Slaying the Meaning of Fear

[1]
Rudyard Kipling blunts fear

Fear can be defined as, "horror, anxiety or dread". [2] More fittingly for this blog, I shall refer to definition #4 of the online webster's definition, '"Be uneasy or apprehensive about; "I fear the results of the final exams"'. [3] Previously, the methods I have habitually used to prepare for exams was to motivate myself by fear of failing. Most of the time, I have much success on exams. So this logic seems to work. But it's not always the most desirable method. Today, I took an exam on the ethical principles of ahimsa. And as I wrote about it, my fear turned into sorrow, at least in the sense of my sypathetic imagination broke down the barrier between myself and the test. At first, there seemed to be sort of a dual existence. Meaning: me vs. the test--or me versus the material world. But something happened. And I became one with the test. On the test, I was to contextualize a passage from the Bhagavad Gita,

"Who see through the lens of likeness to self the same everywhere, Arjuna, whether pleasure or happiness or pain and suffering, that yogin is the very best."[3]

As I wrote, I found my sympathetic imagination working in a similar way to the principle(s) in Blake's poem ON ANOTHER'S SORROW,

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I not see another's greif,
And not seek for kind relief? [4]

Inherent in this poem, whether deliberate or not, lies a congruousness of what I was actually writing about today, as well as what I am writing about now, which is relevant to the blog. But first I must note that I had a choice of questions to write on. Specifically, one about the whether claims about God or Brahman hold any epistimological weight. While it seems to me they do, I always find these religious debates to be somewhat of a dangerous venture, specifically because you never know what kind of argument one who is grading might be looking for. Mine would have much resembled Blake's line, "And thy maker is not near." [5]Perhaps my argument may not have suited his or her taste of what a good argument is and so I digress...

I chose to write on ethics, which, to me makes for better philosophical discussion than proving or disproving Gods. Right, Conrad?

[6]
The Test Fairy

So I began to take an argument authored by my professor, which I had taken the liberty to memorize. I figured, I can't go wrong using the argument written in the text of the man himself. But I also felt that there was something else. I began to put the quote of the Bhagavad Gita into context with two arguments. At first, I feared I was wrong about my first interpretation being that Krishna was talking to Arjuna about his fears of not being a good ahimsika, since he was conflicted about going to battle against his old archery teacher. Yet, when I returned home to check my analysis, it seems to be spot on given the context of the poem and given I also provided the memorized argument from the Upanishads just as my professor had cited. Professor Phillips' interpretation of the argument follows that "self-relization leads to seeing the self in all beings, and all beings in self, henceforth do not recoil from anything, For whom all beings are known as just self, for him how can there be grief, for he sees unity everywhere."[7] Thus I reasoned, Krishna was urging Arguna to see absolutism--a single self which banishes fear.


Of course, I have no way of telling how well-argued the other portions of my essay were until I receive it back. But I can say the part I was most fearful about was actually nothing to be afraid of at all. And even if it isn't correct to the extent that I want it to be when I do get it back, I learned from the experience of banishing my own fears in class on a dreaded timed essay. I am not a practitioner of Yoga in the sense of postures, breathing, meditation or achieving a blissful sense through practice. Yet I have found some luck in practicing Buddhi Yoga, or Yoga of the rational. I swallowed my fear and instead of using fear to motivate my thoughts, I rationalized that fear would not help here. In fact, fear is my enemy. Perhaps we had some use for fear back when we were evolving some thousands of years ago. But I think fear is detrimental to one's existence. Most times, it has no place in our daily interactions. Yet, still, it remains as an innate feature emotionally embedded in all of us. Some of us cave from fear, some thrive, some seem to embrace it (including me).

But having no fear, as I experienced today, allows one to live life and as Kipling writes in such eloquent fashion,

If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son![8]

As part of the discovery learning tradition here in English class with professor Bump, I came across a poem that I find myself referring to, in some fashion or another, almost every day. Words trump fear. Words allow us to reason what exactly fear is. The ontology of fear is innately present in all of us. Yet, so is the ability to over come it.

In Tiger is God, Stephen Harrigan writes,

In the Suburbans, the vast delta region that spans the border of India and Bangladesh, more than four hundred people have been killed by tigers in the last decade. So many fisherman and honey collectors have been carried off that a few years ago officials at the Sunderbans tiger preserve began stationing electrified dummies around the park to encourage the tigers to seek other prey. One percent of all tigers, accordging to a German biologist who studied them in the Sunderbans, are "dedicated" man eaters: When they go hunting, they're after people. [9]

Fear and words. . . .

[10]

Which words we associate in describing tigers seems to result in a certain emotion. Here, in Tiger is God, the words perpetuate unreasonable fear of tigers. This fear stems from how we uptake the language about the tiger. Take the phrase, 'so many fisherman and honey collectors'. To me, this seems odd that the tiger would target fisherman and honey collectors. I guess it's possible... but based on the fact there are likely shoe makers, farmers and chefs in Bangladesh, tigers targeting certain tradesmen seems like fear-driven rhetoric rather than any truthful statement about who the tigers 'carry off'. My reasoning tells me a tiger would drag someone, and not carry them.

Conversely, Harrigan contrasts, "I thought of the Tipu of Sultan, the eighteenth century Indian mogul who was obsessed with the tiger and used its likeness as a constant emblem. Tipu Sultan's imperial banner borne the words 'Tiger is God.' Looking up into Miguel's yellow eyes I felt the strange appropriatenss of those words." [11]

These words also associate false meaning to something that stirs our emotions. Comparing a tiger to God is a bold claim that might as well be fiction. Yet the words which strike our manas, or inner sense, when we hear 'Tiger is God' is an example of the emotional pull words have on our perception of reality and our uptake of their meaning. From their meaning, we associate Tigers as Gods or fear of tigers--depending on which sort of rhetoric we use.

Which brings me to how we percieve the world in terms of meaning. For example, if I fail a test then presumably my biggest fears have been realized. I am not claiming that I have no fear, nor am I claiming that I won't have any fear. But I am saying that the meaning of fear, to me, isn't something to be afraid of. In fact, as of today, I slaughtered my old meaning of fear like in the first part of On Greer Island a Copperhead Lies Slain. My meaning of fear, as Barney writes, has been slain like a snake. My fear,

lies here, head clipped from the slaughtered corse,
lies here, for all reputed guile,
tricked into stiffness, shorn of force.
Assassin, while he trod of his fief,
you struck his angry armor off [12]

And thus, from this day forward, my own meaning of fear will not allow me to be afraid. Rather, fear shall be the "sameness" within me as it is the same within someone else. The difference being, I will not let success nor failure dictate the essence of my being. As Kipling would say, success and failure are both imposters--just the same.

Fear may be within me, but afraid is now dead.

[13]

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[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpcNFll5yOM
[2]http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm
[3]http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/fear
[4]Stephen Phillips quoting the Bhagavad Gita, Ch. vi passage 32
[5]Course anthology, p 354
[6]http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/11-29/test-dream-copyright3.gif
[7]Stephen Phillips, Unless otherwise indicated these translations are my own. I take the Sanskrit text from the edition by J. L. Shastri, Upanishads (1970) UT Course packet, p 66
[8]http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm
[9]Course anthology, p 365
[10]http://s.bebo.com/app-image/7926139940/5411656627/PROFILE/i.quizzaz.com/img/q/u/08/04/22/16883029-tiger.jpg
[11]Course anthology, p 366
[12]Courses anthology, p 273
[13]http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/uploaded_images/FearMongering-758590.jpg