Freeing Ourselves from Hope and Fear

Hope and fear play a huge role in our lives.   In fact, they are prime motivators and affect almost everything we do.  However, both hope and fear are future-oriented and when we obsess about either one, we lose sight of the present moment.  In addition, we often forget that hope and fear are not separate, that one invariably accompanies the other.  We hope for a particular result, and we fear that it won’t happen. Or we fear a particular result and hope that it doesn’t transpire. 

Thousands of years ago, an Indian philosopher and Buddhist teacher, Nagarjuna, presented a teaching on the “Eight Worldly Concerns”, a set of four dyads of hope and fear that still hold meaning for us today.  In this episode, a public talk I gave in Los Angeles in March of 2020,  I use his teachings to point out both the benefits and pitfalls of relying on hope and fear for our actions, and also offer several ways to overcome our incessant reliance on them in living our lives. In truth, hope and fear are simply mental fabrications. When we forget that, when we are incessantly focused on what might happen, we are not fully present and unable to live in the light of truth.