Lewis, thanks for starting this discussion and for your insightful comments on panic. I’d like to add an observation: not all panic is the same. Some people very close to me have suffered from crippling anxiety disorders for years. A trip across town could induce overwhelming panic, freeze them in their tracks. It was a humbling experience for them, and while it involved their ego, I wouldn’t say that it was triggered by their ego, at least not in the usual sense.

I also have question for everyone: is it possible that ‘fear of public speaking’ was deemed important because of the Buddha’s own outreach efforts? As we know, he offered teachings regularly, sometimes to large crowds, sometimes to royalty and aristocrats, and he spurred his disciples to spread the dharma. Perhaps these experiences sharpened his awareness of this fear? One can imagine many sides to this fear: the exposure and vulnerability that a speaker feels before a crowd, the desire of a speaker to win his or her audience over to a particular point of view, a speaker’s anxiety to make a good impression, the risk to a speaker’s status within a community when she or he takes a public position.

I don’t know if there’s anyone out there who has access to the original Pali, but I wonder about the connection between this fear and the urban life that was becoming more common in the Buddha’s day. Does the Pali really say “public speaking” or something else? Does the original text imply speaking to a large audience? Does it imply an audience of strangers? An urban setting provides these kinds of audiences in abundance.

As chairman of a lecture series, I sometimes need to get up in front of strangers to give an introduction and to thank
those people who’ve helped put the lecture together.
I, at first, felt total panic in doing this..although it felt like I was bluffing my way through…
In wondering how to overcome this anxiety, I refer to my meditation practice and experiences and this helps a little.
I think needing to be perfect and knowing I’m not plays a large role in my fears so I have begun not worrying about dressing up, hair perfect, all that ’stuff’ which also helps.
All ego junk

The agony that I’m experiencing this time is a change in the applicants. Several of them (all with PhD’s and years of teaching and research experience and solid recommendations) have seen good-paying jobs disappear on them in the past year or two.

More than ever before, I feel glad to have my job (cling-cling-cling). Sadly, I can only hire one temporary person. Perhaps sadder still, that best-qualified person might be someone just entering the workplace rather than an unemployed person.

I want to approach this situation with equanimity. I try to tell myself that I don’t know that I will do harm by not hiring person X or person Y, but it’s hard.

But, there are relationships, to people, events, everything in and around the field of sensations, consciousness, that has a rhythm, that we either hear and be in synch with, or not for various reasons most of which are imposed by fear, doubt and denial… and predominantly “male” imposed since most sad emotions tend to be viewed as feminine and receive the judgment of some men with rejection, fear.

Take a deep breath. Let it go. That alone is beautiful. And within that beauty is a different quality of sacredness, which makes most everything sacred, everything to be treated differently at least, so that the seeds of sacredness can be nurtured, transformed, transferred to all.