{"id":2881,"date":"2020-10-11T10:41:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-11T04:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thequest.org.np\/shop\/?p=2881"},"modified":"2020-10-12T08:36:41","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T02:51:41","slug":"make-fear-your-friend-not-foe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/blog\/make-fear-your-friend-not-foe\/","title":{"rendered":"Make fear your friend, not foe"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear? \u2013 Confucius.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She was seated in front of me the first time I saw her. The room was full – there were people of different cultures and\u00a0of different ages. Almost all were seated on the floor and were\u00a0very absorbed in the subject under discussion. I had come a\u00a0long way to visit this big city beyond the Alps. For the evening, my friends had invited me to this renowned Buddhist center in\u00a0the city.<\/p>\n

One could see that she was full of enthusiasm. Often she\u00a0would raise her hand and wait to put a question to the speaker.\u00a0Then she would turn back at me and smile. She seemed like a\u00a0 child with much curiosity. I could feel the energy in her arrive at\u00a0the surface and explode like bubbles. The Tibetan monk\u00a0continued with his discourse on mind and on sunyata<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When I came to know her better, she expressed her deep\u00a0worries for her mother. Despite a poor physical state, her mother worked a lot, and suffered from insomnia and other minor\u00a0ailments. She had tried everything but her mother would not\u00a0listen. One day I came to know her mother. She was a sweet and warm woman, but one felt sorry to notice the fatigue stored\u00a0up in her being. She was concerned about not speaking any\u00a0language that I knew. But we went on to discover that we could\u00a0communicate fairly well. She asked me about my origin, my work\u00a0and my family. She seemed impressed with my sense of\u00a0adventure. “You are so far from your country,” she asked me,\u00a0“Aren’t you afraid?”<\/p>\n

One day, her mother invited us for dinner. She had prepared\u00a0typical dishes of her native country but was not sure if they would\u00a0be to my taste. At one point, the two started to discuss. I could\u00a0not understand all this but one could note that the mother was\u00a0very worried. The daughter was quite calm but at the end the\u00a0mother burst into weeping.<\/p>\n

Later, the daughter explained that her mother did not want\u00a0her to follow that Buddhist school. She was terrified that it could\u00a0be some dangerous sect and could take away all her money.\u00a0“But strangely enough, today I am calm with my mother,” she\u00a0said, “I think it is your presence.” After dinner, I tried to talk with\u00a0the mother and to explain why there was nothing to fear or to\u00a0worry. She would certainly not budge from her convictions but something had moved in her. At the end, she hugged me and\u00a0said “I feel you as one of our family. Thank you!”<\/p>\n

We are terrified of losing our possessions, of our children\u00a0taking the wrong way or of our parents contracting a disease.\u00a0We are scared of being alone in a far-off land, of not\u00a0understanding or of not being understood. We are afraid of not\u00a0being able to live up to our expectations or to others’. In this\u00a0process of living, fear is our constant companion. But do we\u00a0ever treat it as such?<\/p>\n

All that we do is try to ignore this enemy called fear, to conceal\u00a0it or to keep our distance from it. Have we ever met it fully,\u00a0looked in its eyes and listened to it carefully? Perhaps only when\u00a0we do so, shall we know what it has to say. Perhaps this entity will then reveal us a secret or two. Perhaps then fear will assume\u00a0a wholly different significance.<\/p>\n

pc Drew Graham<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear? \u2013 Confucius. She was seated in front of me the first time I saw her. The room was full – there were people of different cultures and\u00a0of different ages. Almost all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[636],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/drew-graham-cTKGZJTMJQU-unsplash1.jpg?fit=760%2C497","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0y3h-Kt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2890,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions\/2890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mindbody.com.np\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}