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.
Pema Chödron
from the book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Read a random quote or see all quotes by Pema Chödron.
Further quotes from the book When Things Fall Apart:
- The Possibility of Egolessness
- Don’t Set Out to Save the World
- Drive all blames into oneself
- The perfect teacher
- What is in front of us right in the moment
- Flooding the world with your kindness
- No fresh air
- Finding out what is true
- Becoming unstuck
- Moving closer to the truth
- Just being here again and again and again
- The courage to look at ourselves honestly and gently
- Opening our hearts and minds beyond limit
- Being with us
- Cultivating Peace
- It’s just like that
- The path of true awakening
- Undoing of old ways of seeing
- Awakening is essential