That afternoon, the young man walked down the mountain to trade some forest vegetables for salt.

Passing a small house, he saw a child crying in the yard.

He stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

The child sobbed:

“Mmy goat… it ran into the forest… I’m afraid it’s lost…”

The young man looked into the child’s red, tearfilled eyes.

Without thinking, he said:

“I’ll help you find it.”

The child looked up, surprised.
The fear in his eyes softened a little.

They followed a narrow path into the forest.
The child walked close beside him, calling from time to time:

“Be Be… Be Be…”

His voice still trembled,
but the panic from earlier was gone.

After a while, the young man noticed something strange:

He no longer felt afraid of the forest,
of the shadows,
of sudden noises—
things that usually frightened him.

His mind was light.
Calm.
Wide.

No fear arose.

And suddenly, he understood why.

 

1. When you care for another, the ‘self’ becomes small

He was walking for the child.

Not for himself.
Not for his ego.
Not for his image.
Not for his own safety.

His mind held only one thing:

help the child find the goat.

And when the “self” becomes small,
fear becomes small too.

The teacher once said:

“Fear revolves around the self.
When the self shrinks, fear dissolves.”

Today, he saw this through direct experience.

 

2. Jiddu Krishnamurti: Fear is the shadow of the self

A sentence from Jiddu Krishnamurti echoed in him:

“Fear exists only when the self is important.”

When he cared about himself, fear appeared:

· I might get hurt
· I might be in danger
· I might fail
· I might lose something

But when he cared for the child,
he was no longer caring for the “self.”

There was only presence.
Only care.
Only steps.

And fear vanished.

 

3. Avatamsaka: The self is only a dependentarising phenomenon

The teacher once taught:

“The ‘self’ is not an entity.
It is only a collection of conditions:

· memories
· habits
· reactions
· expectations
· fears
· selfimages

When conditions change,
the ‘self’ changes.

When conditions no longer revolve around the ‘self,’
the ‘self’ naturally shrinks.”

Today, the condition was a child needing help.
And the young man’s “self” dissolved into that care.

 

4. When the ‘self’ shrinks, the world expands

After some time, they found the goat—
its rope tangled in a thorn bush.

The child shouted with joy and ran to it.

The young man knelt down and freed the rope.

The child looked at him with bright eyes:

“Thank you so much!”

He smiled and patted the child’s head.

On the way back, he realized:

His mind felt wider than the entire forest.

Not because he had done something great—
but because, for a moment,
he had lived without a “self.”

And in that moment,
fear had nowhere to cling.

 

5. Practice: shrink the ‘self’

When he returned to the hermitage,
the teacher was sitting under the porch, repairing a bamboo basket.

He looked at the young man without asking—
as if he already knew.

The young man sat beside him:

“Master… today I saw clearly:
when I care for others, I am no longer afraid.”

The teacher nodded:

“Because the ‘self’ becomes small.

And when the ‘self’ becomes small,
fear dissolves like darkness dissolves when the sun rises.”

Then he added:

“From today on, whenever fear appears, ask:

‘How big is the self right now?’

If you see the self swelling,
breathe and let it shrink.

When the self shrinks,
fear will dissolve on its own.”

The young man looked at the sunset spreading across the forest.
The light stretched across the earth like a reminder:

When the self becomes small,
the world becomes spacious—
and fear has no place to stay.