Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It would seem that some hallucinations are best to be explained in this way. We have in fact a regular series of facts which can all be formulated under the single law that the substantive strength of a state of consciousness bears an inverse proportion to its suggestiveness. It is the halting-places of our thought which are occupied with distinct imagery. Most of the words we utter have no time to awaken images at all; they simply awaken the following words. But when the sentence stops, an image dwells for awhile before the mental eye (see Vol. I. p, 243). Again, whenever the associative processes are reduced and impeded by the approach of unconsciousness, as in falling asleep, or growing faint, or becoming narcotized, we find a concomitant increase in the intensity of whatever partial consciousness may survive. In some people what M. Maury has called 'hypnagogic' [132] hallucinations are the regular concomitant of the process of falling asleep. Trains of faces, landscapes, etc., pass before the mental eye, first as fancies, then as pseudo-hallucinations, finally as full-hedged hallucinations forming dreams. If we regard association-paths as paths of drainage, then the shutting off of one after another of them as the encroaching cerebral paralysis advances ought to act like the plugging of the hole in the bottom of the pail, and make the activity more intense in those systems of cells that retain an activity at all. The level rises because the currents are not drained away, until at last the full sensational explosion may occur. The usual explanation of hypnagogic hallucinations that they are ideas deprived of their ordinary reductives. In somnolescence, sensations being extinct, the mind, it is said, then having no stronger things to compare its ideas with ascribes to these the fulness of reality. At ordinary times the objects of our imagination are reduced to the status subjective facts by the ever-present contrast of our sensations with them. Eliminate the sensations, however, this view supposes, and the 'images' are forthwith 'projected' into the outer world and appear as realities. Thus is the illusion of dreams also explained. This, indeed, after fashion gives an account of the facts. [133] And yet it certainly fails to explain the extraordinary vivacity and completeness of so many of our dream- fantasms. The process of 'imagining' must (in these cases at least [134] ) be not merely relatively, but absolutely and in itself more intense than at other times. The fact is, it is not a process of imaging, but genuine sensational process; and the theory in question therefore false as far as that point is concerned. Dr. Hughlings Jackson's explanation of the epileptic seizure is acknowledged to be masterly. It involves principles exactly like those which I am bringing forward here. The 'loss of consciousness' in epilepsy is due to the most highly organized brain-processes being exhausted and thrown out of gear.

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  121 the gods’ anger at not being properly acknowledged. Because Christians didn’t make these acknowledgements, they found themselves in the hot seat when any disasters hit a village, town, or city. The earliest Christians were persecuted in a completely ad hoc and random fashion. It appears that persecution usually began at the grassroots level, as either alienated family members or rebuffed friends took umbrage when Christians removed themselves from everyday life. The problems were exacerbated when small or large disasters occurred, because these were easily laid at the feet of the Christians, who steadfastly refused to worship the gods. If any acts of mob violence occurred, Roman governors might step in and round up the Christians. If the Christians continued to À out authority (e.g ., by still refusing to worship the gods), they could be punished or executed. The emperors appear to have sanctioned this kind of activity, and why not? If any group caused problems, it had to be dealt with. It was not for a couple of centuries that Christians grew large enough as a group to begin to worry the Roman administration in any serious way. At that time, in the middle of the 3 rd century, serious and systematic persecutions began. Ŷ 1 Peter. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, chap. 33. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, chap. 25. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. Essential Reading Supplemental Reading 122 Lecture 22: First Peter and the Persecution of the Early Christians 1. Make a catalogue of the reasons and ways people suffer and consider which of these might be justly considered “religious” suffering. 2. How could early texts that portray Christians as a small, persecuted minority be relevant to the modern context, in which the Christian religion wields such enormous social, economic, and political power? Are there instances in which modern Christians talk as if they were still a small, persecuted minority? What is behind this sort of rhetoric? Questions to Consider

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  It is another story of hospitality: the disciples have allowed a stranger to enter their minds and have let his ideas find a home there. When they arrive at their destination, the disciples beg their new friend to stay the night with them. The moment of recognition comes when the stranger breaks bread at dinner, and they understand that all the time they have been in the presence of the Messiah, the christos, but that their “eyes had been held” from realizing it. It is only a fleeting illumination: almost immediately he vanishes from their sight. Henceforth, Luke suggests, Christians will glimpse the risen Christ only in the Eucharist, in the study of scripture—and when they reach out to the stranger. We may find that if instead of retreating from the stranger and rejecting his insights out of hand, we allow him to change our perceptions, our understanding of our own traditions may be enriched by the encounter and we too may have moments of numinous insight. Finally, consider the famous story of Yaakov (in English we call him Jacob) wrestling with a mysterious stranger on his return to Canaan. Twenty years earlier, after gravely wronging his twin brother, Esau, Yaakov had fled for his life to Mesopotamia. Now he is returning with his family to the Promised Land and is very apprehensive about seeing Esau again. When he hears that his brother is coming to meet him with a company of four hundred men, Yaakov is terrified. He sends his family across the Jordan River ahead of him and dispatches servants to Esau with a generous gift of livestock, saying to himself: “I will wipe [the anger from] his face with the gift that goes ahead of my face; afterward when I see his face, perhaps he will lift up my face!”11 Then Yaakov is left alone. Now a man wrestled with him until the coming up at dawn. When he saw that he could not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; the socket of Yaakov’s thigh had been dislocated as he wrestled with him. Then he said: Let me go, for dawn has come up! But he said: I will not let you go unless you bless me. He said to him: What is your name? And he said: Yaakov. Then he said: Not as Yaakov shall your name be henceforth uttered, but rather as Yisrael [“God Fighter”], for you have fought with God and men and have prevailed. Then Yaakov asked and said: Pray tell me your name! But he said: Now why do you ask after my name? And he gave him farewell-blessing there. Yaakov called the name of the place: Peniel [“Face of God”], for I have seen God face to face, he said, and my life has been saved. The sun rose on him as he crossed by Peniel and he was limping on his thigh.12

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for, he says, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.” 12 Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance. 13 In the next step, we shall try to correct this ignorance. THE ELEVENTH STEP Recognition A t a very unhappy period of her life, Christina Noble had a powerful dream: “Naked children were running down a dirt road fleeing from a napalm bombing … one of the girls had a look in her eyes that implored me to pick her up and protect her and take her to safety. Above the escaping children was a brilliant white light that contained the word ‘Vietnam.’ ” 1 From that moment, Christina was convinced, in a way she could not understand, that it was her destiny to go to Vietnam and that one day she would work with children there. It is not difficult to see why this dream made such an impression on her. Forty years later, the memory of her own childhood still makes her voice “high and tight, and there is a hint of fear.” 2 At the age of twelve, she had become a child of the streets in Dublin, sleeping in public toilets during the winter and under the bushes of Phoenix Park in the summer. She was perpetually hungry: a priest once discovered her eating wax drippings from the votive candles in front of a statue of Christ and threw her out of the church. One night she was raped by two men, and when they dropped her back on the streets, torn, bleeding, her face bruised and swollen, she was struck by “the horrible realization that there was nobody for me to go to. I needed just one person who would not see me as dust, or barely more than an animal.” 3 One of the men had made her pregnant: Christina was placed in a harsh institution, the child was taken from her, and she eventually stowed away on a boat that took her to England, where she married a Greek named Mario who abused her but who gave her three children. It was during this time that she had her dream. Christina’s life changed for the better when she left Mario and with the help of her new partner started a successful catering company. But she never wavered in her belief that she was destined to work with children in Vietnam.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The common stereotype of the witch as a gnarled old woman does not reflect the reality that the accused were characteristically prosperous or significant figures in their community, though commonly not the most peaceable. If they were indeed elderly women, there was often a long history of accusations against them – and a sudden lack of male protection when their husbands died. [112] A high incidence of witchcraft prosecutions was often found in western European regions, both Protestant and Catholic, that had effective systems of court discipline which people living under them would find it difficult to challenge. Individual powerful personalities might then make all the difference. Some of the worst persecutions were in the Archbishopric of Cologne after it was secured for the Catholic ducal family of Bavaria, the House of Wittelsbach. Ferdinand, Archbishop of Cologne from 1612, was a typical product of the radical Counter-Reformation self-discipline characterizing both the Wittelsbachs and their allies the Habsburgs. It has been plausibly suggested that these devoutly Catholic rulers were fighting more than the Protestantism that certainly obsessed them: their Jesuit mentors gave them a preoccupation with sin and judgement, now strengthened for the clergy among them by the new demands of a clerical celibacy much more conscientiously maintained than in the pre-Reformation Church. As an array of conscientious Counter- Reformation bishops struggled with their own temptations, witches became symbols of the general temptations that Satan used to torment society. Among Protestants, the mid-seventeenth-century Church of Scotland distinguished itself by one of the most statistically intense persecutions in Europe, which was not unconnected to the Scottish clergy’s constant struggle to assert their authority against secular authority in the kingdom. The Scots Kirk had the distinction of inventing that form of torture still popular in the contemporary world, sleep deprivation, in order to extract confessions. [113] Curiously neither here nor in other jurisdictions that employed torture did interrogator or putative witch make much effort to link witchcraft to that other work of the Devil, sodomy: clearly the satanic had agreed on a division of labour. [114] In both Protestantism and Catholicism, the impulse to encourage popular fear of witches began to fade in elite circles in the late seventeenth century, and so deprived persecutors of public legal backing. An oddity was the curiously late transatlantic outcrop around Salem in Massachusetts in 1692, leading to nineteen executions. Less frequently remembered by ghoulish modern tourists is the exactly contemporary hysteria in Stamford, Connecticut: it petered out without eventual fatalities after careful probing by its courts under English common law procedure, and some conscientious reconsideration by the pastors. [115] Back in Europe, an independent-minded Dutch Reformed minister, Balthasar Bekker, denounced witch-hunting in an influential book, Bewitched World (1691). His Church did not thank him for it, but after a sequence of sceptical literary treatments of witch-hunting over the previous 150 years, this was the one that finally shamed many Protestant authorities in north-west Europe into giving up witch trials.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  I’m going to call the doctor, he said. And then, Can you hear me? Should I call your mom? And, Can you hear me? There he was, down by my feet. There was no way they’d work anymore, those feet. I turned the room on its side, started a slow descent to the terrycloth rug in front of the sink. A weird hardening spread outward from my mouth across my cheeks, like crystals of ice linking across the surface of water. Brandon was running out of the room. I rolled onto my back. Here he was. He climbed over me, knelt, and poked something at my mouth. Can you open? Open your mouth, he said. The doctor said to try to get you to drink something. I thought about my lips, told them to open. The straw bumped against my teeth, and I pulled at it. Cold juice ran out, apple. It was one of June’s juice boxes. I swallowed. The dog barked, and then my mother was in the doorframe. Brandon had called her too. She’d put on leggings and running shoes and a ponytail like always, like it wasn’t midnight. I saw her seeing me. She held her voice steady and spoke to Brandon, to the air above me. What were they saying? The juice box belched, empty. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] They told me it was only minutes, but it felt like hours that I was lying on the floor. My face was starting to thaw. They said it might have been the juice, the restoration of a reasonable blood sugar level. Or the act of drinking it, which required me to breathe. They decided I should go to the hospital and asked if I could stand up. I nodded. It was ten minutes to the emergency room. My mother drove, and we were silent, no radio. Why wasn’t Brandon with me, and my mother back with June? My mother knew nothing. What catastrophe did she imagine for me? [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The emergency room waiting area was empty. We were given our own room, and the nurse helped me onto a gurney. I still had my bathrobe on. My mother sat in a chair by my elbow and texted Brandon to say we’d arrived. As the nurse drew my blood, the TV on the wall threw off noiseless flashes of white-blue light. Have you been under a lot of stress lately? the nurse asked. Yeah, I whispered. I wanted to be a good patient. I wasn’t going to lie. But I knew that whatever I said, my mother would hear. This would have to be it. I watched the ceiling. Can you tell me what’s been going on? the nurse asked. I’ve been having kind of a weird time, I said. I figured out that I don’t think I’m straight. My husband and I just opened up our marriage.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Aggressive deforestation had made more land available for cultivation but had destroyed the natural habitat of many species and decimated the region’s wildlife. 24 Hunters now came home empty-handed, and because so much land was now devoted to growing crops, there was less for the breeding of sheep and cattle. In the old days, without a thought for the morrow, aristocrats had slaughtered hundreds of beasts and given lavish gifts to demonstrate their wealth. Concerned above all with status and prestige, they had engaged in bloody vendettas and petty feuds. But in the dawning age of scarcity, the new watchwords were moderation, control, and restraint. Court ritualists evolved complex codes to control every detail of life (even warfare was strictly governed by elaborate chivalric rites that mitigated the horror of battle). 25 The nobles discovered the virtue of self-restraint and no longer called out the army in response to every imagined slight. For more than a century the li seemed to have worked. 26 But by the time of Confucius, the Four Fs had reasserted themselves. In the incipient market economy of the sixth century BCE, people were casting restraint to the winds in headlong and aggressive pursuit of luxury, wealth, and power. Large new states, ruled by erstwhile barbarians unfamiliar with the li, attacked the smaller principalities with impunity, resulting in terrible loss of life. Confucius was horrified. The Chinese seemed bent on self-destruction, and in his view, salvation lay in a renewed appreciation of the underlying spirit of the old rites. The rituals of consideration (shu) ensured that people did not treat others carelessly and were not driven simply by utility and self-interest; these gracious codes of behavior had made people conscious of the dignity of every human being; they expressed and conferred sacred respect; they taught every family member to live for the others; they introduced individuals to the virtue of “yielding” to their fellows, helping them to cultivate the “softness” and “pliability” of ren. Properly understood, therefore, the rites were a spiritual education that enabled people to transcend the limitations of selfishness. In the old days, it was thought that the li conferred a magical power on the recipient. Confucius reinterpreted this: when people are treated with reverence, they become conscious of their own sacred worth, and ordinary actions, such as eating and drinking, are lifted to a level higher than the biological and invested with holiness. The implications for politics were immense. If instead of ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest to the detriment of others, a ruler would “curb his ego and submit to li for a single day,” Confucius believed, “everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness!” 27 What is ren, asked one of his disciples, and how can it be applied to political life?

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  When we wake up tomorrow, she said, I shall wish you every happiness, and it will be like telling a machine working by some unknown mechanism that I hope it will run well. Can’t you tell me the reason, she asked, said Austerlitz, why you remain so unapproachable? Why, she said, have you been like a pool of frozen water ever since we came here? Why do I see your lips opening as if you were about to say something, maybe even cry out loud, and then I hear not the slightest sound? Why did you never unpack when we arrived, always preferring to live out of a rucksack, as it were? We stood there a couple of paces apart, like two actors on stage. The color of Marie’s eyes changed as the light dimmed. And once again I tried to explain to her and to myself what incomprehensible feelings had been weighing on me over the last few days; how I kept thinking, like a madman, that there were mysterious signs and portents all around me here; how it even seemed to me as if the silent facades of the buildings knew something ominous about me, how I had always believed I must be alone, and in spite of my longing for her I now felt it more than ever before. But it isn’t true, said Marie, it isn’t true that we need absence and loneliness. It isn’t true. It’s only in your mind. You are afraid of I don’t know what. You have always been rather remote, of course, I could tell that, but now it’s as if you stood on a threshold and you dared not step over it. That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came too close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe, and that at the same time I saw myself transformed into a frightful and hideous creature, a man beyond the pale. Dusk was gathering as we walked back through the park. Dark trees and bushes lined both sides of the white sandy path curving ahead of us, and Marie, whom I lost entirely soon afterwards, by my own fault, was murmuring something

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  67 end of time, that God’s judgment was near. Paul, whose writings come ¿ rst chronologically, conveys this idea. The idea is also con¿ rmed by the fact that the earliest sources (namely, Mark and Q) are ¿ lled with sayings of Jesus that anticipate the imminent end of this age, the coming judgment, and the appearance of God’s Kingdom (e.g. Mark 8:38; 13:24–27, 30; Luke 17:24–30; 12:39). Interestingly, this emphasis is muted in later sources. As we have seen, the Gospel of Luke changes Jesus’ predictions in Mark that the end is imminent. In the still later Gospel of John, Jesus does not preach at all about the coming Kingdom. And in the still later Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is shown arguing against an apocalyptic understanding of salvation. There appears to be a clear trend here: the later the tradition, the less apocalyptic it is. How might one explain the trend? When the earlier expectations of an imminent end did not materialize, were Christians forced to modify their understanding? If so, this would suggest that the expectation of an imminent end was most fervent at the earliest stages—that is, during the life of Jesus himself. As a preacher of repentance, Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was near. His ¿ rst words in Mark’s Gospel are a fair summary of his teaching: “The time has been ful ¿ lled, the kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). Jesus taught that a real Kingdom was coming to earth, one that stood in contrast with the evil kingdoms run by the pagan rulers of earth. This kingdom would be ruled by none other than God, through his human emissary, the messiah. The judgment would be brought by a cosmic judge from heaven, whom Jesus called the Son of Man, probably in reference to a prediction found in the Jewish Scriptures (Dan. 7:13–14) about the end of the present age (Mark 8:38; 14:62). Although in some other Gospel passages, Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man,” he did not appear to be referring to himself in these sayings (cf., Mark 8:38). The Son of Man would bring cosmic destruction (Mark 13:26–27). This judgment would fall on all people and institutions. Even the Jewish Temple, the seat of the Jewish religion, would be destroyed (Mark 13:1–2). Jesus’ prediction of this destruction is attested by multiple sources. The coming judgment would involve a complete reversal of the present order, in accordance with apocalyptic logic. The ¿ rst shall be last and the last, ¿ rst

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Instead of reviling ourselves for our chronic pettiness and selfishness, it is better to accept calmly the fact that the cause of such behavior is our old brain. Geared for survival, the reptilian brain was all about me. Without this ruthless self-preoccupation, our species would not have survived. Yet if we allow it to dominate our lives, we will be miserable and do our best to make other people unhappy. Our egotism gravely limits our view of the world, which we see through the distorting screen of our personal desires and needs. When we hear a piece of news, we immediately wonder how it will affect our own plans and prospects. When we meet somebody new, our first impressions are often colored by such speculations as: Am I attracted to her? Is he a threat? Can I use her in some way? As a result, we rarely see things or people as they are. We are frightened, insecure, and restless creatures, endlessly distressed by our failures and shortcomings, constantly poised against attack, and this can make us hostile and unkind to others. During this step, we begin to practice the Buddha’s meditation on the four immeasurable minds of love, which will be a central part of the program. There is no need to sit in a yogic position to meditate, unless you find it helpful to do so. This meditation can fit easily into your regular routine and be performed while you are walking the dog, exercising, driving the car, or gazing out of the window of your commuter train. The purpose of meditation is not to make contact with a god or a supernatural being; rather, it is a discipline that helps us to take greater control of our minds and channel our destructive impulses creatively. You will recall that while he was working toward enlightenment, the Buddha devised a meditation that made him conscious of the positive emotions of friendship (maitri), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita), and “even-mindedness” (upeksha) that lay dormant in his mind. He then directed this “immeasurable” love to the ends of the earth. Later he would tell his monks to do the same: When your mind is filled with love, send it in one direction, then a second, a third, and a fourth, then above, then below. Identify with everything without hatred, resentment, anger or enmity. This mind of love is very wide. It grows immeasurably and eventually is able to embrace the whole world.8 Over time, the Buddha found that by constantly activating these positive psychological states he became free of the constrictions of hostility and fear, and that his own mind expanded with the immeasurable power of love.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  One day a Brahmin priest found him sitting meditating under a tree and was astonished by his strength, serenity, and composure. “Are you a god, sir?” he asked. “Are you an angel ... or a spirit?” No, the Buddha replied. The self that had held him in thrall had been “extinguished” by the cultivation of compassion, revealing a new potential in human nature by activating parts of his being that normally lay dormant. “Remember me,” he told the priest, “as one who is awake.” 20 A skeptic will dismiss these claims as delusory. But the only way to prove or disprove them is to put the method to the test. During the twelve steps, we are trying to awaken our potential for compassion, sagehood, and Buddhahood. Do not leave this step until you have laid the foundations for a healthy, realistic assessment of yourself and made the meditation on love a regular part of your day. Once you have started to feel a genuine compassion for yourself, you will be able to extend it to others. THE FOURTH STEP Empathy When the Buddha was born, his father invited the local priests to his home to tell the child’s fortune. One of them predicted that he was destined to see three disturbing sights, which would inspire him to renounce the world and become a monk. The Buddha’s father had more worldly ambitions for his son, so he immured the boy in a luxurious palace and posted guards around the grounds to keep all distressing reality at bay. It is a striking image of the mind in denial. As long as we close our minds to the pain that presses in upon us on all sides, we remain imprisoned in delusion, because this artificial existence bears no relation to reality. It is also futile, because suffering is inescapable and will always break through our carefully constructed defenses. When the Buddha was twenty-nine years old, the gods decided that he had lived in this fool’s paradise long enough, so they sent four of their number past the guards into the grounds, disguised as a sick man, an old man, a corpse, and a monk. Utterly unprepared for these spectacles of suffering, the future Buddha was so shocked that he left home that very night determined to find a way to help himself and others to bear the sorrow of life with serenity, creativity, and kindness. This story is a mythos, devised to show Buddhists what they had to do to achieve their own enlightenment. We cannot even begin our quest until we allow the ubiquitous dukkha of life to invade our minds and hearts. That is why nearly all the religious traditions put suffering at the top of their agenda. We would rather push it away and pretend that the ubiquitous grief of the world has nothing to do with us, but if we do that we will remain confined in an inferior version of ourselves.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  When they finally succeeded in conquering Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, they could only conclude that God had been with them. “Who could not marvel at the way we, a small people among such kingdoms of our enemies, were able not just to resist them but survive?” wrote the chaplain, Fulcher of Chartres. 57 War has been aptly described as “a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships.” 58 The First Crusade was especially psychotic. From all accounts, the Crusaders seemed half-crazed. For three years they had had no normal dealings with the world around them, and prolonged terror and malnutrition made them susceptible to abnormal states of mind. They were fighting an enemy that was not only culturally but ethnically different—a factor that, as we have found in our own day, tends to nullify normal inhibitions—and when they fell on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, they slaughtered some thirty thousand people in three days. 59 “They killed all the Saracens and Turks they found,” the author of the Deeds of the Franks reported approvingly. “They killed everyone, male or female.” 60 The streets ran with blood. Jews were rounded up into their synagogue and put to the sword, and ten thousand Muslims who had sought sanctuary in the Haram al-Sharif were brutally massacred. “Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen,” wrote the Provençal chronicler Raymond of Aguilers: “Men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers.” 61 There were so many dead that the Crusaders were unable to dispose of the bodies. When Fulcher of Chartres came to celebrate Christmas in Jerusalem five months later, he was appalled by the stench from the rotting corpses that still lay unburied in the fields and ditches around the city. 62 When they could kill no more, the Crusaders proceeded to the Church of the Resurrection, singing hymns with tears of joy rolling down their cheeks. Beside the Tomb of Christ, they sang the Easter liturgy. “This day, I say, will be famous in all future ages, for it turned our labors and sorrows into joy and exultation,” Raymond exulted. “This day, I say, marks the justification of all Christianity, the humiliation of paganism, the renewal of faith.” 63 Here we have evidence of another psychotic disconnect: the Crusaders were standing beside the tomb of a man who had been a victim of human cruelty, yet they were unable to question their own violent behavior. The ecstasy of battle, heightened in this case by years of terror, starvation, and isolation, merged with their religious mythology to create an illusion of utter righteousness.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Once a person had accessed “the immense and unborn atman, un-ageing, undying, immortal and free from fear,” he was free of terror and anxiety. 12 He was no longer so completely in thrall to the instinctual acquisitive drive that compelled him to want more and more, to pursue, desire, achieve, and consume: “A man who does not desire—who is freed from desires, whose desires are fulfilled, whose only desire is his atman—his vital functions do not depart. Brahman he is and to Brahman he goes.” 13 The sages did not see this state as supernatural; it had not been bestowed upon them by a god but could be achieved by anybody who had the talent and tenacity to cultivate it, albeit with considerable expenditure of time and effort. A trainee ascetic had to study with his guru for as long as twelve years, and during this time his lifestyle was just as important as the intellectual content of his education. Enlightenment was impossible if he did not curb his aggressive, assertive ego, so he lived in a humble, self-effacing manner, tending his teacher’s fire, collecting fuel from the forest, and begging for his food. All violence forbidden, he was expected to behave with detached courtesy to all. Even Indra, god of war, who never stopped boasting about his military and amorous exploits, had to study for 101 years with a human guru, giving up fighting and sex, cleaning his teacher’s house, and tending his fire. 14 Once his training was complete, the student would go home, marry, and bring up his children, putting into practice everything that he had learned from his teacher: he would continue to study and meditate, forswear violence, and deal kindly and gently with others. 15 As urbanization developed in India, the sages were disturbed by a new level of aggression. By the sixth century BCE, infant states were developing; these brought a degree of stability to the region, but the kings could impose order on their subjects only by means of their armies, which they also used to conquer more territory for themselves. The new market-based economy was fueled by greed, and bankers and merchants, locked in ceaseless competition, preyed ruthlessly on one another. To some, life seemed more violent than when cattle rustling had been the backbone of the economy. The old religion no longer spoke to the changing times. Increasingly people felt uneasy about the cruelty of animal sacrifice, which seemed at odds with the ideal of ahimsa, and looked instead to the “renouncers” (samnyasins), who had turned their back on society to craft an entirely different kind of humanity. The mind-changing discipline of yoga had become central to Indian spirituality.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Later they would remember how their hearts “burned within them” when the stranger expounded the scriptures. It is another story of hospitality: the disciples have allowed a stranger to enter their minds and have let his ideas find a home there. When they arrive at their destination, the disciples beg their new friend to stay the night with them. The moment of recognition comes when the stranger breaks bread at dinner, and they understand that all the time they have been in the presence of the Messiah, the christos , but that their “eyes had been held” from realizing it. It is only a fleeting illumination: almost immediately he vanishes from their sight. Henceforth, Luke suggests, Christians will glimpse the risen Christ only in the Eucharist, in the study of scripture—and when they reach out to the stranger. We may find that if instead of retreating from the stranger and rejecting his insights out of hand, we allow him to change our perceptions, our understanding of our own traditions may be enriched by the encounter and we too may have moments of numinous insight. Finally, consider the famous story of Yaakov (in English we call him Jacob) wrestling with a mysterious stranger on his return to Canaan. Twenty years earlier, after gravely wronging his twin brother, Esau, Yaakov had fled for his life to Mesopotamia. Now he is returning with his family to the Promised Land and is very apprehensive about seeing Esau again. When he hears that his brother is coming to meet him with a company of four hundred men, Yaakov is terrified. He sends his family across the Jordan River ahead of him and dispatches servants to Esau with a generous gift of livestock, saying to himself: “I will wipe [the anger from] his face with the gift that goes ahead of my face; afterward when I see his face, perhaps he will lift up my face!” 11 Then Yaakov is left alone. Now a man wrestled with him until the coming up at dawn. When he saw that he could not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; the socket of Yaakov’s thigh had been dislocated as he wrestled with him. Then he said: Let me go, for dawn has come up! But he said: I will not let you go unless you bless me. He said to him: What is your name? And he said: Yaakov. Then he said: Not as Yaakov shall your name be henceforth uttered, but rather as Yisrael [“God Fighter”], for you have fought with God and men and have prevailed. Then Yaakov asked and said: Pray tell me your name! But he said: Now why do you ask after my name? And he gave him farewell-blessing there. Yaakov called the name of the place: Peniel [“Face of God”], for I have seen God face to face, he said, and my life has been saved.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  5 In a similar fashion, when the Crusaders slaughtered Muslims, they claimed that Islam was a violent religion of the sword—a fantasy with little basis in fact but that reflected buried anxiety and guilt about their own behavior. Jesus had, after all, told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. At a time when the papacy was trying to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy, medieval Christians condemned Islam as a faith that encouraged Muslims to pander to their basest instincts. 6 In many ways, the Crusaders’ attitude toward the Islamic world, which was far more powerful and sophisticated than Western Europe at this time, resembled the response of a modern Third World country to a great power. Their distorted view of Muslims was a compensation for their own feelings of inferiority. In their mingled fear, resentment, and envy, medieval Christians projected doubts about their own identity onto the Muslim foe. Islam had become the shadow self of Europe, a confused image of everything the Crusaders believed they were not—but feared that they were. Suffering is a law of life, and it is essential during this step to acknowledge our own pain or we shall find it impossible to have compassion for the distress of others. In Buddhism, compassion (karuna) is defined as a determination to liberate others from their grief, something that is impossible if we do not admit to our own unhappiness and misery. Today in the West we are often encouraged to think positively, brace up, stiffen our upper lip, and look determinedly on the bright side of life. It is, of course, important to encourage the positive, but it is also crucial sometimes to allow ourselves to mourn. The ancient Greeks had no problem with shedding tears; they believed that weeping together created a bond between human beings. In Shakespeare’s day it was considered quite normal for men to weep. Not anymore. Today there is often a degree of heartlessness in our determined good cheer, because if we simply tell people to be “positive” when they speak to us of their sorrow, we may leave them feeling misunderstood and isolated in their distress. Somebody once told me that when she had cancer, the hardest thing of all was her friends’ relentless insistence that she adopt a positive attitude; they refused to let her discuss her fears—probably because they were frightened by her disease and found it an uncomfortable reminder of their own mortality.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Aggressive deforestation had made more land available for cultivation but had destroyed the natural habitat of many species and decimated the region’s wildlife. 24 Hunters now came home empty-handed, and because so much land was now devoted to growing crops, there was less for the breeding of sheep and cattle. In the old days, without a thought for the morrow, aristocrats had slaughtered hundreds of beasts and given lavish gifts to demonstrate their wealth. Concerned above all with status and prestige, they had engaged in bloody vendettas and petty feuds. But in the dawning age of scarcity, the new watchwords were moderation, control, and restraint. Court ritualists evolved complex codes to control every detail of life (even warfare was strictly governed by elaborate chivalric rites that mitigated the horror of battle). 25 The nobles discovered the virtue of self-restraint and no longer called out the army in response to every imagined slight. For more than a century the li seemed to have worked. 26 But by the time of Confucius, the Four Fs had reasserted themselves. In the incipient market economy of the sixth century BCE, people were casting restraint to the winds in headlong and aggressive pursuit of luxury, wealth, and power. Large new states, ruled by erstwhile barbarians unfamiliar with the li , attacked the smaller principalities with impunity, resulting in terrible loss of life. Confucius was horrified. The Chinese seemed bent on self-destruction, and in his view, salvation lay in a renewed appreciation of the underlying spirit of the old rites. The rituals of consideration ( shu ) ensured that people did not treat others carelessly and were not driven simply by utility and self- interest; these gracious codes of behavior had made people conscious of the dignity of every human being; they expressed and conferred sacred respect; they taught every family member to live for the others; they introduced individuals to the virtue of “yielding” to their fellows, helping them to cultivate the “softness” and “pliability” of ren . Properly understood, therefore, the rites were a spiritual education that enabled people to transcend the limitations of selfishness. In the old days, it was thought that the li conferred a magical power on the recipient. Confucius reinterpreted this: when people are treated with reverence, they become conscious of their own sacred worth, and ordinary actions, such as eating and drinking, are lifted to a level higher than the biological and invested with holiness. The implications for politics were immense. If instead of ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest to the detriment of others, a ruler would “curb his ego and submit to li for a single day,” Confucius believed, “everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness!” 27 What is ren , asked one of his disciples, and how can it be applied to political life?

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Above all, we need to listen. All too often in an argument or debate, we simply listen to others in order to twist their words and use them as grist for our own mill. True listening means more than simply hearing the words that are spoken. We have to become alert to the underlying message too and hear what is not uttered aloud. Angry speech in particular requires careful decoding. We should make an effort to hear the pain or fear that surfaces in body language, tone of voice, and choice of imagery. To take just one example: every fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation; and each one began with what was perceived to be an assault by the liberal or secular establishment. 9 History shows that to attack any fundamentalist movement, whether militarily, politically, or in the media, is counterproductive because the assault merely convinces its adherents that their enemies really are bent on their destruction. If we analyze fundamentalist discourse as carefully as we interpret a poem or an important political speech, ferreting out the underlying emotions and intentions of the poet or speaker, this fear and humiliation become immediately apparent. Instead of ridiculing fundamentalist mythology, we should reflect seriously on the fact that it often expresses anxieties that no society can safely ignore. It is difficult to achieve this kind of dispassion, because any fundamentalist position is a profound challenge to principles and ideals, such as free speech or the rights of women, that are sacred to their liberal opponents. But aggression, righteous condemnation, and insult only make matters worse. Somehow we have to break the escalating cycle of attack and counterattack. We have seen what happens when fundamentalist fear hardens into rage. Language is based on trust. We have to assume, at least initially, that our interlocutor is speaking the truth and telling us something of value. Logicians have argued that the truth of an individual sentence can be assessed only by considering the whole context. It cannot be seen in isolation but is part of a “conceptual scheme,” a fabric of interwoven sentences. We cannot understand the ideas expressed unless we are familiar with this conceptual scheme in its entirety. 10 Thus the sentence “the law is an ass” is explicable only in a particular framework.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But at this point, recollecting that her lover was concealed beneath the chicken-coop in the very next room, she started coaxing Pietro to go to bed, saying it was getting late, whereupon Pietro, who had a greater urge to eat than to sleep, asked her whether there was any supper left over. ‘Supper?’ she replied. ‘What would I be doing cooking supper, when you’re not at home to eat it? Do you take me for the wife of Ercolano? Be off with you to bed, and give your stomach a rest, just for this once.’ Now, earlier that same evening, some of the labourers from Pietro’s farm in the country had turned up at the house with a load of provisions, and had tethered their asses in a small stable adjoining the lean-to without bothering to water them. Being frantic with thirst, one of the asses, having broken its tether, had strayed from the stable and was roaming freely about the premises, sniffing in every nook and cranny to see if it could find any water. And in the course of its wanderings, it came and stood immediately beside the coop under which the young man lay hidden. Since the young man was having to crouch on all fours, one of his hands was sticking out slightly from underneath the coop, and as luck would have it (or rather, to his great misfortune) the ass brought one of its hooves to rest on his fingers, causing him so much pain that he started to shriek at the top of his voice. Pietro, hearing this, was filled with astonishment, and, realizing that the noise was coming from somewhere inside the house, he rushed from the room to investigate. The youth was still howling, for the ass had not yet shifted its hoof from his fingers and was pressing firmly down upon him all the time. ‘Who’s there?’ yelled Pietro as he ran to the coop, lifting it up to reveal the young man, who, apart from suffering considerable pain from having his fingers crushed beneath the hoof of the ass, was trembling with fear from head to foot in case Pietro should do him some serious injury. Pietro recognized the young man as one he had long been pursuing for his own wicked ends, and demanded to know what he was doing there. But instead of answering his question, the youth pleaded with him for the love of God not to do him any harm. ‘Get up,’ said Pietro. ‘There’s no need to worry, I shan’t do you any harm. Just tell me what you’re doing here, and how you got in.’

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  The volcanic energy of trauma discussed in Chapter Eight is bound in the coupling of fear and immobility. The key to moving through trauma is in uncoupling the immobility (which is normally time-limited) from the fear associated with it. When a frightened animal comes out of immobility, it does so with an intense readiness for counter-attack, or in a frantic, non-directed attempt to escape. For the sake of survival, all the energy that was being utilized in desperate fight or flight (before it collapsed or froze) re-emerges explosively as the animal comes out of immobility. As humans begin to emerge from immobility, we are seized often by sudden and overpowering surges of emotion. Because these surges are not immediately acted upon, this energy can become associated with enormous amounts of rage and terror. Fear and the fear of violence to self and others reactivates the immobility, extending it, often indefinitely, in the form of frozen terror. This is the vicious circle of trauma. Nancy Re-examined: A First Step When I tried to help Nancy (Chapter Two) relax, she began to come out of her long-held immobility reaction. The arousal and emotions of rage and terror that had been held in check most of her life broke through dramatically. In responding to the inner image of the attacking tiger, Nancy was able (decades later) to uncouple her frozen energy by completing an active escape response. In running from the imaginary tiger, Nancy was able to mobilize an intense, biologically appropriate response that allowed he r— in the presen t— to discharge the heightened arousal that had been unleashed as her immobility began to release. By exchanging (in that highly aroused state) an active response for one of helplessness, Nancy exercised a physiological choice. Her organism was learning almost instantaneously that it didn’t have to freeze. The core of traumatic reaction is ultimately physiological, and it is at this level that healing begins. It’s All Energy The forces underlying the immobility response and the traumatic emotions of terror, rage, and helplessness are ultimately biological energies. How we access and integrate this energy is what determines whether we will continue to be frozen and overwhelmed, or whether we will move through it and thaw. We have a lot going for us. Given the proper support and guidance, we can conquer our fears. With the full use of our highly developed ability to think and perceive, we can consciously move out of the trauma response. This process needs to occur gradually rather than abruptly. When working with the intensely cathartic and volatile expressions of rage, terror, and helplessness, it is best to take one small step at a time.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Part Two: Visualize yourself sitting on the front step of some friends’ house waiting for them to come home. It’s a warm day and the sky is clear. You aren’t in a hurry so it feels comfortable to just lean back and enjoy the day while you wait for your friends to arrive. Suddenly, a man you had noticed walking on the street begins running straight toward you screaming and waving a gun. How does your body respond? Finish the exercise as you did in Part One. Part Three: Pretend you are driving your car on the freeway. Traffic isn’t bad, but your destination is still twenty minutes away. You decide this would be a good time to listen to some music. You have just reached for the radio when a semi-truck careens across the center divider and heads straight for your car. How does your body respond? Finish the exercise as you did in the previous parts. Part Four: Compare your answers for the first three parts of the exercise. How similar are your responses to each of the three scenarios?  What is different?  How easy is it for you to relax now?  Make a note of the time it took you to relax after each exercise. Most people will have similar responses to all three scenarios. Any potentially traumatizing event, real or imagined, results in certain physiological responses that vary from person to person, primarily in their magnitude. This response is a generic phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom. If you personally find it difficult to control your arousal, then open your eyes and focus on some (pleasant) aspect of your environment. Whenever humans or animals lack the resources to successfully deal with a dangerous event, the arousal and other physiological changes that mark their response to the event will be essentially the same. Because everyone experiences the early stages of trauma in a similar way, you can learn to recognize this experience just as the exercise above taught you to recognize the initial response to danger. Once again, the place to look for these similarities is in the felt sense. How do they register in your body? The Core of the Traumatic Reaction There are four components of trauma that will always be present to some degree in any traumatized person: 1. hyperarousal 2. constriction 3. dissociation 4. freezing (immobility), associated with the feeling of helplessness. Together, these components form the core of the traumatic reaction. They are the first to appear when a traumatic event occurs. Throughout our lives, we have all experienced these as normal responses. However, when they occur together over an extended period of time, they are an almost certain indication that we have experienced an event that has left us with unresolved traumatic residue.