting go." She was consciously examining and feeling inwardly the deep process of letting go that is part of dying. She continued, "And yet...It’s not so simple. There’s a place deep in my heart that is resisting, I have to get to know that place." ("Turning Wheel",Winter 2003-2004, p. 8)

I wonder if fear of the unknown helps reinforce our tendency to create habits, to stay with what is familiar, including being stuck in bad habits. I assume that everyone has had the experience of waking up in the middle of the night in the midst of a dream where you’ve lost your bearings, where rationality has been cast aside, where you are left with the insecurity of chaos, where the usual rules and assumptions don’t apply. You know, aliens could be on the other side of the door! I think this experience can be helpful in terms of showing what strong assumptions we have about conventional, everyday reality, and how important these assumptions are to us. If you have an uneasiness about letting go, try to let go in small ways. In zazen, one way to do this is to try completely letting go of your breath as you exhale or try letting go at the end of your exhalation. If you are able let go of your breath, then try letting go of any tension in your body. When you feel bodily tension leave, look for emotional tension, and try to let go of it as you exhale. If it isn’t ready to go, then instead warmly welcome it into your awareness and just sit with it. Get close to it and get to know it better.

Buddhism lists five types of fear. These are fear of losing one’s mind or going crazy; fear of public speaking or public humiliation; fear of losing one’s reputation; fear of losing one’s livelihood; and, of course, fear of death. But honestly, I think for some of us, the basic fear is fear of rejection. This may be especially strong if, as a young child, you felt rejected by a parent or a milder form of rejection through constant correction, criticism or a sense that something about you needed to be changed. This can lead to the shameful sense that something at the core of your being is defective and therefore needs to be kept hidden or under control. The fear of losing control and exposing this defective quality keeps us in a state of constantly trying to please others. And in this context, pleasing others isn’t a strategy for being popular, it arises and is driven by a sense of survival. So minute-by-minute, day by day, year in and year out, we are driven to stay on top of things, to be on-guard, by the constant fear that doing the wrong thing will result in rejection.

If you have a fear of rejection, I think zazen can help by providing a grounded place from which to meet this fear. The equilibrium and balance of zazen practice provides a larger context for fear to fit into. The more we are able to settle in zazen, the more we will be able to reach out to the part of ourselves that is afraid and bring it into this wider, more stable space. One way to work with fear is to go to places within yourself that scare you by calling up or inviting a difficult emotional state and being present with it. Especially, when you are feeling safe and calm, try to recreate the physical and emotional components you feel when you are afraid, or imagine a situation where you feel fear, and just be still with it. Get to know it and look to see if anything else is lying beneath this fear. You can examine,"What is it I am really afraid of?" By "getting to know it," I mean a non-verbal process where we try to bring awareness to the feeling of fear or panic in our body and mind, but without creating a story about it.

By inviting fear into the relaxed, openness of your heart, by reaching out to your fear when you feel calm and grounded, you can begin to develop a connection between these two areas in yourself. Later if you are afraid, a connection already will have been established to help you call upon your calm, grounded being. When you feel connected to your inner wholeness, you can offer that as an ally to the place in yourself that experiences the pain and helplessness of being afraid. Suzuki Roshi said that "The only way you can endure your pain is to let it be painful." And maybe the same is true of fear. The way to endure our fears is to just be with them. Being present without trying to change our experience is how to tame and transform our pain.

Pema Chodron said, "Making friends with yourself is the same as making friends with demons, making friends with the whole world." The Tibetan Yogini, Machik Labdron said, "In other traditions demons are expelled externally. But in my tradition demons are accepted with compassion." In Buddhism, loving-kindness means wishing well for others or wishing to provide others with what is useful, and compassion is the wish to relive suffering. Pema Chodron said that cultivating compassion is more challenging than cultivating loving-kindness because compassion involves the willingness to feel pain. She said that "When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain..... Compassion practice... involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us." She said that "The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance."

The idea of demons reminds me of Buddhist cosmology which describes six realms of existence. These realms are taught both as realms beings are born or reborn into as well as states of mind that we enter and leave throughout the day. The six realms are considered the actual dimensions of suffering that make up samsara or the cycle of birth and death. The states of hatred and anger are causes leading to the hell realm which is characterized by pain and anguish. Attachment, greed, and taking advantage of others lead to the realm of hungry ghosts where beings are characterized by physical hunger as well as dissatisfaction – never being satisfied with what they have or who they are, always reaching out in hunger for something. The causes for being born into the animal realm are ignorance, doubt, and lack of clarity and animals are characterized by fearful states. The demi-gods or asuras are fiercely competitive, always trying to stay on top and be the best, and the states of mind leading to this realm are extreme pride as well as fighting and struggling. The sixth realm is the heavenly realm of gods and goddesses. It is occupied by beings who have everything they want, all the time – all their desires are immediately satisfied so they have no motivation to practice. This realm is the result of good karma through a balanced combination of wholesome emotions, but which are tainted through self-absorption. The antidote to this blissful, but impermanent, state is joyful effort. In the midst of having everything we want, and certainly everything we need, our effort can be to joyfully muster the intention to practice.

I assume that we all recognize aspects of our own experience in the description of these realms. The human realm is placed between the animal realm and the realm of jealous gods. The Tibetan teacher, Geshe Wangyal, said that the state of jealousy is the cause leading to the human realm, and its characteristic is "busyness." Being lost in our busyness or driven by our busyness is characteristic of human beings, and the antidote to busyness is openness. "Openness" means the inherently spacious, fundamental and empty nature of our being. Letting go of our stream of mental activity that is constantly carrying us away gives us the space to experience openness. It is considered quite rare and quite fortunate to be born as a human because the human realm is considered the only realm, or the most likely realm, in which the Dharma can be heard and practiced; but when we are too busy or distracted, we miss the Dharma right in front of us. This is one reason why simplicity is valued in practice. Simplicity gives us the time and energy for practice.

So, here we are in a human body, experiencing many different mind-states and realms within this body and mind. I think that if Buddhist practice is for human beings, if Buddhism is a human endeavor, then we have to be able to practice with all aspects of being human – not just our positive or uplifting qualities. We have to be able to practice with everything that makes up human character and experience. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing – that is what we have to practice with. It doesn't work to try to change ourselves – to improve ourselves or perfect ourselves, to try to overcome anger or desire or whatever so that then we'll be able to practice. Whatever we feel as human beings is completely acceptable for practice, right now. But this does not mean that because whatever we feel is acceptable, that it is OK to express our feelings or to act on them. The activity of being aware of our feelings and accepting them is quite different from the activity of acting them out.

In the book Start Where You Are, Pema Chodron talked about how the practice of seeing herself as Buddha helped her open up her practice to everything she experienced. She said she did this by labeling whatever she was feeling as buddha. For example if she was hungry, she might call herself "hungry buddha." If you feel afraid, that can be "fearful buddha." She used examples like, if you have indigestion, that’s "buddha with heartburn." If you are bored, recognize that as "bored buddha." If you are enraged, that’s "angry buddha,"if you are in a jealous state, then recognize that right now you are "jealous buddha." Recognizing and acknowledging the actual experience of this moment is how to practice wherever you are. The space created by being aware of our experience interrupts the domino effect of one feeling or reaction automatically cascading into the next.

Pema Chodronwrote, "There’s a life-affirming teaching in Buddhism, which is that Buddha, which means ‘awake,’ is not someone you worship. Buddha is not someone you aspire to; Buddha is not somebody that was born more than two thousand years ago and was smarter than you’ll ever be. Buddha is our inherent nature – our buddha nature – and what that means is that if you’re going go grow up fully, the way that it happens is that you begin to connect with the intelligence that you already have. Its’s not ... some intelligence that’s going to be transplanted into you. If you’re going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need to protect yourself.... If you’re going to be a grown-up" – which she defines as "being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation – it’s because you will allow something that’s already in you to be nurtured."