Anxiety, Fear and Clinging.
- clearstreamzendo
- Feb 9
- 2 min read
This week’s topic for reflection is anxiety, fear and clinging. We have anxiety about the unknown, especially what might happen in the future. We also have a fear of loss. What binds these together is our persistent need to cling because of our anxiety and fear.
Let’s first reflect on anxiety. Anxiety is never very far away for me. I hold it in my eyes and around my eyes. Actually it shows up throughout my body as a sort of nervous alertness. The thought is something dangerous or threatening might happen. I do this when driving, especially on the interstate highway.
Anxiety's close friend is fear. This is often a fear of potential danger or loss. I felt a lot of fear when Senkei had her surgery and very difficult recovery in the hospital. I intimately experienced and felt her struggle and enormous difficulty and I was afraid she would not be able to recover. This of course would have led to my very great loss.
Anxiety and fear are bound together with clinging. We do all three of these quite easily and naturally as human beings. However, I hold clinging in a special place as anxiety and fear would be quite different without it. Please look closely at clinging and how it functions. We cling to what we desire and feel we need to have. The other side of that coin is the need to be separate from what we don’t want. In truth everything everywhere is and functions as an interconnected whole. There is no place where the separation can be made and nothing to make it with. The clinging or separation is where we make a fatal mistake. Without the clinging or separation, anxiety and fear would flow with the changing situation.
My anxiety and fear of loosing Senkei and my need to cling to having her be the way she used to be brought me great heart ache. This is the way it is to be human. However, at a glance it is easy to see that everything is continuously changing and we don’t actually “have” anything. Even so as Bansho Sensei asked, “Why do I think this life belongs to me?” Why do we cling to something that does not belong to us? There is a fundamental mistake we make and there is a solution that does not involve creating the perfect or ideal situation. It’s hiding in plain sight.
Please join us for morning Zoom zazen from 7:00 to 7:30 Tuesday and Thursday, and Sunday morning Zoom zazen and discussion of the topic for reflection blog from 8:00 to 9:00 Pacific Time. Here’s the Zoom link:
Meeting ID: 811 6100 3357
Passcode: 278259
Gassho,
Futai
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