Article written by Khushpreet Singh

What do you fear?

What escapes the uncertainty of your rational mind?

Maybe you don’t even know what it is because you can’t put it into words. There are some fears that are too vague for names. A nagging uncertainty. Miscreated in the unknown. A nebulous, undefined area.

I remember there’s a story in my 6th or 7th class Punjabi textbook named, “Mann da Darr” where we see a boy of age 16 and he’s in his own house at night around 1:00 am. He encounters some voices, lighting and a shadow following him, and the whole story is made like someone has been there for him and he is afraid of that thing, after which, according to the story, he checks in the morning that it was just a cat whose shadow he saw last night and due to thundering it got huge. And then they say that the little boy was none other than “Gandhi ji” who is telling a story about a fear created by his own mind. So, as we can see here, fear is about uncertainty. But as long as we fear something, we’re controlled by that thing.

In the following is a summary of a conversation between Buddha and one of his students questioning about fear. That conversation is huge and kind of boring, so I put it in as simple words as it possibly could. So he says:-

Fear is a barrier that prevents the mind from learning, and the source of fear is our desire to protect ourselves from pain. But we can’t protect ourselves from pain. Our protection lies in the hands of fate. Fate trades by a contract and it’s possible to learn his contract and lessen the amount of pain we receive in life.

But to completely eliminate fear from the mind, two things have to be true. When Fate does give us pain, it’s necessary and bearable. And only when fear vanishes are we able to be free, uncontrolled by anyone. But as long as fear exists in the mind, there’s always a tyrant with a sword to control us.

When I was a kid of about 13-14, there was a program on T.V. named “Milo Murphy’s law” it’s very interesting show here we see our Protagonist named Milo who had a bad luck, but according to his so called Milo Murphy’s law he is prepared for any upcoming obstacle and on any worse possibility he had everything he needs in that particular situation he is very optimistic.

He is overcoming every bad luck thing just by not giving up. I remember there is one episode in which he meets his new friend “Zack”, after which “Zack” comes to know that something is wrong gonna happen by being with Milo. And then it starts to where “Zack” is afraid, which is seen by his screaming, but then he asked Milo, why are you not screaming” and on which Milo said, ” Because, I find that it doesn’t help, that just gonna hurt my layrnx. Now just run”. Like he knows the fact that we can’t protect ourselves from bad luck or pain, why don’t we just accept that pain and start learning?