"Anxiety & Fear arises from Views & Beliefs (Ditthiyogo)"

"Anxiety & Fear arises from Views & Beliefs (Ditthiyogo)"

Readers Opinions:

❇️To paraphrase Thanissaro Bhikkhu, we should hold our beliefs/opinions/views very lightly... like post-it notes around the computer screen.  If we hold them lightly, then we don't get reactive when they are challenged or fearful when we need to let them go. 🙏

❇️And hopefully those beliefs/opinions/views gradually drop off like those post-it notes always do! 🙂 

❇️… a small taste of this seems to be what happens in the jhāna stages.

❇️… the third and fourth Jhana is where self concepts begin to fade 

❇️This is what scares me about the 'woke'--attachment to conditioned identity-view.

❇️Observing arising … releasing concepts of self and the attachments of views that fuel self concepts. 

❇️Sure, but so do busses & trains. Either one will still kill you if you step in front of it though. 

They say a real Vajra master could step right through that train, as if it wasn't even there. That's not the rest of us though. Saying something arises from a view doesn't mean it's not real. 

Views aren't equivalent to opinions. Even opinions aren't that easy to let go of. We don't even know what we think about things, until we think about it. It takes a great deal of self examination to ferret out the sources of our opinions I think. 

❇️For example, if you meet a tiger in the woods, you're probably going to feel fear. Because you have the view that first of all, the tiger exists, and second, that it represents a potential threat to your own continued existence. Both of those are perfectly reasonable views to hold. 

And fear in that situation is appropriate, and helpful, because it will help you run faster. To say fear arises from views isn't saying anything positive or negative about either fear or views, it's just noting the mechanism.