Facing Tigers

"Even left alone in a faraway hotel rom, the human animal will choose the noisemakers over silence: immediately turn on the TV, check email, study the room service menu, go to the minibar, make some phone calls, thumb a magazine, suit up for a workout in the hotel gym, which itself is equipped with more TVs and distractions. On a walk, the human animal will listen to the human animal's iPod or increasingly found speaking on the human animal's mobile, even on mountain peaks, standing before mystical vistas, talking, talking, talking....

"An alien lit down here on interplanetary vacation might be left with one question: What are they all so afraid of?"
- taken from How to Disappear by Stefan Ruiz; GQ: July 2006

In my quest to make my mind a soften, gentler place to spend time, I have been listening to lectures from Zencast--which is available on iTunes free of cost. In one of the lectures entitled "Fear," Buddhist minister and scholar Gil Fronsdahl talks about how Thai monks would go deep into the forests in order to master their fear. A few generations ago the forests of Thailand were full of wild tigers. So the monks would sit out in the open with the impending threat of death possible at all time, and remain there until they had overcome their fear.

At the end of the lecture, Fronsdahl commented, "It isn't necessary for people in Western world to go to a place like Yosemite, and meditate with wild bears running around. People in the West have so much anxiety, that their fears will come to them when they sit down and meditate."

I personally know that I harbor a lot of anxiety, and see this in many people that I associate with. So what's up with this?

I really don't have an answer to this, but ultimately this is what I have been wrestling with the past few months: the fear(s) that something might happen and it could be horrible. I've figured out a few ways to mitigate the effects and work through the anxiety, but haven't been able to figure out where this come from. Maybe I never will.

Maybe what is more important that figuring this out, is the recognition that everyone in the world has a "tiger"--a mental phantom that have a hold over a person. Some people will wrestle with the tiger while others will just sit and meditate until they mentally overcome the beast. Point being, unless you face the tiger you will never reach your full potential.