---
ai_generation_date: '2026-10-01'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2020-07-02'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11624/20200702-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-fear_4_of_4_wholesome_and_unwholesome_fear.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Fear (4 of 4) Wholesome and Unwholesome Fear
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11624
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: QV5KDDmRyP8
  imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04'
  title: 'Dharmette: Fear (4 of 4) Wholesome and Unwholesome Fear (plus Q&A)'
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV5KDDmRyP8
---

# Fear (4 of 4) Wholesome and Unwholesome Fear - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Fear (4 of 4) Wholesome and Unwholesome Fear](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11624)

Welcome to the fourth and last of these talks on fear. Before I launch into it, I wanted to say that at the end of this 15-minute talk, I'll stay here on YouTube in order to answer any questions that might come up on the chat following up from this week. Yesterday I said it was going to be on Zoom, but I was mistaken. It's just easier to stay here for now. Tomorrow I won't be here, so this is the last day for this week's morning sittings. Next week we'll go through Friday, and maybe Friday we can have a community meeting on Zoom so you have a chance to meet each other a little bit in breakouts, and also a chance to ask some questions. We've done that a few times, and for those who have been here, I think it was quite lovely.

Here for the last talk about fear, I have a peculiar mental habit or tendency to see things in words. When I hear or see the word _fear_, I notice that the word _ear_ is in it. I have this idea of hearing, and the ability to hear well what our fears are about—to take time to see it and get to know it. When I see the word _fear_, it reminds me, "Okay, now I should listen deeply to what's happening here now."

I like the idea of listening because it's not just feeling what's inside, but it's also listening to the mental chatter: the thoughts, the beliefs, the ideas, and also the imagery that comes up. These words, stories, what we tell ourselves, the images we create, and our ideas of the future can have a huge impact on us. I've certainly been minding my own business and feeling quite nice, and then had a particular kind of imagery or thought come up in my mind, and I could feel my body contract and react. I would be afraid, my stomach kind of tightening, directly connected to having this thought or story come up.

So, to listen deeply to our fear, think of fear as a reminder: "Now is the time to listen. Now is the time to really connect here, and to learn to be wise about it." To learn what is needed, what our fear needs from us, and what we need given that there is fear. This begins, at least with people who practice mindfulness, by being present for it. Recognizing it enough to begin becoming familiar with how fear works for us and how it operates in our own life, and to know how we need to care for it.

There's a wide range of responses. I don't want to give the idea that all you need to do is be mindful of it. Sometimes you actually need to do something different and distract yourself. Sometimes what we need to do is dive right down into it and really allow the fear to grow and become quite strong in order for the boil to pop, or to really see what's going on. And everything in between. But hopefully, it's all done based on care, on love, on really wanting the best for ourselves.

What we don't need in our relationship to fear is to be driven by it. It should be different than being driven by a certain kind of anxiety around fear, or hostility towards fear, or some idea that we're not good enough if we are afraid, or that we have to be different than this. In all these ways, we make it so much harder. One of the goals of mindfulness practice is to learn how to have what I like to think of as simple emotions. Just allow the simplicity of the emotion to reveal itself to us. Experience the emotion without a lot of the second arrows[^1]—the judgments, and the complicated world we create in relationship to it. That's why earlier I talked about how important it is to notice our relationship to fear. If we can simplify that relationship, then sometimes we can just let fear exist in a very simple way.

There are times when fear can resolve itself. Fear has self-healing or self-liberating qualities if we learn how to get out of its way and be very simple with it. It's not always easy, and it can't always be done that way, so other things are needed. But learning how to be simpler and simpler, and to listen more deeply to our fear, is useful because sometimes fear is healthy. It's wholesome.

To live a life without any fear whatsoever is probably not a human life. If I'm walking along a mountain trail, and the trail gets narrow with a steep drop on one side, there can be some very simple fear. A tightening, a concern, a gathering together of attention and focus: "Okay, now I have to pay attention, I have to be careful, and maybe I need to stay away from the edge of the trail." Then, when I come out where the trail opens up again, that caution and little bit of fear is not needed anymore. But it was needed in order to make our walk go well on this trail. In all kinds of situations, fear is there to protect us, take care of us, and do things for us. Fear can be our friend.

It can also be our friend psychologically and for our inner, spiritual life. It doesn't have to be limiting; it's actually the opposite. Fear is what keeps us in a certain spiritual way unlimited and free. This is where the distinction between wholesome and unwholesome is so helpful. We don't need to think that fear is just one particular thing. There's a range of what fear is, covering the wholesome and unwholesome possibilities. When we start having a sense of what is wholesome, nourishing, healthy, healing, and really good within, then we can start feeling that there are forces within us that limit that, that contract, that harm, and take that away from us. Those are the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion—the forces of what is unwholesome.

We want to protect ourselves from the unwholesome, but not with more unwholesomeness. If we have hatred, we don't want to protect ourselves by hating the hate. If we have greed, we don't want to somehow get rid of the greed by having greed for the wholesome. That's just more of the same. This kind of Aikido—this wonderful movement of practice—is to learn how to meet what is unwholesome with what is wholesome.

If fear is unwholesome—and "unwholesome" is not supposed to be a moral judgment that it's bad, but just that it's not helpful or healthy for us—we want to meet that with something that feels healing or healthy. In strict Buddhist terms, we meet what is not free with freedom. It's possible to feel how some fear limits our freedom, limits our way of taking care of ourselves, and limits protecting what's really good in us. Another kind of fear supports taking care of ourselves, keeping us from falling into what's unhealthy.

The ability to listen to fear, to stop and look at it enough to have simplicity about it, to really feel and know it deeper and deeper, allows us to tease apart and see where fear is useful, what is good about it, and what is not. In a sense, all fear is useful in that it's a message to look deeper, to listen to what's going on here. We don't want to bat away or be unwelcoming to those parts of ourselves which are difficult or unwholesome, or which keep us entangled or caught. They deserve our kind, wholesome attention just like anything else. The ability to have observation or mindfulness awareness that can take in everything—the wholesome and the unwholesome—is a wholesome way of observing. That is wholesome mindfulness.

We want to preserve that and protect what a great gift it is to be able to look upon our full experience through the eyes of freedom, the eyes of being awake. We don't condemn anything, shame anything, or belittle ourselves because of what's going on, but rather hold it all in a generous, open, free way, without getting entangled or pushed around by it. To learn to be free with fear, to learn to not let fear limit us, but to learn the art of having supportive, helpful fear keep us in worlds of freedom.

This is where fear can be a partner with confidence. As the kind of fear that undermines confidence begins to wane—confidence in practice, confidence in our being alive, confidence that we can rest in our own dignity and value—then fear can be a partner to that confidence. We become cautious around losing that. We are cautious about things that arise that want to convince us that we're less than that, that convince us we are supposed to be angry, or greedy, or contracted. Instead, we have the confidence to be here in the world.

One of the ways this is discussed in the tradition is as fearlessness. It's a beautiful way to have the confidence of fearlessness. But I think you have to be a little bit cautious that it's a fearlessness that still has fear operating. It's a fearlessness where fear actually supports the fearlessness, supporting that confidence in a wise, good, and powerful way.

I hope that this tender topic for this week—which should be entered with a lot of care and respect—was helpful. I certainly don't want to give the idea that this is an easy topic to touch into, or that you just do these simple things I taught as if dealing with fear is straightforward. Fear is a profoundly deep and important part of our life that can be quite difficult to work with. Usually, fear has been embedded in us very deeply for very significant reasons. This should be deeply respected, cared for, loved, and given time. But it is possible to move into the wholesome, and move into what is supportive for us, to protect and preserve it.

I hope that these days on fear have supported your willingness to look at the fear, anxiety, and worry that you have. To look at it from different perspectives and question it. Maybe it just helps you become wiser, discovering your own wisdom for this very important human topic. Finally, I'm convinced that if you spend time becoming wiser about your fear, you're not just doing it for yourself. Fear is very common in this world around us. As we become wiser about our fear, it's actually a gift to everyone in many ways. May this practice of yours be a support for the world.

## Q&A

I'm happy now to try to take some questions. I appreciate so much when I get the questions and have this back and forth. While waiting for questions, I want to say that because it takes a few moments for them to come through the electricity to me, I sometimes feel I miss the intention of the questioner because I don't have the full context I would have if we were in person. I just want to recognize that.

**"Does fear and delusion relate?"**

Oh, it can. We could think that things are not worth clinging to or holding onto, but we value ideas or beliefs that we think are true, and those are the things that trigger fear. For example, if I think that what is most important for being a Dharma teacher is having only white clothes—because those are the traditional colors for _upasakas_[^2], lay devotees in Buddhism—and I feel I should really only wear white shirts, I might become really afraid that you're not going to like me as a teacher because I'm not wearing a white shirt. That's a kind of delusion, to be caught up in that kind of fear.

There are lots of fears that are born from delusion. That's why listening deeply is important. If we can recognize that our fear is connected to a belief, a thought, or an interpretation, then we can question it. Putting a little question mark behind our beliefs is so helpful. If a question mark isn't quite the right idea for you, just add three words behind whatever belief, interpretation, or commentary you have about things: "Is that so?"

**"Can you explain further how fear keeps us spiritually free?"**

If we have some feeling of being free, some feeling of no longer being entangled in greed, hatred, and delusion, and we have an openness and clarity to us, then along comes a thought. For example, it could be as simple as driving down the road. I come out of my meditation, I have to go somewhere, and I feel relaxed, open, and peaceful. I'm driving down the road and I see a traffic light in the distance, and it's green. I say, "Oh, if I just go a little bit faster than the speed limit, I might be able to cross before it turns yellow."

I can feel myself contracting, getting tight, and focused on the light. I can even feel myself a little bit worried, looking around to see if there are any police there. If I feel all that movement, I might know from past experience that my calm, openness, and peace are going to be contracted and lost just because I want to beat the light. Is that worth it? A healthy feeling says, "No, that's actually dangerous for me to start in that direction and build the momentum of contraction, wanting, speeding up, and being efficient with my driving." What I actually want to protect and preserve is a sense of freedom and openness. So there can be a very simple caution, a very simple fear: "Oh no, it's dangerous to start going in that direction and get involved in that." I hope that example helps.

**"What can we do to enable people in our country to make political voting decisions not from a place of fear but from wisdom and love?"**

I think we always want to start with ourselves. It can take a long time to really explore the depths of our fear and know it for ourselves inside and out. Then, offer yourself to the world around you in a way that they have nothing to fear from you. Be able to talk with people, even those with wildly different political views, in an honest, emotionally supportive way, so they have nothing to fear from you. Sometimes when people are with someone they don't fear, something relaxes and unfolds. You can get deeper and deeper, and find out what's going on for them in a deeper way. Sometimes that's when conversations about our common humanity can start happening, when both parties have really understood themselves more deeply. That's a great question, but for now, that's the short answer.

**"Please say more how fear supports fearlessness and confidence."**

What I was trying to say today is that once we discover a good, healthy, worthwhile way of being inside, the more we practice and the deeper we go, the more we discover there's a beneficial way of being in the world. We realize that other ways we've been living for years were actually harmful for us and just added a lot of stress to our life. Then there can be a fear that comes up when we see the possibility that we might lose touch with that wholesome state. "Wow, I don't want to go back to that. That's not safe for me to go back into that stressful world, to go back to the place where I lashed out in anger so easily." We're afraid of doing that again. That fear tells us, "Maybe I should stop. Maybe I should take a deeper look here. Let me go back and find that place of confidence." If I can find that confidence, then maybe I can take care of life effectively, without going back to the stressful way I was before.

**"Every time I calm my mind, I find that there's a lot of tension and anxiety in my stomach that doesn't go away. I think I try to avoid it in the day. How would you work with this?"**

I had that when I first started the first years of meditation. I had a lot of tension in my stomach, and I would hold my belly tight and contracted. What I made a habit of in meditation was, maybe no more than three times in the course of a 40-minute meditation, I would relax my belly. Within a few seconds, it was contracted again. I didn't make it a project. I didn't tell myself I was wrong for having a tight belly. At the beginning, the middle, and maybe some other time, I would relax it, and slowly it began to dissipate.

Eventually, I still had it when I started Vipassana practice. What I learned from Vipassana practice was to really go into the fear, the tensions, and the contractions. I learned to drop my attention right into the heart of the fear, right into those muscles in the belly, and just be there. I would just breathe with it and hang with it. I wouldn't try so much to let go and relax anymore, but I would just hang out with it until the tension in my body released itself or changed in some good way. In the past, we might do a little bit to relax, but when it's appropriate, it's really good to just go right into those contractions in the belly and hang with them as if you're going to be there forever. Don't make it a problem, don't make it a project. Accompany it, care for it. Our muscles are self-liberating; they know what to do to relax if we give them a chance. We give them a chance by being present for them.

**"What is the difference between fear and anxiety? How to deal with the latter?"**

The definition of these terms varies from person to person. The way I was defining fear for this week is as an umbrella term that covers a whole range of things within it. Anxiety is one kind of fear. What characterizes anxiety is that it generally has nothing to do with what's happening in the present moment. Generally, it's some kind of prediction of what's going to happen, and as a prediction, it belongs to the world of the imagination. We imagine what's going to come. I might be anxious about people I'm going to meet because I imagine all kinds of ways in which that meeting can go wrong. The more the imagination comes alive, the more anxiety there can be. It can be a feedback loop: the more anxious we feel, the more that tends to promote anxious thinking or anxious prediction, and the more we predict something terrible happening, the more the system feels anxious. Sometimes it can become a panic attack.

To learn to see that when we're anxious, there's a belief system, ideas, and imaginations operating sometimes can be helpful. At some point after many years of practice—I don't want to say this is easy—one thing that really helped me with the anxiety I had when I was younger was noticing that my predictive abilities were really poor. Earlier, I just thought my predictions were true. I didn't question them. I lived in the predictions and imaginations of what was going to happen, treating them as truth. As I started seeing my mind more clearly and settled more, I realized that most of the time I predicted it wrong. Sometimes the event was canceled, and that was wasted anxiety. Or I came to the situation and the whole thing was completely different than I ever could have imagined. My predictions were wrong in so many different ways. Seeing that clearly helped me not believe them so much, and not get so involved in imagining the future.

**"Can you comment on the difference of peeling back the layers of fear while sitting in meditation as opposed to dealing with fear outside of meditation, such as talking it through with friends?"**

There definitely can be a difference, but I want to first say that they're both valuable. You don't have to choose one over the other; in the course of a day or over time, please do both. When we're talking about our difficulties, we're looking at them from a different point of view than when we are just making room to experience them. Talking about a fear, it's easy to be more problem-solving or analytical. But talking about an emotion is also a useful way to give it expression. Sometimes it can come out of us and not be bottled up; it shows itself more clearly when we express it. When talking with other people, we get a feedback loop. We hear ourselves say things that we would never have said privately in our own thinking mind. Sometimes our subconscious mind will bubble over into things we say, and we realize, "Oh, that's what's going on, and I didn't know that." That sometimes is not as available if we're just sitting quietly by ourselves.

On the other hand, sitting quietly in meditation allows for some deeper processing to unfold. We can drop down layers and layers of reactivity, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Sometimes we can just let go and settle until it's easier to come down to some of the more fundamental layers associated with fear. Also, the experiential side of meditation—which is not thinking or problem-solving—allows the self-liberating, self-healing processes of our inner life to unfold and evolve on their own. This is one of the great gifts of meditation practice. We come to a point where we're comfortable, safe, and open enough that we don't have to be the person in charge of our healing. There are powerful and very effective processes within us of resolving, opening, freeing, and healing. If we can just get out of the way and really allow it, it gives us a very different feeling for our life than if we're always the one in charge. Talking is a little bit from the point of view of the self as the agent. Meditation allows the agent to take a rest, allowing some deeper wellspring of goodness to take care of things.

**"When strong fear arises, is there a technique that you could suggest to get centered?"**

That's a great question, and it has a very personal answer. People are so different from each other, and the impact of great fear is so different, that it's good to learn a whole series of different things to know what's best for you in different circumstances. Sometimes when there's strong fear, it might be really good to find a friend to talk with, go for a walk, and really talk it out. Maybe you hear for yourself what you're thinking. Sometimes you clearly need to do something that's an antidote: find some place that's really safe, or find a person to be with that you feel really safe around.

Sometimes, when there's a really strong, bottled-up fear—something dramatic has happened—it's good to move. Go exercise or go for a vigorous walk. If you like to do this, pull the curtains in your home, turn on some music, and dance by yourself. Just let your body move whatever way it wants so the fear is not bottled up in the body. Fear sometimes really wants to be discharged.

Sometimes it's useful to do journaling around fear. An interesting exercise is to start with the sentence, "I'm afraid of..." and then write it 50 times, seeing what different words come out. Just don't have any inhibition. Don't worry about what you write, don't worry about the grammar, don't even worry if it's true. The idea is just to let the expression find its way on paper. It might be fascinating to see all the different things, layers, and aspects that come up. Putting it on paper can also create a certain objectivity or disentanglement—a feeling of, "Oh, that's what it is. I'm here, and fear is there," as opposed to, "I am afraid, I am the fear."

Meditation certainly has been hugely important for me with the anxiety I had in my early years of practice. It probably did more for me in working through fear than almost anything else. Partly because I started to discover that some of my beliefs about myself and the world weren't really true. I discovered what was truer in the depths, the clarity, or the peacefulness of meditation itself, and that began breaking up the authority of the fear I was living with.

**"Can you give an example of fear being helpful for confidence?"**

I think this is similar to a question I already answered. Imagine going to give a speech someplace. I have the confidence to give the speech in front of a group of people, and then I start thinking about a time I gave a speech and made a big mistake. I can feel myself sinking into guilt, thinking, "I don't know how to do this, maybe I'll make a mistake again." I could feel that, and realize, "Oh, I better not lose this confidence. This is not the time to sink into this self-limiting train of thoughts. I'm actually a little bit afraid that if I sink into that, I'm going to lose this healthy, relaxed, open confidence that I'm showing up with." So I let go of those thoughts. I don't pick them up, I just let them fall to the side so I can stay here. At another time, it might have been useful to look at what happened the last time I gave a speech and felt bad. But not now. The fear protects me so I stay confident.

**"For a long time I was trying to figure out how fear figures into the hindrances. The more I looked at it, it seemed that fear is what underlies and feeds all the hindrances."**

If this is what you found for yourself, fantastic. One of the surprises for many people who practice—especially on retreats where there's a heightened sense of attention to what's happening moment by moment—is realizing how pervasive fear is. They say, "I had no idea! Fear and anxiety underlie everything—every thought, every action, every way that I walk and do things." It can be a shock. It's actually very healthy to have that shock and see what's going on, because it's part of the process of becoming free of anxiety and finding a very different way of being. It's good news to see it, provided we don't get discouraged, but actually feel encouraged that there's a possibility of going beyond it. By defining fear to cover both the wholesome and unwholesome, you can look at that fear and understand what is unhelpful about it. You might discover that what you're feeling is mostly anxiety, rather than the immediate, physical experience of fear (like a car barreling down the street at you).

**"Can there be a manifestation of fear in the body—rapid heartbeat—without any fear or anxiety detected in the mind?"**

I believe that's the case. We're not always so conscious of what's going on for us, and there can be deeper, subconscious things happening. This is why learning to be mindful and present for our bodily experience is so helpful. Sometimes we get physical symptoms of what's happening emotionally that we wouldn't have if we were just stationed in our conscious thinking mind, overriding what we're feeling. I know for myself that the first times I recognized I was afraid was not with some cognitive recognition, but noticing the tension in my belly. "Oh, there's tension. Oh yeah, I'm anxious." I can imagine that a racing heart can be that as well. We have to be a little bit cautious because there are medical reasons why the heart can race, and when the heart races, that itself can be fear-producing. I wouldn't necessarily say a rapid heartbeat is always from fear; sometimes it's the other way around.

**"For me, restlessness sounds more like how it feels. How is it related to fear, or is restlessness also a kind of fear?"**

I don't know if I have a definitive answer for that. I think restlessness can often be accompanied by fear, or caused by fear and anxiety. But I can also imagine a kind of restlessness with greed, or hatred, or anytime there's a strong desire to do something and it can't be fulfilled. That bottled-up energy makes things more agitated and restless. I think it often goes together with fear. It's a great question. Remember that the wisest response sometimes is to appreciate how good the question is, and then turn the mirror back on yourself. Use that question to help tease apart and see more clearly how it works for you, rather than just learning how it's "supposed" to be from someone else.

**"Can grief also be either wholesome or unwholesome depending?"**

I think so. As Charlie Brown says, there's "good grief." Feelings of loss and sadness are a hugely normal, ordinary part of life that can be simple, ordinary, and even healthy. That's not a problem; that is part of our freedom. My heart gets broken often when I read the news or talk to someone going through some huge difficulty or loss. It's heartbreaking. I feel sad. I feel what I would be comfortable calling grief, and it feels wholesome and healthy. There's a ripeness to feeling that this is what life is like.

There are other times when grief has a lot of attachment, clinging, shame, fear, and expectations related to it that just makes it all gunked up and much more challenging. Part of the benefit of mindfulness practice and sitting with grief is being able to settle away the layers of reactivity, commentary, and second arrows we put on top of grief, so that the simplicity of it can operate. If we can allow the simplicity of all emotions to just come, even grief unfolds the way it should. It's best not to have ideas of what it "should" be.

I need to stop here. I very much appreciate these questions and I hope they were supportive for you, offering you a little bit of something to look at in your life and be more mindful of. I hope that you learn to be wise about your fear, and wise about how to be fearless in such a way that we're really here to benefit ourselves, others, and the whole world. Thank you so much.

---

[^1]: **Second Arrow:** A Buddhist parable from the Sallatha Sutta. The first arrow is the unavoidable physical or mental pain of life. The second arrow is the optional suffering we add through our own reaction, resistance, or judgment of the first arrow.

[^2]: **Upasaka:** A Pali term for male lay followers of Buddhism (Upasika for female) who have taken refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, and who follow the five precepts.