A life without fear

One day, Buddha was walking through a village. As he was walking down the street, a very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him, saying all kind of rude words. He was shouting a lot of abuse at Buddha, saying "You're a disgrace, you're a scam! Who do you think you are? Going around, teaching other people how they should live their lives. You think you're some sort of Master or something?"

Buddha was not upset by these insults. He carried on walking and the more Buddha would carry on walking, the more frustrated this man would get, until he finally approached him and asked him “what's wrong with you? Why are you not reacting?” Instead, he asked the young man, “Tell me, if you give a gift to somebody, and that person does not accept it, to whom does the gift belong to?”

The young man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “I don't get why you're asking these stupid questions. It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.”

The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then, the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself. It doesn't matter how angry, how frustrated you are, you can say whatever you like but if I don't accept your words, that anger, that frustration only belongs within you.”

I wanted to bring this story here because I’ve recently had the occasion to experience something that proved to me this is a very true and practical tool to apply in everyday life, not only a nice story.

The story I want to share with you next, happened in the same day that I was experiencing with the “How does it get any better than this” mantra. I was in a kind of a joyous flow, moving about with my day, experiencing little miracles along the way. In the middle of all those beautiful synchronicities, something dissonant and puzzling happened.

I got off bus number 9 at Monks Cross and I had about 10 more minutes to walk to my next meeting. My inner state was good, joyful, I was grateful for the gentle breeze blowing through my afro, whilst the sun was kissing my face.

I was just walking past the Shopping Park, when I saw a man in his thirties, dressed in a suit and a long, black coat. I noticed he was starring at me. I looked at him, briefly trying to figure out if I knew him from somewhere. He didn’t seem familiar, and I just continued walking, despite him starring. The moment I passed by him and I couldn’t see him anymore I heard a very rude, sexual swearing. He said, "I'd fuck you and pull you by that sexy hair. Wouldn't you like that, you cunt?"

We, Romanians, have a very colourful and rich vocabulary when it comes to swearing. I am not a prude. I like making jokes about that, but this one was really strong, out of the blue and the tone of his voice was very determined. He was not joking. I didn’t stop or even look back. The first thoughts that came to my mind were : “He must be really troubled or nuts….he must be in a deep suffering or need if he just said that… .” And I admit, for a few seconds I was afraid he might follow me. But he didn’t.

Society tends to put the blame on us because, as women, when we’re targeted with that kind of “gifts”, they tend to think it has something to do with us. "What was it in your energy that attracted this "gift"? What did you do? What did you say? Maybe you dressed too provocatively, maybe you have the wrong attitude walking down the street, maybe your hairstyle should be more humble"... and the whole lot of deprecating stuff they say to us.

He didn’t seem like a poor, drunk or drugged homeless person that you sometimes see in the streets yelling and swearing at everyone. He seemed like what we usually accept as a “normal” working, person. But who knows? I will never know what his problem was and I don't intend to. It’s poor, misguided people that have no other thing better to do than be jerks.

The thing I want to stress here is that, just like in the story of the Buddha, I didn’t accept his “gift”. I actually felt sorry for him. I didn’t feel like his words had anything to do with me, although he was looking at me and he addressed them to me.

And looking back, he actually gave me something precious: he gave me the opportunity to experience for a tiny bit, what that Buddha story said. And I felt great noticing that I didn’t allow that to change my vibe, to change the joyous state I was in. I continued going about with my day, asking the Universe, “how does it get any better than this” and I continued enjoying the little miracles that kept appearing in my way.

I feel that every day we have so many people around us, bringing us gifts that are sometimes hidden in an ugly package. Or some are nicely packed, but inside, there are rotten apples.

If it’s one thing I would like you to take out of this, is to remember that you always have a choice. You can accept or not accept these gifts. As simple as that. It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to has power over you, if you allow it. You decide. 

What is attachment and how does it impact our lives?

"Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him: ‘You may have come a long way to visit me’ he told the prowler,’ and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.’ The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. ‘Poor fellow’, he mused, ‘I wish I could give him this beautiful moon’. ”

I adore this ancient Zen fable. It’s a simple story, but one with so many analogies and underlying moral implications. It's worth several reads before you think about it. Where in your life are you attached to material things? These things lead us to false securities and happiness. We go through life gathering, acquiring and competing to match our friends, our family, our neighbours. Most of us do not realize that we cannot take these things with us, until it is too late. Often this is on our death bed, as we are wrapped in our jewellery and family members jockeying for position of our material items that we finally get we cannot take any of these things with us.

Living a simple life without attachments does not mean you need to live in a hut on a mountainside. This means that you do not attach any meaning to any of these things, that at any moment you could give these away as they are meaningless to you. One of the great teachings I've learned from spiritual Gurus is the concept of absolute attachment to the whole existence. Detaching from your body and becoming one with the universe, in synchronicity and harmony. It looks at the moment when you toss aside the attachment, and you realize you are everywhere. Wait, what? Because of this attachment you feel you are limited by the body. It is not the body which is limiting you; it is your attachment to it. It is not the body which is making a barrier between you and the reality; it is your attachment to it. Once you know that the attachment is not there, there is no body to you. Rather, the whole existence becomes your body; your body becomes a part of the total existence. Then it is not separate. So, your body is nothing but existence comes to you, existence reached to you. It is the nearest existence to you, that's all -- and then it goes on spreading. Once your attachment is not there, there is no body to you; or, the whole existence has become your body. You are everywhere. In the body you are somewhere; without the body you are everywhere. In the body you are confined to a particular space; without the body you have no confinement. How can you be somewhere? Consciousness is not a space concept. That's why if you close your eyes and try to find out where in your body you are, you will be at a loss. You cannot find out where you are. but there is no "where" to you. Simply, you are. In deep sleep you are not aware of the body. You are. In the morning you will say that the sleep was very deep, very blissful. You were aware of a deep bliss running throughout, but you were not aware of the body. In deep sleep where are you? When you die, where do you go? Continuously people ask, "When someone dies, where do they go?" You don't know who you are when you are not in a body. You know only one phenomenon, and that is of embodiment. You have always known yourself in the body. You feel you are the body -- this is the attachment. You feel that you are not anything other than the body, not anything more than the body. You live as the body and you think and talk as the soul -- then there is a struggle and a conflict and then you are constantly in an inner turmoil, a deep unease which cannot be bridged. You go on thinking about yourself as the self, and everything that you don't like, you throw on the body. So you say sex belongs to the body, love belongs to you. Then you say greed and anger, they belong to the body; compassion belongs to you. Compassion belongs to the self, and cruelty belongs to the body. Forgiveness belongs to the self, and anger belongs to the body. So whatever you feel is wrong, ugly, you throw to the body, and whatever you feel is beautiful, you go on being identified with. You create a division. This division will not allow you to know what attachment is, and unless you know what attachment is and unless you suffer the misery of it and the hell of it, you cannot put it aside. You look in the sky and clouds are floating: move with the clouds, leave the body here on the earth. And the moon is there: move with the moon. Whenever you can forget the body, don't miss the opportunity -- go on a journey. And then you will become accustomed to what it means to be out of the body. And this is only a question of attention. Attachment is a question of attention. If you pay attention to the body, you are attached. If the attention has moved away, you are not attached. To be in the body, your attention is needed to be there. Your attention is your being. And if your attention is nowhere, you are everywhere.

Wherever you get attached, it becomes a new imprisonment. And whatever we are doing in life is this: we go on creating more and more imprisonments, bigger and bigger jails to live in. Then we go on decorating those jails so that they look like home, and then we forget completely that they are jails. If you toss aside the attachment with the body, realization happens that you are everywhere. You have an oceanic feeling, your consciousness exists without any location. Your consciousness exists without being tethered anywhere. You become just like a sky, enveloping all; everything is in you. Your consciousness has expanded to the infinite possibility. The moment you feel you are everywhere, freedom is attained. This freedom is not political, this freedom is not economical, not sociological. This freedom is existential. This freedom is total. And then only can you be joyous. The joy is not a consequence, it is the very happening. This bliss is not happening as an effect. The moment you feel limited you are miserable. Whenever you feel this freedom, joy happens to you.

You are listening to music and suddenly gravitation is lost. You are so absorbed in it, you have forgotten your body. You are filled with music and you have become one with music. There is not a listener to it: the listener and the listened have become one. Only music exists; you are no more. You have expanded. Now you are flowing with musical notes, now there is no limit to you. The notes are dissolving into silence, and you are also dissolving into silence with them. The body is forgotten. Whenever the body is forgotten, it is tossed aside unknowingly, unconsciously, and joy happens to you.

Ryokan was willing to give up his stuff, yet it let him sad, as he knew this thief would never know what the experience of life would be like when you have no attachments and you are completely present. In this state, you see beauty and wonder in everything. You are connected to life and life does not rule you. We come into this life naked and full of wonder. It is our duty to find this space for the rest of our lives. Not just at the moment of our passing.


The moon cannot be stolen because anyone who would steal the moon already has it. There are a number of wonderful things that we possess without realizing it. All that is required of us is to simply sit back and recognize them. However, all too often we are too busy working to get things we don’t have that we have no time to appreciate the things we already have. The moon is free, and you cannot steal what is freely given to you. We already have a number of precious gifts. The difference between them is that if we accept that the best things in life are free, the moon among them, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we already have them; we might still need to reach out for them. The moon is not constantly being appreciated, we need to act to appreciate it. We need to take advantage of the number of opportunities for a pleasant life that are free, and not to overlook them simply because we aren’t asked to pay. The best things in life are free but often they take a great deal of work. For example, for an artist the best thing in life may be to paint a masterpiece. Learning how to paint a masterpiece does not necessarily take money, but it does take a great deal of hard work and dedication. It is not something that the artist can simply reach out and take for themselves. I agree that it often seems as if the best things in life tend to be those that we work for, rather than pay for. We only really appreciate the value of something if we work for it. And so it could be that when we look back upon the things we had or have that we only fully appreciate those that we worked for instead of paid for, even though by some objective standard some of the things we paid for were equally valuable.

So, my philosophy on the moon is that Ryokan could not give it, because the moon cannot be possessed. The regret he had was in fact, that he could not teach that the biggest treasure is the enjoyment on watching the moon, not owning it. In the end the thief remained poor because he lacked the understanding of the fact that real treasures are not material in nature. The moon is somehow permanent in our human perception, whilst the clothes he gave are subject to the perils of time. The Zen master was not attached to any material possessions. He is wealthy because he is content. The moon is a symbol of that contentment and peace. He could give away his clothes without thinking twice. What he would have liked instead to offer the thief, was something that cannot be stolen; his appreciation of nature, his enlightenment and his wisdom.