“Fear is the
cheapest room in the house. I’d rather see you in better living conditions.” –Hafiz
Fortunately,
we can train ourselves to live with mindfulness, to meet fear and pain with
wisdom instead of with the habits of aversion and anger.
When a
painful or threatening event arises, we can open our eyes to it. When we learn
to bear our own pain and face our own fears, we will no longer blame and
inflict it on others, neither family members nor other tribes.
With
mindfulness, instead of reacting, we can respond with spacious clarity,
purpose, firmness, and compassion. A wise response includes whatever action,
fierce at times, is the most caring toward life, our own and others’.
Imagine a
healthy mind as one that is free from entanglement in any level of hatred. At
first this might seem impossible, an idealistic attempt to impose decorum on
our innately aggressive human nature. But freedom from hatred is not spiritual repression:
it is wisdom in the face of pain and fear.
(from The Wise Heart
by Jack Kornfield)
