So much of our suffering—as individuals and as a society—is caused by fear. In fact, according to Buddhism, fear is at the very root of ego and samsara. Fear causes much suffering including violence and as we have seen can even result in war between nations.

Fear is not a trivial matter. In many ways, it restricts our lives; it imprisons us. Fear is also a tool of oppression. Because of fear, we do many harmful things, individually and collectively, and people who are hungry for power over others know that and exploit it. Often our actions are motivated by fear.

Fear is a very tricky thing. Sometimes we put up a pretense of virtue, but really we’re afraid of being bad. Are our good deeds truly virtuous or are we just responding out of fear? So, it is possible that we can be so afraid of being bad - that we therefore act good - but that isn’t virtue - that is just fear.

Fear also stops us from speaking up when we know we should. I had been visiting an elderly Buddhist patient who was dying. The nursing home invited me to a staff meeting to discuss the care of this patient. They were having difficulty in managing her pain. The hospice company had several representatives at the meeting and decided to call the case manager via a conference call to see what could be done about this woman’s intense pain. The case manager said she was too busy to come by to visit the woman today but would come the next morning. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Here was a human being who was in very obvious intense pain, and this case manager was too busy to visit her until the next day. I felt a sense of outrage, but because the family was present didn’t feel it was my place to say something - so I remained silent. After the meeting I felt very bad that I hadn’t spoken up on behalf of the patient. A shor time later I called the hospice company and talked to the general manager and explained the situation and was assured they would send someone right over. This is an example of a situation where I should have spoken up at the time, until waiting until later.

Ego thrives on fear, so unless we figure out the problem of fear, we will never understand or embody any sense of egolessness or selflessness.

The essential cause of our suffering and anxiety is ignorance of the nature of reality, and craving and clinging to something illusory. That is referred to as ego, and the thing that fuels this vehicle of ego is fear. Ego thrives on fear, so unless we figure out the problem of fear, we will never understand or embody any sense of egolessness or selflessness.

We have our conscious day-to-day fears—of a close call in our car, or maybe we do have an accident, or a bad health diagnosis. But then there is also an undercurrent of fear, which is very relevant to us who are practitioners. This undercurrent of fear lurks behind a lot of our habits. It is why it is so hard to just sit still or stand still or stand in line—not doing anything in particular—without feeling nervous and fidgety. We have a fear of being still.

There are many stages in the practitioner’s journey of working with fear, but it is very important to know where it begins, so we can get off on the right foot. The starting point is called the narrow path, where you look straightforwardly at your own experience. You examine fear and dissect it into its components. Where does it arise? What is the sensation when you feel afraid? What kind of thoughts race through your mind when you are in a state of fear? What’s your particular pattern? Do you panic? Do you freeze? Do you get really busy and try to fix everything? Do you get angry? At this stage in the path, you try to understand your experience, try to break it down.

The point is we always have a choice. We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder. This wisdom is always available to us, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. We can awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

To do this, it helps to see things as they arise—before they become full-blown and you are caught in their sway, at which point you can’t do much about them. In meditation practice you slow things down, and that allows you to see the subtle arisings. By slowing things down, you can interrupt the tossing of the match into the pile of leaves. You can say, “I don’t need to go there. I see what’s coming.” You catch things when they’re manageable. Understanding, examining, knowing, slowing down—those are the first steps in working with fear, the beginning of the path to fearlessness.