By and large, almost all the techniques we are giving you can work with fear. Some may be more specific then others are. To reflect on impermanence; it's great to let go of fear. It's all going to pass anyway, so what's the big deal? Yesterday, the question related to dying in an earthquake, and what happens if your mind is overwhelmed by fear. I said something like, "It is too late unless you have practiced beforehand." OK, you are in an earthquake, what would be methods you would want to use? It's impermanent, it's going to pass. Either you are going to die or you are not, that is one method. You can think of people who are going to die in worse situations (like the D/D method) to help let go of your fear. You can reflect that even if you die, what is going to carry on? Is there is anything that carries on, is the body the only thing you have to worry about? Or is the mind state more something that you want to be afraid of; what your thoughts are? When you talk about the fear of death, for a lot of people, what are they actually afraid of? Is it the physical pain that might come, or are they afraid of what's going to come after, if they have done bad Kamma?
Fear of death can be looked at basically in two different ways. Imagine you are afraid of, say, what may come after death if you have done bad Kamma. One method for that fear is to do lots of good Kamma, reflect on it and train your mind to be able to reflect on the good Kamma easily, so it comes up quickly. Then at the moment of the death, you won't have any fear that you are going to a bad destination, because you have done lots of good Kamma that deserves a good destination. Thus, when you look at fear of death, you can look at it from all sorts of different ways.
The second example was fear of heights. You are looking at someone, right now, who used to be afraid of heights. I grew up afraid of heights, but I would try to beat it, I would try to kill it. Just like I do with lots of other things: defeat it. So, I would climb on top of the roof of our house to try to defeat this fear. And I would be just as scared on top as I was climbing up to the top. I would get on the three meter diving board. I was a good swimmer, I was a good diver, I could do flips, I could do twists, I could do all sorts of things off that three meter diving board. But every time I got up I was scared. I could not defeat the fear in those ways.
There was no way my willpower could actually defeat the fear. So, I learned methods on how to be mindful of the body, I learned methods on how to react better. And my fear went away. I could get up on top of a building, look down and know that I wasn't afraid. Which was a really neat feeling the first time it happened, because all I was looking at was color and form, knowing the earth was down there, and knowing that I was up here. Whereas before, I had all wrong thoughts. When I was up on top, I had the fear of falling. OK, the fear of heights is the fear of falling, the fear of dying, the fear of being smashed on the ground. But if you actually know that you are safe, then there is no fear. So, there are lots of different methods to help you with fear.