"Hope and fear cannot alter the season"
About this Quote
Hope and fear are usually treated as levers: pull the right one and reality shifts. Trungpa snaps that illusion in a single, weather-clean sentence. “Season” does the heavy lifting. It’s not just time passing; it’s the stubborn, patterned neutrality of the world - autumn arriving whether you’re optimistic or panicked, consequences ripening on their own schedule. The line refuses the modern self-help premise that the interior life can hack the exterior one.
The intent is both bracing and strangely kind. By putting hope and fear in the same basket, Trungpa undercuts their shared narcissism: both are future-obsessions that center the self as the main character of events. In Buddhist terms, they’re twin strategies for avoiding the rawness of the present. The subtext is a critique of emotional bargaining, the mental habit of treating feeling as influence. You can cheer at the sky or glare at it; the clouds still move.
Context matters. Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who recast dharma for Western seekers, many of whom came looking for transcendence as performance enhancement. His broader project, especially in teachings on “spiritual materialism,” was to expose how easily practice becomes another form of control. This line reads like an antidote to that impulse: stop confusing mood with mastery.
It also carries a quiet ethical edge. If the season won’t change, attention shifts from prediction to participation: how you meet what arrives. Acceptance here isn’t passivity; it’s the clearance that allows appropriate action without the static of wishful thinking or dread.
The intent is both bracing and strangely kind. By putting hope and fear in the same basket, Trungpa undercuts their shared narcissism: both are future-obsessions that center the self as the main character of events. In Buddhist terms, they’re twin strategies for avoiding the rawness of the present. The subtext is a critique of emotional bargaining, the mental habit of treating feeling as influence. You can cheer at the sky or glare at it; the clouds still move.
Context matters. Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who recast dharma for Western seekers, many of whom came looking for transcendence as performance enhancement. His broader project, especially in teachings on “spiritual materialism,” was to expose how easily practice becomes another form of control. This line reads like an antidote to that impulse: stop confusing mood with mastery.
It also carries a quiet ethical edge. If the season won’t change, attention shifts from prediction to participation: how you meet what arrives. Acceptance here isn’t passivity; it’s the clearance that allows appropriate action without the static of wishful thinking or dread.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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