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Bell Hooks is a writer, activist, and Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York. She lives in New York City.
I prefer to work with aspiration. The classic bodhisattva aspiration is: “Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them.” That means I aspire to end suffering for all creatures, but at the same time I don’t deny the reality of the present situation. I give up both the hope that something is going to change and the fear that it isn’t. It’s all right to long to end suffering, but somehow it paralyzes us if we’re too goal-oriented about it.
June 1997Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
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