Abandon All Hope

Over the past several years, I have immersed myself in Buddhist teachings. What an incredible journey inward it has been. There has been one teaching in particular, however, that I don’t think I fully understood… until now. That is to abandon hope.

In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron wrote:

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.

My western mind and my sort of type “A” personality has always twisted and turned around the notion of not hoping, not improving or not striving… until now.

I have had my leg cast on for over seven weeks. As I continue to practice the Stationary Sequence, my poses continue to be extremely modified and simple. There is not much that I can do to change that. I cannot heal my foot any faster and I cannot take off the cast. For the past few weeks, I have abandoned the hope that I would soon be able to balance on my left foot or take a deep Warrior 2. It’s not happening anytime soon. I have had to “relax with the groundlessness of my situation”. I have had to learn to let go. This has been a tremendous gift.

Chodron continues:

Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

In abandoning hope in my yoga practice, I have relaxed with my body, my left foot and my black cast. Since I wasn’t so busy fixing myself, I have allowed myself to hang out in the present moment and observe. Wow. I have really felt my poses perhaps for the first time in my life.

Maybe this is what my Buddhist teachers have been saying. At some point, we need to just let go of the need to push, tweak and fix ourselves. We need to let go of the hope that a teacher, an assist or a fancy pose will “improve” us. We should relax with ourselves now, with all of our issues and experience the poses of our lives. I am learning that at some point we need to abandon hope, let go of the control handles and cruise for a bit.

Perhaps I can learn to do this in my life “off the mat”. Perhaps I don’t always have to fix things, improve things or have things be perfect. Perhaps I can abandon the hope that something or someone out there will “fix” me. Perhaps then, I can start experiencing my life more fully.

Peace.