The Storms Can't Hurt the Sky: The Buddhist Path through Divorce

by Gabriel Cohen

Last night I was reading Charlotte Joko Beck’s book Everyday Zen, and I was startled by her chapter about hope. We’re taught that hope is a beautiful, essential human quality: it’s the thing that’s supposed to get us through hard times and lift us up, like the part in a movie when the string section swells and our protagonist takes on some grueling but ultimately heartwarming challenge, Rocky Balboa running up the museum steps . . . When you run out of hope, all you’re left with is despair, right? Now listen to Beck: “Actually, it’s not terrible at all. A life without hope is a peaceful, joyous, compassionate life.” Again, that shocking, counterintuitive Buddhist voice. “We are usually living,” she adds, “in vain hope for something or someone that will make my life easier, more pleasant.” As a result, we “lose ninety percent of the experience of our life.” If we’re always looking for happiness somewhere else, some other time, we’re never going to be in it.