The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
24 February 2024
“Overcoming fear and anxiety.”
Question: How to overcome fear and anxiety?
Than Ajahn: There are two methods to overcome them: temporary method and permanent method. The temporary method is by using mindfulness to pull your mind away from thinking about the things that make you afraid. For example, if you are afraid of death, you can stop it by reciting a mantra. Instead of thinking about death, let your mind think about Buddho, Buddho, Buddho. If you can persist in keeping the mind to recite Buddho, Buddho, Buddho, eventually the mind will forget about death, temporarily.
When you stop reciting Buddho, Buddho and you start thinking again, you might think about death again.
You’ll become afraid again. So, this is a temporary measure.
If you stay at a place which make you feel that you are in some danger and it makes you feel uneasy, you can recite a mantra or chant the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha qualities. If you just keep concentrating on chanting or reciting a mantra, you’ll forget about the thing that makes you afraid. Your mind can become calm and peaceful. You will not be afraid for a while until your mind starts to think again.
If you stay at a place which make you feel that you are in some danger and it makes you feel uneasy, you can recite a mantra or chant the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha qualities. If you just keep concentrating on chanting or reciting a mantra, you’ll forget about the thing that makes you afraid. Your mind can become calm and peaceful. You will not be afraid for a while until your mind starts to think again.
Then, you become afraid again.
The second method is by using insight contemplation.
The second method is by using insight contemplation.
Insight contemplation is contemplation of the truth of life, of your body.
Our body is impermanent. It’s subjected to sickness and death. Eventually, we are going to die regardless of where we are. When you’re willing to die, you will not be afraid of death.
Our body is impermanent. It’s subjected to sickness and death. Eventually, we are going to die regardless of where we are. When you’re willing to die, you will not be afraid of death.
If you are not willing to die, you will be afraid.
The reason why you’re afraid is because you want to live. And when you know that you might die, you become afraid. The cause of your fear is your desire to live. This desire makes you afraid and unhappy. If you can stop the desire not to die and you use insight contemplation – that this body eventually is going to die, and you don’t know when you’re going to die which can be today, tomorrow, or ten years from now – then you will not be afraid of death.
So if right now you’re in the situation where you might have to die, if you accept death, you will not be afraid.
So if right now you’re in the situation where you might have to die, if you accept death, you will not be afraid.
The mind stops resisting. It stops creating the desire not to die. When you can stop the desire not to die by insisting on the truth, the mind will not resist the truth.
Then, the mind will embrace the truth. Once the mind does that, the fear and the suffering that arise from the fear of death will subside or disappear.
And from that time on, you will never be afraid of death again because you have already accepted death.
You’re ready to go any time.
Youtube: “Dhamma in English, Nov 9, 2018.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com
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