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Construction of the Medicine Buddha sand mandala.

(Taken from buddhists.)  The completed mandala is incredible.

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It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown.  It is part of being alive, something we all share.  We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience  becomes very vivid.  Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

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Instructions on mindfulness or emptiness or working with energy all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us.  It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in.  When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame it on anyone else, and also don't blame it on ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question that has no conceptual answer.  We also encounter our heart.  As one student so eloquently put it, "Buddha nature, cleverly disguised as fear, kicks our ass into being receptive."

-Pema Chödrön,  When Things Fall Apart

another excerpt from "When Things Fall Apart"

Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

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