Buddhist Perspectives on Fear

Abstract

Fear in the Buddhist discourses appear under psychological, ethical, and religious contexts. In the psychological context Buddhism refers to the subliminal facets of fear and anxiety, as is also presented by Ledoux in emotion studies. Under the ethical, we get the Buddhist notion of shame of evil and dread of evil and from a psychological point of view morally deficient fears are also based on attachments. The roots of delusion, greed, grasping and attachment are at the base of fear and anxiety. Even a monk gone to the forest, if defilements are present in him, this causes fear and dread. Existentialist thinking has their own interpretation of anxiety which offers parallels to Buddhist thinking.