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June 2, 2021

Who Are You Anyway?

At the 26:24 mark of this podcast about handling fear & anxiety, Jonathan Foust reminds us how the Buddha said “your house is on fire” – which means that your body is subject to change. There is impermanence. It’s the remembering of what is true, that all things change.

At the 30:15 mark, Jonathan notes that we all have this baked-in thirst for four things:

1. For pleasure
2. For being successful
3. For praise
4. For fame

And the corollary to that we have a fear of pain, of loss, of blame and of shame. These inevitably are tied to our core sense of anxiety and dissatisfaction in our lives. The good news is that it raises the question of “who are you in the absence of desire? In the absence of pushing away or aversion?”