Against Fear There Is No Other Remedy
We just all are as we are — soft containers for a mix of joys and sorrows.
Hi,
How are you this week? What did your fear offer to you?
“As long as you imagine yourself to be something tangible and solid, a thing among things, actually existing in time and space, shortlived and vulnerable, naturally you will be anxious to survive and increase. But when you know yourself as beyond space and time — in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable — you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are — against fear there is no other remedy.”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I Am That”
Most of my morning meditations lately leave me weeping for 20-30 minutes on end. I just sit down, take a few breaths, and the dam opens, all the tears rushing out through my eyes and down, cutting through the landscape of the cheeks. And I don’t know why.
Nothing happened in my life recently to cause it, nor have I tingled and poked any memory that could excavate an old feeling of sadness and, therefore, work diligently to squeeze it out of me now. I keep checking for a sense of clear ownership of these tears, but in vain.
Usually, there are no thoughts at all accompanying me when I cry in the morning; there’s not even a vague sense of sadness resurfacing alongside these tears. It feels as if they’re not mine, and that the sorrow doesn’t belong to me either. In the moment, I feel as though I am just a vessel for the sorrow of the world to spill out through me, and disperse into the kind and gentle vastness of time. Over and over again. Day by day. It’s as if by turning my awareness inwards, I lift the lid of a container full of worldly sorrows.
This morning, however, an image appeared briefly in my mind; it was a river. I could hear her silent song and feel the coolness and freshness of her waters. I imagined dipping my hands in, then bringing them over my head, washing its crown in a blessing. And then a reflection: “Oh, but the water is so polluted! I might get a rash!” And I looked at the river again, with a heavy and tender heart, seeing her overflown with sorrow, hurt from carrying all of our negligence in her body. I imagined my arms growing as huge as my heart felt at that moment and wrapping around her massive fluid body; embracing to offer consolation.
I don’t cry every time I meditate. Yet, it’s been a frequent event the past two or three weeks. When it comes, I do the only thing which I consider a respectful response: opening my heart wider. Perhaps the tears come from my long-forgotten past, perhaps it’s the pain of my ancestors that’s spilling out through me now, or perhaps it is, indeed, the cry of those denied the right to it. Either way, I try to make space for them all, and hold them in my heart for as long as they need to be held there. “May I have a big and open heart that encompasses the whole world”, I recite at the end of each of my meditation sessions. And so, I try.
The two sticks to walk straight
Pema Chödron, in her book “When Things Fall Apart”, uses the term “openness” interchangeably with “emptiness” when referring to the natural, innate, all-encompassing, unconditional, pure state of mind we all take birth from and die in, second after second. I find this parallel to be helpful in deepening my experience of this state, and furthering all that it entails.
Before we get a good taste of it, emptiness might seem to denote a “lack” of something: objects, concepts, and all phenomena. Yet, in the Buddhist teaching, we’re taught that emptiness in neither lack nor presence of those. It is a realisation that things do not exist independently but arise and exist due to their relationships with other things. A mind confronted with such a reality-bending concept does all kinds of splits and somersaults, trying to accommodate it. But it always fails. We know this is to be experienced, not pondered over.
When we consider our journey of knowing ourselves as we are, the singular concept of “emptiness” can, therefore, seem too elusive or abstract for practical application. We might wonder: “How can I understand something that does not exist on its own?” This confusion often stems from intellectual attempts to grasp emptiness without experiencing it. So, in order to move closer to this direct experience, I find it useful to balance myself with two practical 'sticks': one representing “emptiness” and the other “openness.” This dual support system helps stabilise our practice, making the mysterious nature of emptiness more accessible.
Experimenting with this approach, we might soon discover that to be open means exactly “neither lack nor presence of objects” — it’s an agreement that they might be or might not be there. It’s the acceptance that if they come, it is okay, and if they go — it’s fine too. We are open to whatever comes or leaves us, and to the experience that arises as a result of it.
Through openness, we can begin dismantling our multi-layered attachment to all aspects of life, brick by brick. And then, indeed, we get to experience (at least occasionally) the state of emptiness. For instance, you might catch yourself sitting in a garden and watching everything around you. Soon, you realise that you perceive what you see not as separate, permanent objects but as parts of a connected, ever-changing whole, without a fixed identity, and see yourself as integral to them. This is something accessible to all of us.
Of course, knowing yourself ultimately as “beyond space and time — in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable” might sound very abstract and reality-bending beyond our horizon. It is so because it speaks directly to the emptiness inside of us, which exists beyond words and surpasses our narrow concepts of reality.
However, by taking our own tiny steps on the path of self-actualisation and striving to keep opening our hearts a tiny bit wider with each moment that comes, and especially with each hurdle that floats our way, we gradually approach this transformative state of being.
Fear and sorrow cannot be dispelled or hidden from; they’re a natural and integral part of our lives, just like joy and love and fulfilment are too. By opening up to them, we open up to ourselves — and, by extension, to all of life.
So try to be a little courageous. Keep opening up your heart, let everything pierce through it, let yourself be open to pain — not only yours but that of all humans and all beings. When you cry, let the sorrow of the world wash over you and run down your cheeks, and then, feel the light in your heart, feel how huge it is, and wrap the whole world in its arms.
A unifying quality of fear and sorrow
There was one more image that faintly passed through my mind during one of those tear-soaked meditations.
It was an image of children and grown-ups, crying and frightened, their lives wrecked by some disaster, perhaps a war, a flood or a drought; maybe they lost someone they loved, or maybe they forgot themselves. I could feel their pain and fear, and the tears the came through me felt both foreign and familiar at the same time.
That odd sense of familiarity made me think that perhaps this sorrow belonged, in the end, to me as well. In this image, I eventually sensed a thin thread of ownership over those tears, and I found that they don’t belong to anyone in particular, but also, they belong to everyone a little bit. Perhaps it is the sorrow of what life is, a condition shared by all of us and all beings equally. Maybe it was a communal pain innate to life, unifying us in the equal helplessness against the uprooting life forces, for which there’s no other remedy but to open our hearts and widen our embrace.
One more thing I noticed during those meditations is that my body seeks to bow. It tends to bend on its own, until my forehead touches the ground. It is not in my cultural upbringing to bow as a sign of respect, and yet my body seeks to do it. I don’t disturb it; it knows better than I do how to be and how to grow, I am sure of that. My body bows to all beings, and all I can perceive within myself in that moment, is a pure sense of tenderness and joy, a sweetness pouring out of my heart as it approaches the ground. More and more, I simply feel like a being among beings and not me in my life and them in their lives.
Through embracing the sorrow that flows through me, whether resulting from my direct experience or not, I feel closer and closer to others, and to life itself.
“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” — Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”
I think, ideally, we choose both. It might sound counterintuitive to some, and it certainly would have to me a few years ago. Whenever I tried expressing my sorrows, many of my friends would disperse like a shoal of fish escaping from a rock that had been dropped into their pleasantly undisturbed waters. And so, I grew to believe that to feel close to others and to be allowed that closeness, I should always be happy, positive, energetic, and smiling.
But who said happiness meant smiling all the time? At least, not the all-encompassing kind. By definition, true happiness must also contain a grain of sadness and confusion, because they’re as real as joy is, and one doesn’t exclude the other.
“True happiness is uncaused and this cannot disappear for lack of stimulation. It is not the opposite of sorrow, it includes all sorrow and suffering.” — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I Am That”
Just like we embrace all qualities of life, both pleasant and unpleasant, “letting everything happen to us, beauty and terror,” as Rainer Maria Rilke advises us, the same way, through openness—emptiness, our hearts grow bigger and bigger, ready to home in themselves the entirety of life expressions, manifested through human and all living beings.
When I get up from my cushion, having cried borrowed tears for an hour or a half, I don’t feel sad or overwhelmed. In fact, I feel happy; I feel whole. I am a part of the shared life experience, no different in essence from that of a person passing me by on the street, or the dog sleeping softly with her head resting on my foot as I sit cross-legged.
The sweetness in it all
Sorrow is not all bitterness. There’s a certain sweetness to it too.
Pema Chödron offers a practice: breathe in all the sorrow, fear, hatred — breathe out all the joy, gratitude and compassion.
This is the simplest way to practice an open heart. Whenever we feel the heavy darkness swelling up within us, we can take a deep, deep breath, soaking it all in, opening our arms wide, and expanding our chests as an invitation for all those difficult emotions, whether ours or not, to find a home within us. Then, we can release them all, knowing that their presence doesn’t exclude the wealth of joy, gratitude, and compassion that resides within us.
Practicing in this way, we might soon learn that at any given moment, there’s enough room in our hearts to home both sorrow and joy, fear and gratitude, hatred and compassion. We can grow to understand that when we're overcome with darker emotions for some time, it doesn’t make us bad people. Similarly, when we're filled with light, it doesn’t make us good people either. We just are as we are — soft containers for a mix of joys and sorrows.
This all is, therefore, by no means to say I have some special quality of softness which allows me to tap into this commonality. It is not a trait I developed as part of my character — it's quite the opposite, in fact. The more I dismantle my character, which creates a sense of separation from others (I am this way, others are that way, and I will defend my ways and condemn theirs), the more I feel connected to the collective humanity at large and the life throbbing equally in all bodies. This tells me the quality of soft openness is accessible to each one of us, to the same extent.
The sweetness of sorrow is that it shows us who we are, and how we are made. It comes to teach us a lesson. And often the lesson is to simply open our hearts wider, let in everything we kept shut off behind the door, pour some tea, and make friends with our basic human experience. What else is there to do, anyway? A life spent running away is a life never lived to the fullest.
So, tell me, what did your fear offer to you this week?
The weeping during meditation was a steady feature for me for two weeks. Also the bowing frequently for minutes at a time while seated cross legged - for no reason. Just the way the body felt it needed to express itself. The magic of catharsis is that it is an incomprehensible phenomenon. Things are being released, things are being discarded, things are being resolved, things are being integrated - but we have no idea what, how or why. Just a vague sense that shifts beyond our comprehension are taking place. The only choice we have is whether to trust in the process or not. That is where courage enters the equation. Trust opens us up, fear closes is. And the catharsis can happen more fulsomely the more we open to it.
I’m grateful I found your work. 🙏🏼