Fear of Losing Oneself

When our new life begins, we are gripped by fear of the death of our old self. We want to change, but at the same time we do not want to change at all. We are stuck, and something must force the situation. We can remain stuck for years. We know what we are losing but we do not yet know the liberation of what is to come. An act of faith is required. A great leap is necessary. For awakening or spiritual growth to occur, first we must pass through a “great death.” 

This sounds scary and darkly existential, but in fact, it is quite ordinary. You have already experienced more modest versions of the great death in your life. This might have been your wedding day, when you were gripped by fear before the ceremony. It might have been the news that you were pregnant or when you ended years of happy education and were handed your diploma at graduation. Apart from these voluntary changes in life, it may also have been a change that you did not choose. Maybe the death of a loved one, or the end of a relationship you did not want to end. In so many of our life-transition experiences, we feel vulnerable and exposed. We know how reassuring the familiar past is, but as we set out into the unknown, we are gripped by a deep-seated fear. What if what we are moving toward is a huge mistake? What if what we had is better than what we will receive? What if we lose the person we were by taking on that new job or saying “I do” in that wedding ceremony?

On the path of awakening, we experience the great death in a deep and intimate way. It can even manifest as a visceral, unsettling experience in our meditation.

In my own practice, I clearly remember this “dark night,” as Saint John of the Cross described it. I had been meditating already for many years and found it a journey that settled me and offered psychological equilibrium. I had tasted calm abiding in my practice and it felt familiar and reassuring. It was like a comfortable house that I had built for myself in meditation. Doubtlessly, I needed that comfortable house, having gone through the anxiety and panic that I talked about earlier. This zazen was warm and safe. It was the bright side of the moon, lighting up the sky and the road ahead as I traveled. I was unaware that there was a dark side of the moon also.

One day, in the words of Saint John of the Cross, “my house being now all stilled” in meditation, I felt the core of my self dissolving into a blank darkness. It really is impossible to describe in words. “No one saw me,” and myself as a witness to this was also slipping away. “I abandoned and forgot myself,” says Saint John. And this was exactly it. It was the falling away of self and all things. I felt surrounded by an endless and impenetrable night—even as I sat zazen in full daylight, in my room, before a massive bedroom mirror. Even with my eyes open and seeing my reflection, this night was my sense of things. I felt an infinite chasm opening up under me, and I feared that if I fell, I would fall forever. I had not yet made that choice of abandonment that Saint John describes. I was like a groom having second thoughts, vacillating as to whether to enter the church and be married. I was afraid of losing myself.

Then, in one instant, I decided to allow myself to fall. I felt as though I were falling into that infinite darkness. I had abandoned myself to it, or as Saint John says, “all things ceased; I went out from myself.” And so I fell and broke through something like a false floor below me. I had fallen with faith and was delivered through to a sense of infinite and powerful light. Everything was suddenly illuminated. It was not a presence, but it was the truth of all things. It was an exhilarating experience—in no way easy. And although there have been many other experiences, this only happened once. It was a moment of pure change. 

He passed through the “great death” and remained intact. His fear had lost its power, and he was awake and new.

There is a great story about this kind of change in the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of Zen koans compiled in China in 1125. In case 4 of the collection, the sutra scholar Tokuzan Sengan (782–865) has come to study with a Zen teacher, Ryūtan Sōshin. Sengan is full of doubt. He ascends the mountain and begins his training with the master. Sengan is an academically minded person, someone who likes to know. He must have found the not-knowing of Zen training very challenging. Indeed, as a sutra scholar, he may even have seen it first as a kind of heresy, as Zen relies on direct experience rather than “book learning.”

One dark night, Sengan stepped out of the mountain hermitage, probably to take some air. Outside the warm hermitage building, the mountain night was deep and impenetrable. He went back to the hermitage door and told his teacher it was far too dark outside to see. And so his teacher lit a lamp for him, and Sengan reached out to take it. Just as he was about to take the lamp, Ryūtan blew it out suddenly, leaving Sengan in total darkness. At that moment, Sengan experienced a great awakening. 

Sengan had seen his blindness. All around him was the unknowable mystery of things. He needed the mountain darkness to have this truth lit up for him so clearly that it dazzled him with its brightness. Having been thrown into darkness, he discovered something like faith. He realized that he did not lose himself in the darkness. He realized that there was no need to be afraid. He passed through the “great death” and remained intact. His fear had lost its power, and he was awake and new. He did not need to know everything anymore. Indeed, he realized that his attempt to know everything was doomed from the start. The openness of not knowing dawned on him.

As a great meditation teacher, Master Dōgen was fully aware of this fear of losing the self that one can encounter in zazen. He, too, understood that this fear was a kind of illusion, something that needed to be passed through, a blockage on the path. In his teaching “Genjōkōan,” he used the classical image of Zen enlightenment—the brightness of the full moon—to talk about the realization that breaks through the darkness.

When a person attains realization, it is like the moon’s reflection in water. The moon never becomes wet; the water is never disturbed. Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass. Realization does not destroy the person, as the moon does not make a hole in the water.

In realization, or even in passing through the dark night, one is not lost. In many respects, you remain the same old person you always were. Something has changed and, in a sense, nothing at all has changed. The water is not disturbed by the reflection of the moon.

Do not measure your practice by the experience of others. My experience is mine; yours is yours. Indeed, I should not even try to replicate my own experience in zazen. What comes just comes—or it does not. The point is, whatever experience that comes is it. And whatever comes, goes. Even if it is the dark night of the soul, it comes and then it goes. Like Sengan, in brightness and in darkness, there I am still. There is really nothing to fear. The Buddha is not disturbed by anything at all. In zazen, we can be like this.

♦

From Do Not Try to Become a Buddha: Practicing Zen Right Where You Are by Myozan Ian Kilroy © 2025 by Myozan Ian Kilroy. Reprinted with permission from Wisdom Publications.