Hope is as hollow as fear. ~ Tao Te Ching, Verse 13 (translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995)
For many years, I was in a small meditation group. We met once a week to sit together and to talk through Buddhist teachings. One of our favorite teachers was (and is!) Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön. Her work is so profound and deep that we would often read just a couple of pages and then talk for an hour to try to sort it out.
In her seminal book, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Ani Pema writes
“If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”
We talked about this idea for a long time: that hope and fear are two sides of a not-very-helpful coin. Fear is aversion, pushing away something we don’t want. Hope is grasping something we do. Neither state is conducive to peace. Intellectually, we all agreed with this. But “hopelessness”? That seemed like a hard place to land.
As a nod to all those conversations, one holiday season I gave those four friends little fridge magnets that said:
Abandon Hope.
They were not universally well-received. One woman’s husband upon seeing it tossed it directly into the trash.
Modern culture – particularly in advertising, marketing and politics – uses fear to push us to do or buy something. In a recent interview, former Representative Adam Kinzinger said
“...things like fear and division raises money for political campaigns. And so [the press and politicians have] abused people that way. And the media has abused people to keep them hooked. Starting with, you know, most namely Rush Limbaugh and then Fox News and then now these, Right Side Broadcasting, Newsmax all these that are competing to get people angrier and angrier.”
I know I feel this heightened anger in myself and in the people around me. And it’s not only about politics.
“No one will like you if you have bad breath! Buy this mouthwash!” “If you don’t get electrolytes, you’ll get dehydrated! Buy this sugary sports drink!” “This country is a hellscape and only I can save you! Vote for me!”
In this context, hope seems like a much better approach.
And yet, I remember when I realized that campaigns of hope were really doing the same thing as campaigns of fear only on the sunnier, less swampy side of the street.
I’m not a huge fan of organized religion, in part, because they often dangle the lure of hope in front of vulnerable folks. Your life may be full of suffering now, they say from many a pulpit, but do as we say and the afterlife will be all sunshine and rainbows in the clouds with The Man himself! Hope is the illusion of certainty that things will work out the way we want.
In a recent episode of her Gathering Room podcast, Martha Beck points out that both hope and fear reside in the future and are both rungs on a shaky ladder. She quotes the Tao Te Ching:
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.
By planting our feet in the present on the solid foundation of mindfulness and equanimity, we can let go of the shaky ladder of fear and hope.
As this intense presidential election unfolds, I keep watching my internal experience. Am I feeling the grip of fear and its attendant anger? (Um, yes, pretty much every day.) Am I feeling the surge and pull of hope? (Some days, sure.) Every time I feel myself recoil from what I’m afraid of or lean in toward what I want, I remind myself that hope and fear are two sides of the future – and that is a shaky ladder to stand on.
I do my best to let go of fear...and hope. I do my best to use mindfulness and equanimity to relax into the present where I can actually take wise, skillful action. As Pema says,
“Without giving up hope—that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”
I know, I know, it’s a tall order. I get it. The question I keep asking myself is how can I stay with my feet planted in the ground of mindfulness and equanimity while recognizing the truth of the unpredictable groundlessness that is human life?
I don’t expect the “Abandon Hope” fridge magnet to ever be a big seller. I get why one went straight into the garbage. But as challenging as it is to let go of the hope of hope, I see that it’s really no better than living in the fire of fear and anger.