Don’t Have To Be Afraid To Feel Good The Sangha US 112 4-20-24

Transcript

All right, so it’s Saturday morning, 09:00 a.m. Here and in Thailand and in the evening time in the US. So Corey’s got a question. Go ahead, Corey. Let her rip.

Corey: Thank you. I was thinking lately about, you know, a kind of a more recent blockage that I’ve had, and I’ve been doing the practices for a while, and I’m getting pretty good at being able to handle negative thoughts that what I would say are quite simple. But whenever I have a thought about me not being good enough, it’s quite easy to kind of deal with that. But lately a kind of, uh, more difficult, deeper level problem has occurred, like, a more difficult challenge, and it relates to, like, being afraid of yourself. So it’s just.

It just seems hard to me to kind of deal with this fear because it’s not just a fear of. I think the two common things that people are afraid of is something that jeopardize your. So, like, I think it’s common for people to be afraid of anger to the point that they’re afraid they’re going to hit somebody in a moment of anger and jeopardize their freedom to go to jail for years or maybe ten years. So there’s a. I think a lot of people, if you’re a man, if you have a naturally muscular, strong body, you’re going to be afraid of your anger because your anger can potentially jeopardize the rest of your life.

It can jeopardize your entire freedom because you could lose your senses in a moment of anger. Right. So that’s a common thing, I think, to be afraid of your own anger and your strength and powerless.

Oh, go ahead. Is being afraid of being happy, because I feel like if I get too happy, I’ll be manic and I’ll be crazy, and it’ll be like a whole thing with doctors. And I know this isn’t rational, but these are kinds of, like, deeper level fears that are. Are more hard to overcome than the simple negative thoughts that I can begin to kind of swipe away more easily now that I’ve done some practice. So if you could talk about those more difficult, deeper, harder things, like being afraid of yourself or being afraid of being happy.

Dhammarato: All right. Okay. So let’s go ahead and get started on that. We can dance around the issue a little bit. The first thing that we can talk about is what is referred to in ta is the three P’s, which is protection, potency, and permission.

Now, basically, the permission part has to do with the doubt of who’s going to help me? It’s the victim’s position. It seems like that people have the idea that they actually have to have permission to feel good. And then there is the.

The smartest movie. I’m not sure what you meant, Kat. Can you expand upon that?

Never mind. Let’s go back to the point about getting permission. We think that we’re not able to do it, that we need to get someone’s help, or at least their permission to feel good. And it’s important for us to recognize that we can give ourselves permission. We can do it, and it’s okay that we do it.

Now, the second part is the potency, and that is the capability to do it. Are we able to actually get it done? Are we capable of feeling good? And then the last one is. Is protection.

And that’s the one, Corey, that you’re actually referring to is that if you feel good, then something bad is going to happen. Now you’re using it in the reference of afraid of becoming manic or whatever. And that I can guarantee you that when people are actually manic, they are not feeling good. They may look like they’re feeling good, but in fact, panic and manic are very similar.

It’s based in fear and that manic is actually chasing something. It’s not the same thing as feeling good, but I can appreciate that you’re associating it that way. From the perspective of this issue of if I do something good, something bad is going to happen, or if I make a change, something bad is going to happen, that I don’t have the protection that I need. And this is actually quite common when it comes to feeling good. In fact, there’s an old joke about it, and the joke is that I was sad and lonely, and somebody came up to me and says, cheer up, things could be worse.

And I cheered up. And sure enough, things got worse.

All right, this is exactly what we’re talking about, is that we have that feeling of. Is that we. It’s almost back to the point that we don’t have permission to feel good. And so if we do feel good, we’re going to get caught. We’re going to have to pay some price for feeling good.

Let me take a little cold. Does anybody have this experience? Everybody, I think, should have had that at one time or another, that if they feel good, there’s hell to pay.

Michael admits to it. How about you, David?

If you want to feel good, there’s health to pay.

I can feel good. And if I want to feel good, have to do anything externally to feel good. All right. How about you, cat? Have you ever had that experience of if you feel good that something bad’s going to happen, things are going to get worse?

It’s like you don’t have the right to feel good yet. You haven’t done enough. You haven’t performed your duties.

Yeah. Also, I was. I did go through a very powerful manic episode one time because of some, some, like, snri drug that I was prescribed when I was younger. When I was like 19 or 20, I was on an SNRI, and I had this insane manic episode, like, the biggest high of I can describe, like this two week long samadhi, like, just popping through the roof for two weeks straight. And there was a following low, like falling, plummeting down.

And ever since I experienced that, there is this underlying fear of losing whatever happiness I experience. Like, there’s this deep fear of I’m going to lose this. But then I start to see that even the happiness I feel is not my happiness. So I don’t. I don’t cling to the happy feelings that much anymore.

And it’s a lot easier like that, knowing that this is just happening and it’s not mine, and I. I’m not going to lose anything. But when I was in that mind state of, oh, this is mine, I need to hold on to it, I’m going to lose it. That was the, that was a real duka for me there, like, oh, no, I’m going to lose this because it’s my happiness. And that’s a little story.

Yes. This, in fact, does happen to everybody, is that if they do practice anapanasati and feel good because they’re practicing correctly, then when we go back to normal, the normal is not nearly as good as it was before we had something to compare it to, that, in fact, we have these mood swings, and that the higher the highs, the lower the lows in the beginning.

In fact, this is common with meditators, that if they have some sort of experience while they’re meditating now, later they want to have it again.

That right now is not good enough. And so this is the primary thing that that will happen with people, is that we can begin now to remember to look at the mood swings that we have and that we can, in fact, come back and feel good again without having to pay the hell.

That, in fact, this is very common with Mohasi meditators, that they will fall into a state of peace and calm, and then they’ll work really hard, trying to get that peace and calm back again. That’s the hell to pay. Is wanting something now that you don’t have. You’ve never had it before, and you didn’t know what it was. But now that you have it and then lost it, that’s when we feel really bad.

If we never had it at all, then we wouldn’t know what it is. And so we can look at, in fact, all of these things, permission, protection and potency, all have the quality of fear. We’re afraid of something, and if things get good, then things will get bad again. But what we can look at is the fact that these cycles that we’re in, we can begin to control them. So that the highs are a little bit higher.

And the lows are not nearly as low as they used to be. Is kind of like a spiral or a slinky. To where instead of just being in this circle, you begin to move the circle up. And then move the circle up higher and higher. So that the lows are not nearly as low as they used to be.

And the highs are, even though they’re better than they used to be, they’re kind of okay, because we’re not looking for something really bad to happen. And that’s the fear, is that fear of, um, we need that, that protection. And so, Corey, I would tell you this. I will give you that protection. It’s okay for you to feel good.

Now, the next point that we can look at is the the fear of our own strength or own power. That if we do something, we’ll hurt someone. And the answer to that has to do with that. Like, for instance, you mentioned anger. That when you’re really angry and you’re very powerful, you’re a big guy.

And when you’re angry, you can hurt things. Well, actually, when when people are angry, they can hurt things. A three year old, when he’s angry, can destroy all of his toys.

So it’s not so much of actual physical strength. It has a whole lot more to do with that. When we’re angry, we are mindless. We cannot think straight. And there is a whole lot of things that prove that.

And I can go through, you know, very quickly, several of them. One would be that if you’re playing chess with someone and you can get that guy, your opponent, angry, he will probably lose that chess game. Because chess requires a whole lot of really watching and calculating and figuring out what to do. And when he’s pissed off, then those thoughts of playing, playing the chess and calculating each move and whatnot will be interrupted constantly by his anger thoughts.

This is also in debate, where they have the word in the concept of ad hominem attacks, that you can attack the guy’s debate point, but you can’t attack the guy. Why? Because in a debate, if you attack the guy, he’ll stop defending his debate point and start defending himself.

Okay? That’s the selfishness that we have. And that’s, in fact, anger is a huge display of selfishness. Anger, in fact, is a huge display of fear. And that’s what the self is.

The self that we’ve come to understand is actually a self preservation instinct, and that we react angrily or violently when we feel under attack, under pressure. And here you’re talking about it is that if you feel really good, if you feel really happy, then you will become manic, to where actually, the state of manic is also full of fear. And so maybe it’s a displacement of the word manic, that people, when they’re very, very happy and joyful, they don’t act manic.

I’ve seen people, I would just say manic. I mean, my experience of mania was a total restlessness. It’s a kind of, I don’t know, fear. It wasn’t fear. It was complete restlessness.

It’s not. It’s not a serene type of happiness. It’s not a. It’s not that enjoyable. It’s just this restless sort of hide you can’t get down from.

You can’t relax whatsoever. You know, it’s weird like that. Okay? But guess what? Restlessness always is based upon fear.

That found. The fear of. The foundation of restlessness is, in fact, they talk about it, restlessness and worry. And you can see that worry has an element of fear in it. And when we’re manic, when we are totally restless, it means that we’re driven to do something.

We’re driven to do it. Now, what’s that drive? The drive is actually fear. The fear of I’ve got to do something. There’s.

There is disaster pending or impending. So when we ever, we actually begin to feel good, those thoughts of impending doom or impending disaster will come up. But that’s the restless mind that everyone has. That’s, in fact, the. The fear that we can go so far as to say that almost all downer emotions have a basis of fear.

And so when, Corey, you’re talking about going a little deeper, this is basically what we mean is to get down to that level of fear. What is fear? How does it feel? What is the manifestation of it. That, in fact, you could say that anxiety, restlessness, anger is a manifestation of fear.

But what is the fear itself? It’s the sense of danger, sense of something is impending doom, and that we respond to that fear in many, many different ways. But here’s the trick with Anapanasati, is that you have now the ability to comfort yourself. And by saying something that’s real and positive, like in the reality, is that there is nothing to fear, that you’re actually safe. But what you’ve done, Corey, is uncovered.

That fear that is almost built into our DNA, that self preservation mechanism is built into the DNA, and it is what we could say, false positives. It’s triggered often. Our society, in fact, triggers us intentionally to control, especially controlling a child. How do we control a child? Do we promise them something really nice, or do we threaten them with danger and violence?

So the threat of violence triggers the fear, and then the child will behave himself. And so we grow up being triggered by something could possibly go wrong. We don’t know quite what it is, but it manifests through that sense of fear. So the right way to practice with anapanasati is to begin to see that fear, recognize that fear, and then talk ourselves out of it, because the reality is that there’s nothing to fear here. Each one of you is sitting comfortably, laying comfortably, reclining comfortably with no danger.

And yet the danger will come up in the mind. We actually talk ourselves into feelings afraid, and then we kind of justify that fear with the thoughts of, like I was saying, the permission or, excuse me, the protection is not there, that if I feel good, then the fear will come. But the fear is actually just part of the cycle. Except that now, Cory, you’re uncovering that fear. And what I can say about that is congratulations for getting in touch with this base fear.

Most people live their lives terrified, and they don’t even know it. These are what we mean in psychology about the drivers. People are driven. They’re driven into action. They’re driven to go to work.

They’re driven to do things. Repetitive motions. Compulsive behavior is all based upon fear. That, let me give you this kind of an example. A compulsive, one kind of compulsive will go around the house making sure every window is locked, and then make sure every door is locked.

And then they’ll clean the house, and then they’ll go check the doors again and then check the windows again, and then clean the house again and then take a bath, and then go back and check the windows and check the doors and clean the house, then take a bath and then go back and check the windows again, checking the doors. That behavior is based upon fear. Fear of someone breaking in, fear of dirt, fear of all kinds of phobias. And that this is the real issue for most of us, is to come out of our fears. This is why in the pallida definition of sukkha is to learn to feel safe, safe, secure, comfortable.

Only then can one become satisfied, and only then one can actually become joyful. Joy actually is the expression of the satisfaction that leads to success. And only when we feel successful does real joy arise.

So at the base of all of it is fear. The question is then you can say that, in fact, we can have this whole idea of black and white, on and off, would be, what level of fear do you have? And if you have no fear, now you can go into positive feelings. The positive feelings of feeling safe, feeling secure, feeling comfortable, feeling satisfied, feeling joyful, feeling successful, feeling wealthy. All of these kinds of feelings have to do with lack of fear.

But if the fear switch is flipped, then we can go into panic, anxiety, stress, grief, sadness, frustration. All of those kind of feelings are based upon the bottom of fear. And when we have this fear, we can’t think straight.

In fact, you could go so far as to say that when there is adrenaline in the bloodstream, the brain don’t work so good because the brain, in fact, is not really needed in a flight or flight, that when someone is in boxing and fighting, they need to be trained to do it because they can’t think straight, especially if you’re getting your head beat in some time to time or falling on the ground or whatever. And so basically it becomes an automatic thing because the brain is just simply not working when we’re in stress. And so what we do with anupanasanti is to sit down and intentionally take the stress away. We intentionally keep telling ourselves we’re safe, there’s no problem, there’s no worries, there are no deadlines, there’s no place to go and nothing to do, and everything is hunky dory. This is all the kind of language that we use in order to pacify that terrified child inside of us, that we’re not good enough, that we don’t match up, that something bad is going to happen if we feel good.

And all of that is based on fear. And so the real practice then, in fact, again, I congratulate you, Corey, for being able to get down to this, to be able to start seeing this fear. But right now, what we’re doing is that we’re as we that feel fear is coming up. You’re labeling it as having come from someplace. And the better thing to do is when you see the fear, you can say, oh, I see the fear.

I can see that fear. And then we can do something about it, like comforting ourselves and come into. The reality is that there is nothing to fear.

We’ve got a new guest. What’s your name? It’s Brett. Brett, yes. Oh, so you’re the.

We already know, huh?

Brett Miller. Or evidently. Pardon? What’s your last name? Miller.

Miller. Yeah. Right, right. Okay, so I recognize you, but the label guest user was a bit confusing. Glad to see you.

Glad to see you. I’ll have to recut. I lost my other password and haven’t recovered it, so I noticed I could just join right in with the web, apparently. So. Ivan, you got your hand up.

Yeah, I was just thinking about when you were saying fear. And I just realized society has, at least from my perception, has encouraged. Has encouraged this, or I should say normalized the idea of fear. That it’s like, if you have fear, it’s almost like a good thing. I don’t know.

At least that’s my perception.

I mean, especially because me growing up in an asian family, it’s like fear is something that’s good. Meaning that you care about stuff. Meaning you care about your future, or you care enough to be afraid. And it normalizes.

That’s what I realized.

Right. You could say that fear is natural only when there is danger. That it is natural for you to feel afraid when there’s real danger.

When there is real danger. When the lion has you by the foot, that’s danger. And you need to behave accordingly to that. But the cops coming to the door is not dangerous unless you’re afraid of the cops. And then they’re trained to respond to fear, thinking that if you’re afraid of them, you’ve done something wrong.

And that’s not the case. People are just normally afraid. I wish that they’d teach that to the police academy students, that being in this position of a policeman makes everyone afraid because of their own stupid ignorance. And then the cops will say, oh, well, I’m not making him afraid. Your blue uniform and your demeanor makes people afraid.

People behave like daddies. Kathleen and I had just talked about that, that he sees some of the german monks as a father figure, someone who is big and tough and tells us what to do, reminds us of our father. Not in the sense of actually remembering daddy doing this to me. But we certainly remember the way we felt when we were being threatened by daddy. Daddy’s job is to threaten kids in our society, to yell at them, to threaten them, and that the better way of raising a child is by nurturing him.

And that it takes some sort of balance. If there is a balance between the stick and the carrot, the balance is a whole lot of carrot and just a little bit of stick. But the way that we raise our kids in most of the societies is a whole lot of stick and a little bit of carrot. But in eastern Europe and Germany and places like that, it’s all stick and no carrot.

And so what we need to do is within raising our children, is to change that balance. But when we’re in practicing Annapadasati, recognize that you’re dealing with the child within and start having all carrot and no stick. Now, what I mean by no carrot, all carrot and no stick is that we’re critical of ourselves. An example of that is, oh, if I feel really good, then I’ll get manic. If I feel really good, I will.

There’ll be hell to pay. And the reality is that if I feel good, we could congratulate ourselves. Yeah, I can feel good, finally. And stop with all of the fear we have to cock ourselves into feeling safe and secure. And we can do that only because of the reality.

The reality is, is that right now, you’re safe and secure. Right now, Kat, there are no german monks in the room. You can feel safe and secure.

Wow, what a relief it is to feel safe and secure, to have no deadlines, to have no impending doom, that, in fact, you can recognize that you can think about something that needs to be done months from now, like renewing a visa, and that tension will come right into the chest. Within a few seconds, that adrenaline gland is ready to go off instantly. Because that’s part of our preservation. I’ll give you this example. Two way back when, two stone Age dudes, before even the stone Age, all they’ve got is maybe a loincloth and a stick that they’ve sharpened into a spear.

Way back when, you know, a couple hundred thousand years ago or whatever, maybe they’ve hardened it, the stick with. With fire. Now they’re walking down this little trail and they hear rustle in the bushes behind them. One of them turns around to see what it is. It may be one of the kids out of the tribe.

He’s curious about what it is, and the other one immediately takes off running. He’s not using his brain at all. He’s not investigating anything. He’s just running. Guess which one of them survived, Michael.

Which one of those two survived? The one who ran away not knowing or the one who turned around to investigate? The one. The one who turned around to investigate. He got eaten.

He didn’t choose flight. Hmm? He didn’t choose flight. Right. He did not choose flight.

The ones who chose flight were the ones who survived. Right. Okay. If you think about it like that, that’s why our genes are the way that they are, is because our grandfathers, our daddies, were the ones who ran away in fear. Amygdala.

Mm hmm. The amygdala, that fear machine that we have inside, is a hair trigger. As they say, it’s designed for survival. And way, way back when, survival was the only issue that we had.

It’s only in our society now that survival is rarely an issue. Let me ask it like this. When. When is the last time any of you were in actually real danger? Actual danger for me has been years, especially since I don’t drive anymore.

I was a dangerous driver.

But when was the last time that you were actually in danger?

And yet how often do you feel afraid?

See that mismatch in reality?

When was the last time you were actually in danger?

A long, long time ago. Many years ago. Okay. How fast would it take you then to feel afraid? A gun goes off in the neighborhood very fast.

It’s still. So that what that means that we are still animals. We still are at that hair trigger for fear when there is, in fact, no fear.

And that when we become afraid, we can’t think straight, that we’re geared for fight or flight. This makes the practice of anapanisati just a little bit hard to do, because when we’re dealing with fear, it’s hard to deal with anything else. In reality, we’ll have thoughts about justifying that fear. So when Corey fields the fear, he has, the thought of, oh, something bad’s going to happen. And another way of handling it is, is that when the fear arises, we can say, oh, there’s fear here, but there’s nothing to be afraid of.

I’m safe, I’m secure. Let me breathe this fear out. Cause it’s inappropriate. It comes from our old DNA, it comes from our instincts, and it comes from daddy and his stick.

It comes from daddy and his stick because he reinforced that feeling. In fact, if you. If the child had no fear in the first place, then daddy’s stick would not be fearful. He can threaten us with that stick. He could even hit us with the stick.

And now what we feel is pain, not fear. Sensation. Yeah. Mm hmm. We feel the sensation of the stick, but we have no fear of the stick.

But that’s not possible. The DNA of the human is highly motivated around fear.

And so what can we do about that? We can begin to watch when we’re sitting alone with nothing to do and no place to go, and some thought will trigger that fear. And now we’re afraid. I’ll give you an example of that, is that when I find, when I’m doing the data validation, vetting all of the data, and when I come across the place, I cannot find the email address. That’s a little bit of fear.

Oh, I should be able to find an email address when that person or that place has intentionally hidden their email so that I can’t find it, but that little bit of fear will come up. That’s why I keep searching for the emails, because I’m trying to get rid of the fear until I recognize that I’m not going to get that email. And now I can go through it easier. Before, it would take me three or four minutes of searching for emails and searching for emails and not finding one. And now I’ve got the skills and the tools and the recognition of, oh, there’s no email, out they go.

All right, so this is how we can learn to deal with fear, is by being alert to it. This is one of the things that I’d like to do for you guys on this particular call is to get you mindful of your fear, to start recognizing that much of your motivation is based upon fear, and that fear is not real real. It’s irrational fear. We don’t rationally see the dangers. There’s no danger there.

But we feel danger anyway. We feel fear, and then we respond to that fear with frustration, anger, uptight panic, anxiety, stress, that you can think of it as the stress hormone.

So begin to be alert when you’re around other monks, cat. Be alert that your fear is there, that you behave to those guys with your fear. Can you take a deep breath and come out of your fear and meet them like you’re the champion here, that they’re not your daddy with a stick, and in fact, they’re probably behaving with you because they kind of think that there’s some other daddy with another stick beating them. And everybody operates out of fear. Go ahead, Brett.

Isn’t it so that often fear, or maybe every time, if not often, fear, will manifest in the form of feedback loop and so if we stop putting feedback into that loop, it can fall away. Is that not so? Absolutely. In fact, you’re using the word feedback loop, but I’ve been talking about it most specifically in the sense of interrupted those critical thoughts and start using nurturing thoughts. The nurturing thought is, there’s no rule, there is no problem, there is no stick, there is no deadline.

There is nothing to cause this fear other than the old habit of fear. And just have. The word deadline has the word dead in it. Yes, exactly. Appeal to our base.

The source of fear, then, is our non existence. Or the. That’s a very interesting word. And guess what? Every business has dozens of deadlines.

Everybody who has a job has deadlines.

And it’s a very interesting word, because if you cross that line, you’re dead. Mm hmm. And that’s not true.

The line itself, in fact, is imaginary. The line doesn’t exist, and the dead certainly doesn’t. That we see danger when there is no danger. We’ve been trained to find danger, and we’re so good at finding danger that we find it where it doesn’t even exist.

That’s how we got here as a species. What was that? Brett? Perhaps it’s how he arrived here as a species, from the scientific paradigm. From the scientific paradigm.

It could be the very mechanism that arrived our species. Or how.

But when are we going to graduate to the next level? Right now, humans learn to deal with their fear rationally, which means then that humans, when they’re not afraid of one another, there’s not going to be so much conflict. We won’t need police anymore. There won’t be war. There won’t be the weapons.

McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta go out of business because all of those industries are based upon fear. Guess what? There are other industries. How about the makeup industry? Max Factor and Revlon and Chanel?

And all of those companies are in business because girls are afraid of not being beautiful enough or not being good enough. I need you.

So, kat, you got your hand up? Go ahead.

Yeah, I was, uh. It’s kind of slipped out my mind now, but, uh, I was going to say something about this sort of, um. This. I mean, in a community, in a group, when I’m living with a group of people, in a. In this place.

Anyway, there is this sort of like when the. When the. When the senior monk is away, it’s a bit of a different place. And when he’s here, it’s a bit of a different place. And when.

When the abbot is around, it’s a bit of a different place. And when he’s denied, do we ever have the feeling, or do the guys at the wat have the feeling that. That the abbot then is daddy with a stick? Yeah, absolutely. But also it’s the same, and I think it’s the same in every, like, environment.

Like in school, when the principal’s out, it’s like when the substitute teacher’s there. Every environment, isn’t it? In every environment, there’s a daddy with a stick, and everybody’s afraid. There must be some. Something built, like, some psychological, like, function of having this father sort of overarching kind of figure inside of us.

That is the super ego, I think, isn’t it? That Freud call it or something like that. It’s like this is God, like our inner top adult, the top dog of our psyche, and we kind of adopt. Adopt people as that. The Buddha talked about it as Siva Bhatta paramasa.

And guess what? Is one of the primary fetters?

It’s actually the second fetter.

Look how powerful that fetter is. And if we do it wrong, according to some rules or some daddy or whatever like that, with a stick, we’re going to get hit and the fear comes.

So if you’re going to come out of fear, we have to relax our own rule systems. We have to stop being critical of ourselves and start being nurturing. Instead, we start have to use this carrot and stop using the stick on yourself and stop seeing other people as having a stick and start looking at those people as people full of carrots, so that you can be friends with everybody. But so long as we have fear, we can’t be really good friends with people because we’re afraid of them.

But that’s one of the things that I will mention about a chan pod was he never did anything to make me afraid of him. I was always really glad to see him. And that was not true in all cases. There were some monks. I didn’t like to see them when they would come up.

Why? Because they would be critical. But a Ajahn Poh was always very, very responsive like that. And he never did anything to make me feel afraid. He always made me feel welcoming.

And I’ll tell you a little story. That on the side point is that Daniel has now taken on the robes. We just talked to him yesterday. He’s at guess where with a chance. And Royette, have you talked to him yet, Cap?

Yeah, I’m trying to help him out with his visa, but I’ll talk to you later about that. But, yeah, we talked yesterday about it. Yeah, let’s talk about the visa stuff later. But meanwhile, what he said was, and this I already knew about a chance because I’ve heard about him before, and that is, is that he continues to nurture Daniel. Oh, good job.

Oh, that’s really great. He doesn’t criticize Daniel. And here you are at a wattage where you’re constantly being criticized. Kat. Now, it actually, I would say that Ajahn Poh really, really helped me a lot by never being critical with me.

This is one of the reasons also that there is a rule with the monks. One of the Patty monk rules is that monks don’t criticize other monks. We want to give them the feeling of being safe and secure around us. We’re not critical. We’re nurturing with others.

So start being nurturing around the other people that you know and are part of your life because you know that they’re afraid of you.

Brett, you’re terrifying to some people. Corey, you’re terrifying to some people. Dhammados, you’re a terror in some people’s minds.

I bet you, too, all of you guys, especially the older we get, the more daddy by we become, our stick gets bigger and stronger, and we have to recognize that people become afraid of us. They put that daddy figure on us that came from their childhood, just like we do. In fact, it’s quite possible that two guys together, each one of them sees each other as the daddy figure. What are they going to do? There’s going to start arguing and fighting with each other.

And so this is why Ajahn Santee and a chan po wind up being such excellent monks is because we feel safe around them. But, cat, you’re on your own. You’re going to have to get that feeling of safety and security by practice, because these monks that you see as your daddy figure, they’re not dangerous. They’ve got their own daddy figure.

They’re probably more afraid than you are.

Brett, you still got your hand up. I just put it up. The practice will be foolproof. Pardon? The practice will work and will be foolproof if we practice, if we remember to do it, if we remember to look for the fear, because the fear is the foundation for all of our unwholesome thoughts.

The Buddha was really big on becoming fearless to stop. In fact, that was his technique whenever he felt afraid, stop and let that fear subside so that we don’t have any fear left and we can talk ourselves out of the fears that are irrational. I mean, he was in the state where he was actually in real dangerous places. In fact, here’s part of the story is BoD Gaia, where he went to practice. He knew that he would be secluded there because it was known it had a reputation of being a dangerous place.

For one thing, it was in a river bottom, and snakes and alligators and all kinds of things, including swamp gas and spooks and all kinds of apparitions and things like this were there. And so Bodh Gaya was known in those days to be a haunted place.

And so the Buddha intentionally went to a haunted place so that he could, in fact, manage his fear and become fearless. The reality is that a place might be haunted, but it’s not dangerous. It might have alligators, but you’re not in danger if you can see the alligator, because he sees you. If you can see the snake before it sees you, you’re safe. That’s even true with cops.

If you can see a cop before he sees you, you’re safe. Now, that little rule I learned when I was in high school cause I had a buddy. We lived in a small town in South Carolina. It was Dillon, South Carolina, and we were the hells angels of Dillon, South Carolina, with two guys with motorcycles. And that was one of the things that Randy taught me, was that you keep your eyes open on this road.

You see the cop before he sees you. The further down the road you could see, the faster you could go.

And so even though it was a Hells angels kind of twin mob scene, there was some dhamma in there.

There was that dhamma. I remember that very specifically, that the further down the road you can see, the faster you can go. Recognize that we live our lives like that. If you can see what’s going on in advance, that’s wisdom, to see how things are headed, to see where things are going, to see which way the gun is pointed. If it’s pointed at your kneecap, that’s dangerous.

If it’s. If the guy is swinging it back and forth. In fact, that happened when I was in high school, too, was this old man was going with us hunting, and he had a twelve gauge shotgun, and he had it under his left arm, draped over his forearm, and he was walking around that way. And wherever he’d go, that gun was pointed down, but it was pointed at various kneecaps, and guys did not like it that he was not being careful with which way that gun was pointed. All right, whichever way the gun is pointed, that’s where it’s going to fire.

If it fires. That’s wisdom. So look at the way that things are headed. If you can see, cat, the fear in these other monks, then you can deal with it without you becoming afraid of them.

You can see that they’re behaving out of fear. They’re behaving out of a set of rules, as I said before, that all of the fear comes from breaking some stupid rule that we’ve made. And if we stopped having rules, we’ll stop being afraid.

Because why? Because all of the rules that we have stored in our mind, and we’ve got thousands of rules stored in the mind, and every one of them has an enforcement behind it that we’ve referred to here is daddy with a stick.

And that’s based. It’s in our subconscious, and we don’t even recognize it. So, Corey, if you feel happy, there is no daddy with a stick. Remember that. Recognize that you’re safe.

You could feel happy and joyful, and there’s no result to that.

That you. You can feel that there’s not going to be any retribution.

Oh. That you have that protection. Recognize, guys, that you are protected. And how are you protected? With your wisdom.

If you could see what’s going on, you will there be no reason to be afraid at all.

Cat, you got your hand up?

All right.

Yeah. Okay, Corey, how do you feel right now? Um, pretty good. Above neutral. About neutral, huh?

Is that dangerous? Better than neutral? Yeah, better than neutral, huh? And it still. Is it dangerous?

No, no, it’s relaxed. I mean, I. Luckily, I would like kind of the energy of the atmosphere or environment, so I’m around really relaxed people. Like in the Sangha, I tend to be more relaxed, especially as the time goes on, you know? So I’m feeling pretty good and pretty relaxed now that we’ve had some time to hang out for a bit.

Yeah, no problems, no worries, no rules. Everything is just hunky dory. Cat, you got your hand back again.

Yeah. Actually, just listening to what Corey said, I had a. I had this thought, like, okay, so there is this.

I don’t know if it’s a balance, but there’s definitely, like, a reality to this sympathetic environment. Right? So it’s like, idealistically, I would like to be above that and to be like, oh, well, no matter. Realistically, be above that. Yeah, but realistically, it never really.

It. Somehow the environment always sinks itself into my. My feelings or my being, whatever you want to say. Like, if I’m around uptight people or if I’m around relaxed people, it somehow sinks in, even when I have. Even when I have this, like, underlying Sati or awareness.

Oh, this is all just going on. It’s just notice. It’s like such a. It’s such a thing that I pick up, you know, it’s like, okay, I have this sati, but I noticed that I’m just slipping into this environment’s mood, and it seems like I have no control over that. Like, the sympathetic vibrations, as you said, like, one time or something.

Something like that, yeah. Like, it’s. It’s. It’s. It’s definitely a nice thought that I can stay above that.

Those sympathetic vibrations are as real as that old man with the shotgun, waving it around mindlessly.

Right. So that means that if you’re aware of it, you could move your knees, you can get out of the way. That’s what you can do when you’re at the watt, when you find these guys uptight. We’ve talked about this before, but we’re talking about it now in this sense of be aware of the way you feel. Be aware of the fear that you have so that you can drop it.

You can tell yourselves, this guy is running his mouth, but he’s not dangerous.

He’s not dangerous to you.

Can you see that? He’s not dangerous. You just feel danger. You felt the same when you were a kid. Go ahead.

Yes. No, I just gotta say, I can feel like this. Like, I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s, like, very tribal, like, same feeling of early school or just. I remember, like, just having. Being in a group, my position in a group.

And this. This. I don’t know where it all comes from, but this. These came from as a child. It came from your daddy.

When you were a child, you were trained to be afraid.

And we respond to that fear with rebellion and anger because we don’t like being afraid.

And the reality is, you can talk yourself out of being afraid because the fear is unbounded, irrational. The reality is, is that you’re safe. Even when some monk is yelling at you, he’s at least not going to hit you. I mean, I could tell you there’s always these weird social, cultural conflicts we have with, like, a russian guy, a german guy, irish guy, and we’re all somehow end up in a conflict just because of this. This hot pot.

Like, it’s something that everyone’s just. You can see the social kind of conditions bump into each other. Like, you know, it’s just almost inevitable. It’s almost inevitable, like, how it has been inevitable because you’re not watching where you’re going. That dog turd on the sidewalk is inevitable that you step on it unless you can see it.

And when you can see it now, you have a choice. It’s not inevitable. That’s an interesting word. I very rarely use it. I use words like destiny and providence.

It’s gonna happen about a lot. It’s not inevitable if you can see it. Yeah.

So practicing these guys is safe to you and afraid for themselves.

Hello, Andrew. Welcome. We’re just about to wrap up here. We’ve been doing this for an hour. I’m afraid you missed it.

Anybody hear me?

So, Brett, what you got? I think Michael Clark wanted to say something earlier.

Michael?

Well, I think it’s been well covered. I just wanted to say, for example, when you’re interacting with other people, there’s a middle way there too, right? So it is a skill to be able to be mindful to not step on other people’s toes. But if you’re trying too hard to not step on other people’s toes, then you’re going to step on your own toes and trip yourself up, if that makes any sense. And well said.

Yeah.

You know, and like Damarato was saying, we don’t have to be afraid even if somebody is yelling at us. And that kind of reminds me of the idea of, you know, if bandits are sawing your arms and your legs off, you can still have compassion for them, you know, and this is kind of, uh, that’s pretty extreme Buddhism, you know. Well, you can refrain from here. Why is it that, why is it that you have that in Buddhism? And then you have like, jesus, you know, all these high saints have these, like, well, if someone’s chopping your hand off, you should still love them.

You should forgive you. It’s like, what did I. Jesus and Buddha. You probably find it in other religions, you know, I mean, it can occur. That’s not, that’s not really going to happen to any of us here.

The likelihood of getting your limbs sawed off is like very, very unlikely. But it’s a good pointer to think about, like, you know, nobody’s really ever attacking you. You know, it’s like, because there’s no you there. There’s no you and the limbs. There’s no.

There’s no you. And that fear of being yelled at, for example, and so you don’t have to be afraid of it. And that’s also a key thing about fear, is that everybody has a fear of venomous spiders and venomous snakes, but being afraid of them all the time, when they’re not there. That’s. Or a picture of them that’s not dangerous at all.

A picture of a snake is not dangerous. Exactly. Or an idea of a snake is not dangerous. The idea of a snake is not dangerous. The idea, cory, of feeling good is not dangerous, and we’re very rarely in real danger, but we often feel afraid.

So start to watch for that fear. In fact, the easy way to do it is to start looking for anxiety that you’ll find in the belly or the chest. Tension, a niggle, a sensation, and start using that as your guide rather than having the thought of, oh, if I feel good, something bad will happen. Bad. Actually, if you feel good and think that something bad is going to happen, guess what?

Something bad did happen. You had to tension in the chest. You had a bit of tightness, you had a bit of discomfort. And that’s what we don’t like. We don’t like those sensations.

We can laugh at them instead and make friends with them. Yes. Take a deep breath and relax. Oh, yeah. That’s one of the best reasons for the Buddha having anapanasati and putting that breath element in it is because you can breathe out those tensions, those worries, those bodily sensations that have adrenaline with them.

That’s the way to do it. Remember to look for the fear. Remember to nurture yourself, to come out of the fear.

This is a primary point of getting into the state of sukkah, because fear is dissatisfying, and we’re ignorant to it.

So let’s start being aware of it. Put that at the top level of your list of things to look for, this chest sensation. Thoughts of danger, thoughts of fear. Because if you can begin to manage your fear, your life is going to be already okay. There’s nothing left other than an absence of fear.

You either have fear or you don’t. If you have fear, there’s no other place to go than detention. Anxiety, anxiety, frustration, panic, restlessness, worry, tension, grief, despair, anguish, all built on fear. And when you don’t have any fear, what have you got left? You’ve got safe, secure, comfortable, relaxed, satisfied, successful, wealthy.

Those are the feelings we cultivate by merely getting rid of the fear. So be mindful. Watch. Looky, looky, wakey, wakey. See that fear?

Recognize in reality, cat, that monk does not have a stick. He is not your daddy. You’re safe. Even when you’re being yelled at, you’re still safe. He can’t touch you.

Who was the famous guy had a song? Dana Nana, Nana can’t touch me. Oh, uh, one of those older rappers, right? What was his name? Yeah, some rapper or something.

You can’t touch me. Yeah, run DMC. MC Hammer. No, Michael, run DMC. Hammer.

Hammer something. Hammer. Oh, MC Hammer. Mc Hammer. Yeah.

All right, so remember to have that kind of thought. He can’t touch you, cat core, and nothing’s bad going to happen to you. It can’t touch you. If you’re wise enough to see it coming, you can get out of its way.

I just get into right view. The right view is nothing problem there? No, we can see the reality. That’s what’s right view is to be able to see what’s happening, to see that shotgun waving around so you can move your knees.

So, does anybody have any further comments? I think that we’ve pretty well covered this. I’m afraid this is coming to an end.

Notice that word, too. How often we use the word fear inappropriately.

I’m not afraid. This scholars coming to an end. I’m quite happy about it. I’ve had about as much joy as I can stand right now.

Nova, we haven’t heard from you. What do you have to say?

Fantastic. I’m really enjoying this. The couple of times that I had the mindfulness enough. I was mindful enough to remember. I remember to forget all fear and just relax.

And it was like heaven. Good one.

So, Damadosh, do you have any final remarks?

You’re okay. How about you, David?

I find the less I care about things, the less fear I have regarding things as well. I don’t care about anything. Then I don’t have any fears about anything. That’s right.

It don’t matter. Mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter. And there’s nothing to be afraid of. If he ain’t got no cling, ain’t no thing.

So, Corey, how about you?

I don’t hear him. Does anybody hear what he said?

Yeah, we didn’t hear you, Corey.

Eyes breaking up. All right. How about you, Ivan? You got any final things to say?

I guess I’m satisfied. I realize I have questions, but I’m okay with not knowing for now.

Great.

Andrew, you just come on.

I hope you’re getting something out of the last part of our talk.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. No, it’s really, really good to be here, even if I missed out by an hour. I’m in Thailand as well, actually.

But I was trying to work out the times, and I worked it out wrong by now. But, yeah, I’ve enjoyed the last part of the talk. I also find that concentrating on the feelings in the body helps. It’s more tangible than the thoughts, which can be quite slippery if you’re having fear to try to calm down the bodily sensations rather than work with the thoughts. For me, they’ll find that easier.

Well, welcome aboard. I’m glad to see you. Thank you. Enjoying. Sorry, I’ve been enjoying listening to your talks online.

So Michael, do you have any wrap up? Yes, we have another talk tomorrow at 04:00 p.m. Thai time. And please, y’all, if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel and check us out on your favorite podcasting service. And be sure to check out our website, opensongafoundation.org dot.

We still haven’t fully launched yet, but we have almost 4000 entries vetted now and we’re getting very close. So yeah, go check it out, tell us what you think. And everybody have a good one. Right. One last thing, and that is that, Domidas, I want to mention thanking you for doing your comments on the YouTube channel on a regular basis.

And I would encourage everybody to start commenting on the, on the videos. Yes, for sure. Comment like. Okay. All that.

Definitely. Yeah. In fact, we can start. You guys can start dialogues right here on the, in the comments section of those YouTube channel videos. Yeah.

All right. So thank you, Michael. Guys, it’s been good. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Okay, bye bye. Bye. Like they say, old school.

God bless, huh?

Take care. Thank you. You too. Thank you. Thank you.

Want More? Watch the Whole Dhamma Video Here

Participate in one of our Live Sanghas (Free of Charge)

►The Sangha US, Friday 7 PM PDT Join Skype Call.

►The Sangha UK, Sunday 10AM BST Join Skype Call.

►The Sangha UK, Wednesday 7PM BST Join Skype Call.

There is nothing like direct transmission of the teachings in a one-to-one or one-to-group (Sangha) format from a skilled teacher. We encourage you to participate in our weekly Sanghas.