Joseph Goldstein talks about working with and opening to fear as he pinpoints the three types of deeply conditioned fears that keep us from recognizing our own Buddha nature.

“What happens as proceed along this journey of practice is that we come to our edges, we come up to our boundaries of what is acceptable; what is acceptable in terms of physical sensation, what is acceptable in terms of mind states or feelings or emotions. And those are our boundaries at which fears in the mind begin to reveal themselves. Can we go beyond these boundaries? Can we go beyond the edges? Is there a way of working with fear and understanding it so that it is no longer a limitation for us?” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph explores:

• How the practice of Dharma is a path of opening, but fear is often something that closes us down
• How fear is a manifestation of aversion
• The three types of deeply conditioned fears that keep us closed down: fear of pain, fear of insecurity, and fear of death
• How we can work directly with the mind state of fear through loving acceptance and discriminating wisdom

“So we learn how to open, we learn to come to our boundaries, our edges, our limitations; we see the fear that may be operating there, and we learn to work with the fear, we include the fear in our practice.” – Joseph Goldstein

This dharma talk from November 11, 1985, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

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