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desire equals fear?
The reason why I got into Buddhism is due to my obsessive worrying and constant fear lurking in back of my mind.
I was listening to a Buddhist audio and a teacher said that desire is always accompanied by fear. The fear of loss.
It makes sense to me. The more I want something, the more fear I create through the attachment and the fear of loss.
What does this mean in terms of eliminating fear from one's life?
I was listening to a Buddhist audio and a teacher said that desire is always accompanied by fear. The fear of loss.
It makes sense to me. The more I want something, the more fear I create through the attachment and the fear of loss.
What does this mean in terms of eliminating fear from one's life?
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Comments
Pain - eliminating fear - that's a biggie! Fear actually has its place, just like pain. Fear can be a powerful stimulant (when, for example, the tiger is leaping out of the bushes to eat you). But like any stimulant, too much is a bad thing. I don't know that eliminating fear from your life is what you should be aiming for.
You have a good grasp, so it seems, on the root of your "constant fear" - desire and attachment. But it may be more than that. It may actually be anxiety disorder of some kind. I think we all suffer from that to some degree or other in today's western society (how could we not?). I think perhaps SherabDorje is right that some cognitive therapy might be helpful to you. In some (..some, not all) cases pharmacological therapy might be warranted, although in my personal experience, anxiety is much more effectively dealt with without the drugs. All they do is act like aspirin for a headache - they make you feel better for a while, but they don't fix the problem, they just mask the symptoms.
The teacher is correct though. Letting go of attachment (good or bad) will help tremendously I suspect.
Best of luck with whatever you do.
Peace
Mtns
I can really only speak from my own experience regarding this, but I think others might agree.
Meditation or mindfulness is one way among many to approach this. My caveat would be that it's even possible that mindfulness or meditation might not work well for you taken by itself, and may even leave you frustrated with meditation and possibly at least as anxious as when you started, or you may learn to associate attempts at meditation with frustration and possibly even more anxiety.
I myself have been working with Generalized Anxiety Disorder/Panic Disorder for about 35 years now. I once had an interview specifically regarding my difficulties with anxiety with the 98th Ganden Tri Rinpoche, a lama named Jampal Shenpen, who was one of the teachers of the present Dalai Lama when he was a boy- and HE Jampal Shenpen told me not to meditate too much. Again, this is just my own personal experience, but I think it's worth mentioning. HE Jampal Shenpen told me specifically not to meditate too much. Now I understand why.
Mountains and I may be led to a somewhat "clinical" approach to this because we're both apparently crazy old burned out nurses, so it all needs to be taken in context. But when you say "obsessive worrying and constant fear lurking", it's very possible that you may be talking about Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
So this is a tough nut to crack using meditation alone. You may find yourself sitting down to meditate only to find yourself flooded with this "obsessive worrying and constant fear lurking", and it may or may not get worse, possibly to the extent that you find a mindfulness approach a negative experience. There is a therapist named Tara Brach who does therapy from a Buddhist and mindfulness-based perspective, and I recommend her works highly, but she tells a story about one of her clients that I think makes my point.
The client was female and apparently had had a good mindfulness practice going for a couple of years when she started to have really negative experiences that were overwhelming. (My source for this is Ms. Brach's book Radical Acceptance.)
I think Ms. Brach's point in telling the story is that mindfulness practice is in great part directed toward softening and taking some of the rigidity out of what we might call ego-structures. If those ego-structures are what is helping the person deal with anxiety, then it would make sense if the anxiety rears its ugly head again when the ego-structures are softened. That's why I advise caution with this and that mindfulness be taken as part of a total therapeutic approach.
Anxiety is often "state-dependent", that is, once the mental habit and neural circuitry is built for constant anxiety, it becomes the usual "state" of the brain and pretty much everything is experienced from within this "state". There is good, encouraging literature that shows that the neural circuitry can be rearranged through mindfulness, but that's a very very difficult way to go about it. (My source for that is the work of Dr. Richard Davidson as described in the book Destructive Emotions- How Can We Overcome Them? by HH Dalai Lama and Daniel Goleman. There is also the work of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, who had bad panic attacks as a child- videos about that on YouTube and books available, as well as an article in National Geographic.)
So:
Mindfulness practice may work for you. It could be that you have enough good experience with this approach that it re-establishes your neurological state in a positive way and your anxiety lifts and you start to feel better. That's possible.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy may work for you. There are many who say that mindfulness meditation is sort of the original Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and for good reason. If one is sitting in mindfulness and a negative or anxious thought arises, the meditatior can then say "that's just a negative thought that may or may not have any validity and probably doesn't", and the negative thought can be replaced with a more productive thought, and more positive mental habits can be developed from there.
There is also the possibility of the use of medication to change the neurological state that you're in now to a more relaxed and neutral one, and then mindfulness practice and/or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be used as adjuncts to that. My most recent understanding of the studies is that, for anxiety and depression, CBT combined with medication works very well. Mountains may know of more recent or better studies that contradict that, and that may be.
So mindfulness practice may work for you. If your "obsessive worrying and constant fear lurking" are relatively severe, you may need to try an approach that combines mindfulness practice with other interventions.
I hope that helps put it in perspective. From my own experience, I have never been able to do mindfulness practice very well because of the anxiety. But within the past couple of years, when sitting was the only way to deal with anxiety, I sat relatively productively and it helped when other things did not.
So: if "The reason why I got into Buddhism is due to my obsessive worrying and constant fear lurking in back of my mind."- Buddhism is one way to approach it. If mindfulness works for you, then that would be a very good thing. But there is nothing in the other approaches that contradicts any Buddhist teaching, and Buddhism would suggest that other therapeutic approaches might be very valid and an act of compassion for yourself.
Therapy is a very good thing and frankly it's my opinion that everyone on the planet would benefit from it periodically. Yes, based upon my own, limited experience with Buddhist ideas, teachings and practice it can do what therapy does in many cases, but the hardest person to see clearly is the one in the mirror. That's what a good therapist does - sees through our BS and gently leads us to see ourselves more accurately.
I consider therapy and Buddhism to be complimentary practices.
Therapy to get to the heart of the immediate problem, Buddhism to eliminate future problems before they begin.
I actually have been reading Radical Acceptance. I'm about half way through and it has helped me fairly well.
I'm a college student so I don't have money for cognitive therapy at the moment. There seems to be some self-help type of cognitive therapy products out there. I may give them a shot.
I do plan to go to a local zen monastery to seek a teacher also.