Key insights from
Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm
Audio available
9 minute read
Published Mar 4, 2014
What you'll learn
Thich Nhat Hahn (1926-2022) was a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist who, for decades, promoted personal peace and world peace, so much so that he was banished from Vietnam for denouncing the Vietnam War and Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. As Hahn saw things, we reflexively flee our fears, but we would do better inviting these feelings up from our inner depths, looking at them plainly and compassionately and befriending them. In Fear, he invites us into the present, where life is perennially ready to welcome us back from the fear-packed poles of past and future.
Key insights
- • What you'll learn
- 1 Original fear was born when you were.
- 2 Fear inevitably takes us into the past or future; mindfulness returns us to the present.
- 3 Fear will pull you away from the here-and-now, where all the treasures of life and peace originate.
- 4 Trying to control emotions with intellect is like trying to survive a thunderstorm in a rowboat on open waters, instead of on land.
- 5 For most people, “I think, therefore I am not present” is more accurate than “I think, therefore I am.”
- 6 The fears you keep shoving down can attract the fears of others—and all the dangers that brings.
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