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We live in a world of fear. But need we be driven by it?  

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Dr. Pilar Jennings, a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and psychotherapist, speaks with Michael Kinnamon, former Dean of the Lexington Theological Seminary and author of The Witness of Religion in an Age of Fear, about the restlessness, anxiety, and even panic characteristic of contemporary society. Such “excessive fearfulness,” Kinnamon writes in his new book, “leads to attacks on the wrong targets and to the misdirecting of finite public resources.”

In Kinnamon’s view, religion can be part of the solution rather than the problem. He has issued an interfaith call to action to combat the modern prevalence of fear, employing the teachings of the major world religious traditions.

Drawing on their different academic and religious backgrounds, Jennings and Kinnamon discuss the differences between healthy and unhealthy fear and the role that each of us can play in bringing peace to both ourselves and a fearful world.

Tricycle Talks is a podcast series featuring leading voices in the contemporary Buddhist world. You can listen to more Tricycle Talks on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and iHeartRadio.

Related: Special Section on Fear: A Buddhist perspective can help us mediate our reaction to fear, and its teachings and practices can act as remedies for an emotion at the root of so much suffering

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