Tao Te Ching
Edvard Munch, "The Scream"
Fear
Fear—an insatiable monster that devours our life
But helps showing where our confidence most thin.
Fear transports us from harmony to strife,
ignoring reality, amplifying the grim.
A paper tiger we won’t confront
That vanishes quickly when we closely look
And stops our success from taking the brunt,
Lets us read or write the book.
Fear lures possibilities into view
But often blinds us to what’s true
While Illusion often helps us through
The yin and yang of fear stay true.
Chogyam Trungpa described “The bandits of hope and fear.” Bandits because they so easily and frequently steal our awareness away from nowness, from the here-and-now immediacy of our lives; hope and fear most often determine our decisions, guide our vision, enslave our creativity and uniqueness. And yet fear cautions our choices, keeps us from too much danger, and prevents foolish judgment. Hope seduces us with unrealistic fantasy; yet without this, creativity, innovation, and new ventures would die as merely flickering thought. Our fear of failure may much more often become true; but, without seemingly unrealistic hope, we would never accomplish anything innovative and meaningfully helpful to ourselves and to the world.
Quotes (121)
“I wished to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test; for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and, as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute.”
“People were so consumed by their fears and ambitions, their desires. They were so busy planning and plotting their lives that they failed to live them.”
“I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side… You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for... surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
“It is better by far to risk the evils we anticipate than to remain in fear of what might happen.”
“To stand from Fear set free, to breathe and wait; to hold a hand uplifted over Hate; what else is Wisdom?”
“Fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good.”
“To fear a crowd, and yet to fear solitude, to fear to go unguarded, to fear the very guards themselves; to be unwilling to dispense with an armed escort, and yet to feel displeasure at the sight of one's attendants carrying arms: what a hateful predicament.”
“The wise become their own best friend and appreciate privacy while the man of no virtue or ability—afraid of solitude—turns into his own worst enemy”
“There is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.”
“The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; all that we dread can be conquered.”
“The happiest men are they who have arrived at the point of having nothing to fear.”
“This fear, this night of the mind must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun, but by the face of nature and her laws.”
“If you study the history and records of the world, you must admit that the source of justice is the fear of injustice.”
“Every person creates his own world, according to that which he fears and that which he loves”
“All birth ends in death, all creation ends in dissolution. All accumulation ends in dispersion. All that appears real is transitory. Ignore these omens and drink the elixir of fearlessness!”
“If such a thing as 'I' exists indeed.
Then terrors, granted, will torment it.
Buttt since no self or 'I' exists at all,
What is there left for fears to terrify?”
“Abandon hope and fear. Let go of trying to accomplish something or exhibiting anything.”
“When ordinary officials and the common people have no fear, punishment occurs. When ministers and high officials have no fear, banishment occurs. When princes and kings have no fear, warfare occurs.”
“Know that thankfulness is from the highest of stations, and it is higher than patience, fear, and detachment of the world.”
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation.”
“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.”
“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.”
“we should wish to be both; but since love and feared can hardly exist together and if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
“The contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.”
“This is the real fear presaging my dying: what if my fire be only straw and flame?”
“The origination of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.”
“Fear not what they can do to you; greater is he that is in you than he that is in the World”
“It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy.”
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
“The fool and the wise man are equally harmless; it is the half-wise and the half-foolish who are most to be feared.”
“The nature of realization is the absence of hope and fear.”
“Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear
Some flying from the thing they feared and some
Seeking the object of another's fear.
”
“The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then”
“We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.”
“A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.”
“Ignorance is the parent of fear and being so nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself”
“an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward… the most reliable and useful courage is that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril.”
“religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed, and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.”
“Almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
“Erewhonians, therefore, hold that death, like life, is an affair of being more frightened than hurt.”
“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
“It is pathetic to observe how lowly are the motives that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.”
“The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.”
“Love—and consequently fear—of the crowd is among the most powerful motives in all men: an inordinate love of the crowd which so completely dominates every other feeling that—unable to obtain the admiration of the janitor, of the passers-by, and of the loitering taxi driver—a man prefers never to be seen”
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain the path does not lie through the fear of life and death and blind faith but through striving after rational knowledge.”
“Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor.”
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
“We shall banish fear... Rooted in a fuller life for every German from childhood to old age, National Socialism means a new day of abundance at home and a Better World Order abroad.”
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard… Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them… throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly.”
“The basis of all religions is the cold fact of human mortality... Death is an ugly fact, but it is fascinating. It has fascinated men's minds from the Inca Indians to the most modern poets. It is probably the only thing that makes men thoughtful. We dislike it, we abhor it, and yet we are fascinated by the terror of extinction.”
“Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward.”
“Fear withers the mind, distorts thought, and leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.”
“We are mortal as long as we fear death, but we become immortal as soon as we do not identify ourselves with the confines of our present personality and yield to the eternal rhythm of the universe in which we live.”
“If your effort is in the right direction, then there is no fear of losing anything... There is nothing to lose... If you understand this ultimate fact, there is no fear.”
“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.”
“Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.”
“The family’s function is to repress… to deny death by avoiding life… to promote respect, conformity, obedience; to con children out of play; to induce a fear of failure; to promote a respect for work; to promote a respect for ‘respectability.’”
“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”
“To Lao Tzu, not to fear dying and not to fear killing are equally unnatural and antisocial. Who are we to forestall the judgment of heaven or nature, to usurp the role of ‘the executioner’?”
“I take the liberty of reading this chapter as a description of what we, ordinary people, should fear… the ruler. It’s certainly what William Blake would have told the oligarchs of the Industrial Revolution, who still control our lives.”
“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something… We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.”
“No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear.”
“The bandits of hope and fear are subdued and all experiences are transformed into crazy wisdom.”
“The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are… If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence.”
“Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live… like a tiger in the jungle.”
“inscrutability is based on fearlessness. This is unlike the conventional concept of inscrutability, which is deviousness or a blank wall… From this fearlessness, you develop gentleness and sympathy, which allow you to be noncommittal, but with a sense of humor.”
“I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another.”
“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
“Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear... The principle that made other choices possible was missing. Or was it the choice that made the principle possible that was missing?”
“Very powerful forces are adamantly opposed to creating full employment [because] if enacted would remove ‘wage pressure’ — the fear struck into the hearts of the poor, of anyone who feared becoming poor, almost everyone on Earth.”
“Fear has no end. Fear is limitless. Fear thrives and feeds on itself, preparing your for calamity, preparing you to believe... that the most important things... are the most dangerous. If it's real in your mind, it's real in the world.”
“Ironically, we never truly appreciated the experience for which we are nostalgic because we were too busy clinging to our hopes and fears at the time.”
“One of our greatest Presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth... He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.”
“It is an infinite-minded player's appreciation for the unpredictable that allows them to make these kinds of changes. Where a finite-minded player fears things that are new or disruptive, the infinite-minded player revels in them.”
“Buddhist training offers an alternative approach to experiencing life from an essentially fear-based perspective of survival in favor of experiencing it as a parade of odd and wonderful things.”
“science fiction tends to confuse intelligence with consciousness. As a result, it is overly concerned about a potential war between robots and humans, when in fact we need to fear a conflict between a small superhuman elite empowered by algorithms and a vast underclass of disempowered Homo sapiens... Karl Marx is still a better guide than Steven Spielberg.”
Comments (0)
Log in to comment.