A lot of this has to do with your intention. What is behind what you are speaking about? Now, the intention, a compassionate intention wishing to help other people often takes the 'me, me' out of the speaker and rather it is jut a helping process. Personally I was just like everyone else in not liking to speak in front of people. For some bizarre reason I ran for class president when I was 14 in 9th grade, I didn't expect to win because another guy was more popular than me but he was not allowed to continue running because his grades were not good. All of a sudden I became the more popular person to run and I expected to win but I still had to give a speech no matter what. Five minutes, I don't know if they could hear my knees knocking against each other or not, but it was like pure hell for a little 14 year old. I was as scared as everyone else.
The first time I gave a Dhamma talk was not at Wat Kow Tahm, but at Suan Mokkh, some of you know that center in the South of Thailand. They were dong retreats before we were, and Rosemary and I just went there as students to do a retreat. The head monk there knew us and knew we had a long practice. We had a practice of about 13 years before we came to do that particular retreat and during the retreat the person who was leading most of it did not know how to do any Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation. So in the middle of the retreat as a retreatant I was asked, "Steve, would you give a talk for everyone?" Believe me, I didn't want to give a talk at all, I was in the middle of my retreat doing my own work, and I wasn't a Dhamma teacher, I thought what the heck is going on? But on the other side was the fact that the person who was leading most of the retreat was very inexperienced, far less experienced than I was and I could see the many mistakes they were making. So I thought, well, I guess if I gave a talk, I could do a better job than the guy doing it so at least it would help the students.
So I prepared the talk, it was very similar to the Compassion/Lovingkindness talk that I do tomorrow night. I was totally scared before giving it and for the half hour before giving it, I was doing walking meditation. What helped me to calm down was to reflect on my purpose of why I was giving that talk, and it was out of compassion, wanting to help other people. What also helped me calm down was the fact that this was not me. It was not "my" talk. Sure, I wrote it, it came out of my own understanding of the Dhamma, but it came from other teachers, it came from the Buddha, it came from some of my personal teachers, it came from one book that we had read that was very significant and I incorporated different ideas into that talk.
Yes, I put it together, but it was not my invention. So by reflection on that, I was taking the "I", "me", "mine" out of it. It was a totally dependent arising talk - it was dependent on other people first. If I had never had those teachers, I couldn't write this. I couldn't give this. Rosemary and I couldn't give these retreats if we had not been taught ourselves. So to reflect on this, that it is not all "me, me", and to also have the intention of just wanting to help, takes the "I" out. When we take the "I" out, we take the ego out and the fear goes away, because there is nothing to be afraid of.
The fear of speaking in public is often because we are afraid of getting blamed if we say something wrong. We are afraid people are not going to like us, we are afraid that we are going to lose friends, we are afraid there is going to be something extremely painful. Later during the retreat we are going to talk about the eight worldly dhammas and how very much we are afraid of losing friends, being blamed, having unpleasant feelings and all sorts of things. Now if we take the "I" out, then there is no "I" to worry about fame, or lack of fame. There is no "I" to worry about praise or blame, there is no "I" to worry about pleasure or pain, there is no "I" to worry about gain or loss. There is no "I" to worry about those eight things. There is nothing to be afraid of. Everybody gets blamed - even the Buddha got blamed. Everybody loses fame sometimes. Even the Buddha was totally obscure sometimes. He would go to some little village where nobody knew who he was. Everybody has pain sometimes and everybody has loss sometimes. Those four negative things, they come to us no matter what. There is no need to be afraid of them, they are going to come anyhow. So the whole issue of fear is very much closely related to the reaction of "me", "mine", "my ego" regarding these four negative qualities, which are part of the eight worldly dhammas that we intend to speak more about later. But with Right Intention and the fact that it is not really "me" giving this talk, it is from someone else's information and I just helped to put it together, this helps greatly to overcome fear of public speaking.