LEARNING AND CULTIVATING FEARLESSNESS

Thich Nhat Nahn, Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm (New York: Harper One, 2012) ("The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply." Id. at 1-2. "Many of us find ourselves thinking of things that stir up feelings of fear and sorrow. We have all experienced some suffering in our past, and we often recall our past suffering. We revisit the past, reviewing it and watching the films of the past. But if we revisit these memories without mindfulness or awareness, every time we watch those images we suffer again.... Mindfulness reminds us that it is possible to be in the here and now. It reminds us that the present moment is always available to us; we don't have to live events that happened long ago." Id. at 15-16." "'Terrorists' are everywhere. They're not only the people who blow up buses and markets. When we are angry, when we behave in a very angry, violent way, then we are not so different from the terrorists we demonize, because we have that same knife of anger in our hearts. When we're not mindful in our words, we say things that can hurt others and cause a lot of pain. That is a kind of intimidation, a kind of terrorism. Many people use hurtful words against children. That knife of hurt may twist in a child's heart every day for the rest of his life. In our family, in our society, on our planet, every day we create more people with knives in their hearts. And because they hold knives in their hearts, their suffering and rage overwhelms their families, their society, the world." Id. at 95. Food for thought.).