We all have daydreams. All very safe and extremely enjoyable since daydreams can be manipulated and moulded to fulfil our heart’s desires, without any of the pitfalls and fears of reality.

Buddhism teaches that our heart’s desires can become reality when challenged with confidence and faith. So having become a Nichiren Buddhist and having expressed my desire to become a writer to a fellow Buddhist, I was invited to write an article for this publication based on the theme ‘Fear’. My desire to turn my dream into reality (and my ego) accepted the invitation and I set about writing the article. Immediately I was thrown into a state of panic and terror. Try as I might, I was frightened to commit a word to paper. Continually, I found or created reasons for not being able to sit down and write. As long as it had been a dream, I was full of confidence and courage, but soon as it became reality, I was consumed by the very subject I was supposed to be waxing eloquently over.

The Buddhist view is that we human beings can create our environment or the situations occurring around us if we choose to, as opposed to being controlled by and reacting as a result of them. In other words, when a situation occurs that we dislike, we instinctively blame the outside circumstances, instead of facing up to our responsability for changing the situation through our Buddhist practice. So I began to realise that the terror I was experiencing each time I tried to tackle the article was in fact not being created by the task itself, but by the inherent fear within me of any new or untried situation when I exposed myself to the criticism or judgements of others. I wasn’t invited to write about this subject, I had invited it since it was time I challenged and conquered it and expanded my life and horizons.

Fear is a pernicious facet of our lives.
How many times have we found ourselves in situations where we kept avoiding doing something because we lack the confidence to tackle it. Only to eventually accomplish it after much inner torment and then say to ourselves “that wasn’t so bad after all - why did I mess about so long?”.

We could be so much ‘bigger’ if we just recognised it for the debilitating force it is straight away, challenging and overcoming this ‘block’ in our life and moving on to the next one with courage and determination. But instead we back off, prevaricate and stagnate, and again create new situations which invite us to challenge our inherent fear only to repeat the same process. What a vicious circle.

The society we have created around us also feeds off this state of fear. Think of the institutions and established attitudes that abound which actively encourage us to be fearful and docile. How many gouvemments of how many countries ignore the dignity of life and the freedom of choice, imposing their distorted ideals by means of domination, coercion and terror? Some religions dictate what is right and wrong, threatening eternal damnation if we step out of line.

This society is of our creation and, as a mirror, reflects the state of our lives. Instead of complaining how corrupt and unsatisfactory our society is, we should examine our own lives and create in them what we want to see reflected around us. As individuals of the human race we have contributed to and created the society we live in and as individuals we can change the attitudes of mankind, starting with ourselves.

Fear exists only to highlight the areas of our lives that need to be challenged and conquered. But we need to be big enough to reckognise this fact. The Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin has taught me to reckognise this fear and overcome it, by teaching me that my potential is unlimited if I have confidence and faith that the mirror of my perfect lifestate – the Gohonzon – will point me in the right direction at the right time. By chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo to the Gohonzon my heart’s desire will be fulfilled, and I can expand area upon area of my life hitherto untapped because fear, that deadly companion, held me in its vice-like grip. And when I change, my environment will too, developing the true potential of mankind to be happy, creative and liberated.

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This page was last modified on Sunday, August 20, 2006.