"Begin with hopelessness."
What?!?
This sentence knocked me flat when I first read Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" a few months ago. Here I was, agitated and uneasy, seeking comfort in a well-known text by a popular Buddhist teacher, suddenly blindsided by the opposite of what I expected to find in its pages. In a sea of positive affirmations and exhortations to "keep hope alive" as tidal waves of hardship and suffering and grief pound us day in and day out…
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