Repost from Barbara OBrien, on 9/11 and Fear Mongering

We are rapidly approaching the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. I was in lower Manhattan that day, and my memories have hardly faded even though it now seems to have happened ages ago. Right now, though, I don't want to talk about the attacks but about fear.

In the days immediately after the attacks, New York City was saturated with sorrow. And just beneath the sorrow, there was fear. Two days after the attacks I saw a businessman on a subway who  was visibly trembling with fear. A woman I worked with literally fainted from fright upon hearing a rumor of poison in the subways. And for a while we all ran to the windows of our 40th-floor office whenever we heard a plane.

That was understandable fear; a natural reaction to a terrible event that we personally witnessed. But New Yorkers had to face that fear, and put it aside, to get on with their lives. You simply cannot function here and avoid subways, skyscrapers and famous landmarks, not to mention people who might seem "different." At some point you just have to trust the world and go out and live in it.

New Yorkers remain vigilant. Packages abandoned in subway stations are quickly reported to police, for example. But I'd say that on the whole, New Yorkers don't allow fear of terrorism to run their lives or cloud their judgments.

But in the years since I've noticed many different kinds of fear. For example, I've met people -- not New Yorkers -- who are shocked that I do not support, say, torture of terrorist suspects (or anybody else, for that matter), or curtailments of civil liberties such as warrantless wiretaps and suspension of habeas corpus. Such people are quick to point out how much danger we are in, and how I don't understand what happened on September 11.

Invariably, the person who thinks I "don't understand" September 11 watched it all on his television set, 500 miles away. But I was there. I think I "understand" it well enough, thank you.

People attach to a kind of fake fear, not unlike the kind of fear you feel when watching a horror movie or riding a roller coaster. It can be a sense of excitement that loosens inhibitions and incites recklessness and even mob violence. It also can be a great tool for manipulating public opinion. Bigots use fear to justify their bigotry.

And then there are the conspiracy theorists. Obviously an obsession with secret evil plots to rule the world fills a void in some people's lives. I read a column this morning that said, "We love this manufactured fear, I think because it keeps real fear at bay." There's something to that.

Fear often is irrational. In most parts of the world more people die every year slipping in bathtubs than from terrorist attacks, yet we don't fear bathtubs. In the U.S., some of the same people who see "jihadists" in every shadow deny the danger from global climate change.

Scientists who study why people fear what they fear say that a familiar thing is less feared than a new thing, even when the familiar thing poses more real danger. We also are more fearful of potential but unlikely catastrophes than chronic common dangers, such as heart disease.

Judith Lief said,

The essential cause of our suffering and anxiety is ignorance of the nature of reality, and craving and clinging to something illusory. That is referred to as ego, and the gasoline in the vehicle of ego is fear. Ego thrives on fear, so unless we figure out the problem of fear, we will never understand or embody any sense of egolessness or selflessness.

This takes us back to what the Buddha taught in the Four Noble Truths. The antidote is to thoroughly understand that our fears come from a skewed perspective on ourselves and the world.

For the United States this has been a hard ten years, made harder by the craven exploitation of the terrorist attacks by many of our nation's elected leaders. It makes memories of the day itself that much sadder. Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the fear and craziness in the world. Then I reflect on the Bodhisattva vows.

Let us all let fear drop away and find trust in our practice.

When I took up Buddhism, My Catholic Family was Suitably Horrified

Repost from 

http://buddhism.about.com

Wisdom Is Compassion; Compassion Is Wisdom

By Barbara O'Brien, About.com Guide   August 5, 2011

My first Zen teacher used to tell us that wisdom and compassion are the two eyes of enlightenment, and that they function together and support each other. The realization of no separation between self and other gives rise to compassion, he said, and at the same time compassion, and selflessness, opens the door to realization.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama said,

"According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind, wanting others to be free from suffering. It's not passive -- it's not empathy alone -- but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and lovingkindness. That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy and empathy with other sentient beings (this is lovingkindness)."

This is from the book The Essence of the Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra is, of course, part of the Mahayana Prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom) literature, which is focused on shunyata. But notice that in this sutra, the lecture on wisdom is not given by Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, but by Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Years ago American Zen centers appeared to be full of people who were fired up to get some mind-blowing satori experience, and they had to be reminded about compassion. But lately I seem to be running into people who get all gushy about compassion but have forgotten wisdom.
I bumped into a fellow today online somewhere who spouted (after the usual "Buddhism is not a religion") that Buddhism is just about living an altruistic and compassionate life. Oh, and mindfulness. Mindfulness is good, too. But somehow wisdom has been dropped from the picture.
If we go back to the historical Buddha's very first sermon after his enlightenment, as recorded in the Pali Canon, we see that he spoke about the "middle way realized by the Tathagata that -- producing vision, producing knowledge -- leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding." When he spoke of his enlightenment, he said, "Vision arose, insight arose, discernment arose, knowledge arose, illumination arose within me ..."
In this sermon he doesn't directly mention compassion at all, although he introduced the basic outline of the Eightfold Path, which takes in all of the ethical and moral teaching. And, of course, during the rest of his life he spoke of compassion and loving kindness often. But at the very beginning, when he began to teach his first disciples, he spoke of vision, insight, discernment, direct knowledge, and illumination.
For another take on this subject, see Zen teacher Brad Warner, "Secure Your Own Mask Before Helping Others." Obviously, the title is taken from the safety instructions given to airline passengers. He writes,

"The underlying problem is the same as the problem with the emergency oxygen masks on airplanes. In our usual condition we are far too woozy to be of much service to anyone else. When our own condition is all messed up our attempts to be helpful are more likely to make things worse than to improve them."

In other words, until we cultivate some vision, insight, discernment, and all that stuff, our efforts to be helpful are likely to fail. What often happens is that our ego and selfish attachments get in the way of clearly seeing what other people genuinely need.
Warner Sensei continues,

"The problem is not whether we should live for others or not. The problem is how we should live for others. If our efforts to help end up doing more harm than good, then we aren't truly living for others any more than the most selfish cad among us lives for himself. We're just feeding our own egos, establishing a clearer and more fixed self image as a good person."

This brings us back to the Eightfold Path. The religion (ahem!) of Buddhism is the practice of the entire Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is said to have three sections, which are wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline. If you study the path in more detail you find that helping others is very important, yes. But it is not more important than wisdom and mental discipline.