Keep looking for alternatives
Pema Chodron said a thing on Facebook on March 13, 2013. That thing has 3,637 likes and 1,976 shares. I think that’s 3,637 and 1,976 too many.
ABANDON HOPE (AND FEAR)
Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.
In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”
(From Pema’s book When Things Fall Apart.)Thank you Shambhala Publications for our Weekly Heart Advice. To receive yours, sign up at
I get it. I get that attachment entails suffering. I get that sometimes – in some circs, for some people – getting rid of attachment is worth it, to lessen the suffering. But as a general guide to life? I reject it.
I feel similarly – that the joy is worth the suffering. To be devoid of feeling is to be in a state of depression.
There was this modern version of the myth of Pandora’s box – you know, all the evils crept out, but then there was the Hope to alleviate them. In the modern version (whose? what’s the origin?) a cruel diagnosis was proposed: that’s because Hope was the ultimate and the worst of the plagues.
I agree with Ophelia and Beth – not just rationally, but also on the emotional level. I also find this way of thinking about hope immensely tempting.
Why can’t everything be plain and simple?
I have spent weeks and on a few occasions months at a time in a state where I was incapable of feeling either hope or fear. It’s called “severe depression”, and the only thing I could feel was pain – physical pain, emotional pain, any kind of pain you want but nothing else. Not feeling fear because you don’t care about anything, including whether you live or die, is not something to aspire to.
That sort of detachment is half of why Buddhism never quite got me. The other half is that I’m kinda in love with the material world: it’s fascinating and entrancing.
Without hope – which is, after all, just a short way of saying ‘anticipation of things getting better’ – the human race would not have made the huge strides forward that it has. We don’t need hope in an afterlife, that horrible way that religions have of telling us to shut up and be grateful for what we have, we need hope that the actions we take today can result in a better life tomorrow.
amrie – I’m with you. Many years of severe depression left a lot of wounds on me, but I came through on the other side to find joy. Several times I abandoned hope – at that point, I almost abandoned life altogether.
I suppose if we did abandon fear, it would be possible to abandon hope without pain; I think abandoning fear is unreasonable and counter-productive, because fear can alert us to danger in the environment. Fear keeps me from re-embracing the bosom of the family that is dangerous for me to be around. That is actually healthy behavior, self-empowering behavior.
Hope sometimes seems naively optimistic in the modern world (and certainly in the ancient world as well), but if I did abandon it, I could no longer do my job. If I didn’t have some hope that things would someday be improved, how could I talk environmental science to my students? It would be one long primal scream.
I would point out that in Buddhist terms, “getting rid of attachment” isn’t about being devoid of desires, let alone joy. Despite the talk about “not desiring things to be other than they are,” it also doesn’t mean refusing to take action to make things better. Psychologist Tara Brach, who is also a Buddhist, coined the term “radical acceptance” for this concept. Which only helps clarify after the term has been explained at some length, so that doesn’t help too terribly much.
The general idea is to take wise action at any given point in time (such as removing your hand from a stove when you discover that it’s hot, or voting for a pro-choice candidate, or whatever), enjoy the pleasant things that come along, and refrain from torturing oneself over the things that are unpleasant. The “radical acceptance” is about the not torturing oneself; it’s not about cultivating passivity or shunning joy.
Disclaimer: I buy into this basic concept, having incorporated it into the course of therapy that helped me escape (knock on wood) crippling depression and anxiety disorder.
“Abandon hope” sounds bad but if we rephrase it as “abandon expectations”, then it becomes regular cognitive therapy. You can have wishes, but expectations make your peace of mind rely on things you don’t control. That’s likely to end badly. You can still strive to achieve things, but you can go on if you fail and achieve nothing.
The old Couéism (‘Every day in every way…’) is pretty revolting too. But Chodron’s version of acceptance is dangerously close to fatalism and passivity. Its distressing that both the Patient Griselda of pop-Buddhism, and the Polyanna of Opra Winfrey-ism, have become the state religions of women.
QFT
You said it better than me.
To me, “Abandon hope,” means more or less, stop wishing for things and start doing things. Hope, like faith, is passive and allows you to stay where you are. I prefer action.
jose @ 8 –
I know, that’s why I said the part about getting it. I know it can be a coping mechanism in the worst circumstances. But as a general life stance, which is how Chodron presents it, it’s terrible.
Do you think a parallel can be drawn between hoping for something and praying for it? Can we give up hope like we gave up Heaven? It occurs to me “Have Faith” and “Believe in yourself” sound positive. When someone gets cancer, Christians pray for the person; atheists hope for a speedy recovery.