Bring Fear Close

IN THE AFTERNOON, we meet over tea. Ram Dass says, “When I am afraid of something, I come up as close to it as possible, and I notice my resistance. I allow myself to just notice the resistance, because the resistance intensifies the fear—there’s no doubt about it. Get as close to the fear as you can, noticing the boundaries of it, just being with it, seeing it as it is. Don’t grab, don’t push it away, just notice.”

I remember that just after my mother had stopped smoking—which she had done for fifty years—she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Soon after that, she started smoking again. She figured she was