![]() The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa the word for fear is dokpa. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. ![]() In abandoning hope, she advises, we stand a chance of finding confidence in our basic sanity. In this extract from the chapter Hopelessness and Death, she talks about the relationship of hope to fear, and how hope is really just a crutch, or a babysitter a way of delaying the necessity of looking truth squarely in the eye. Pema Chodron recommends that we lean into pain and suffering, rather than avoiding it or trying to escape it. ![]() When Things Fall Apart continues to be one of the most enduring spiritual books of the last century that holds wide appeal as a treatise on suffering and how to manage it. ![]()
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