The Anxious Buddhist

Anxious thinking is cultivated and reinforced every time we create an attachment or aversion to our feelings.

We become a stranger to ourselves, unable to display the tenderness or genuine compassion that would enable our recovery.

Anxieties are formed when we develop an unhealthy attachment or aversion to pleasant or unpleasant feelings and then lose control of the ability to repeat or avoid those feelings.

elimination of wrong views and ignorance. To do this we should cultivate the virtues of patience and compassion.

When we can recognise this narcissism, then we take a step toward happiness. As we have learnt, only when we recognise our suffering as suffering can we awaken to happiness. Like two sides of a coin, happiness and suffering are non-dual – they are merely two subjective experiences of the same objective reality.

When we do not live mindfully we forget ourselves and let our new employee run around our control room, pressing buttons and causing trouble.

Anxieties arise whenever we experience a loss of control over the ability to satisfy our many attachments or aversions.

Samskara is the lens of our consciousness and like any lens, unless we keep it clean and bright then everything we see through it will be blurred or distorted, creating confusion and anxiety.

Because we have the capacity of imagination, we can spend our time visualising and worrying about negative scenarios that could happen 10 minutes, an hour, a day, or a year or more in the future.