On Hope

I wrestle with the concept of hope as a Buddhist. I tend to consider myself an optimist, and hope is an arrow in my quiver of sunshine. After reading some of the works of Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, however, I've come to a place where I contemplate and wrestle with the complexities of hope.

One of Buddhism's central Four Noble Truths firmly identifies expectations as the root cause of suffering. The whole of Buddhist practice aims at awakening people to a new perspective to overcome the pain of unmet expectations.

So, hope can equate to an expectation; a false hope. A person can hope an external force -God, your boss, that cute guy who makes deliveries to your office- will fulfill a hopeful desire. We regularly tell someone who is sick that I hope you feel better. Then there is the advice to someone facing a possibly terminal illness: Hope for the best and plan for the worst. 

 Alexander Pope perhaps best sums up the realities of hope in his An Essay on Man:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

(If you are like me, I had to look up expatiates. It means to write at length about something...or as Southerners might say, to go on and on about something.)

Hope is a fantasy about tomorrow that seeks to comfort or numb today's feeling of incompleteness or fear. To again quote Pope, hope never is, but always to be. This seemingly helpful and positive approach to living can become an escape from experiencing the Now -raw and uncensored so to speak- to instead cling to a possible tomorrow, a divine plan that will work things out, a fate or karma or destiny or something Out There that is going to make everything ok.

Such a viewpoint, however, runs against much of what Buddhism's core beliefs argue. Pema Chödrön's writing conveys some of this viewpoint. In surrendering a reliance on hope for a better tomorrow, we can come to realistically find our strength in experiencing the Now stripped of expectations of how that experience will play out. Chödrön gently writes about our grasping for something solid in an ever-changing reality. Hope robs us of the Now. It is imagining how the flight attendant will bring you peanuts and a Coke in a little plastic cup before you gently land -when in reality you are in free fall towards humanity's shared experience of mortality.

Frankly, who wouldn't want to grasp for the peanuts and Coke instead of plummeting for an hour...or 50 years... towards Death? And if no hope, what do you say to someone who is sick? ...Sorry to hear you're ill...Sure, you could say this, but you aren't really offering any solace that things will work out. And isn't that what we all want people to assure us: that things will work out?

To paraphrase the movie Mommie Dearest, this isn't Pema Chödrön's first time at the rodeo. She's been divorced. She has faced her share of life's hurdles. And she has come out of these experiences and her learning with something of a no nonsense, gritty Buddhism; the kind of pick-yourself-up-'cuz-no-one-else-will pragmaticism that offers the advice you give at last ditch interventions. Chödrön isn't cruel. She preaches a loving message of maitri or how to develop a loving relationship with yourself as your best friend. She does, however, urge people to lean into the sharp points -as her teacher would say to her- of our fears. Give up hope for a fantasy future and instead live in the uncomfortable, shifting Now. Chödrön teaches us that if we lean into those sharp points -neither running from our fears or impaling ourselves on our terrors- we will release all those energies we use to avoid pain. We will become stronger and find the energy to deal with our issues in the Now. And we will be dealing with our own issues personally rather than hoping for some external help. It's not a Buddhism you'd likely find marketed at a Disney store, but it is a path towards a perspective that alleviates suffering.

So, does this mean Buddhists should abandon all hope, all ye spiritual seekers who enter? Not necessarily. Even the current Dalai Lama uses the word hope from a Tibetan teaching:

There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster. -13th Dalai Lama

Here is my personal interpretation. To alleviate our own suffering, we must be awake to the Now. If there is a God, gods, Fate, or some destiny in store for us, we cannot really know. So, we have to work with what we do personally experience. When hopes are fantasies that imagine some better future that takes us out of the Now into a dreamy future, then we have to learn to wake up from these hope-dreams. Likewise, when our fears play out movies of some dark futures, we have to wake from these fear-dreams. Developing a perspective that helps us stay rooted in our own abilities and the Now is key. Meditation involving focusing on the Now through mindfulness techniques is a practical skill to develop this perspective.

So, chuck the hope-dreams. What remains, however, is hope as empowerment. Change is constant. Today's enslaved people are tomorrow's liberated nation. History tells us things change. History also teaches us that the actions we take now determine the future.

This leads us to another key concept in the Buddha's teachings: our thoughts create the Universe. Now, this statement skips some steps so let's dig a bit deeper. First, we think of something. Then we choose to act or not act. Our actions or inactions create some or all of the conditions which come together to define the Universe. And here in this formula there is a place for hope-plans. In the Now we can envision a better future that we want to build. Our hope becomes a blueprint and plan. It remains rooted in the Now and within us to create. There is a clear understanding that this future may or may not come into existence. It will depend on what we think in the Now and do in the Now that will determine the changes in the Now of tomorrow.

So, my perspective is that Buddhist concepts of hope involve a subtle perspective that differentiates dreamy escapist fantasies where some external force will create a bright, cheery future from plans for a different future grounded in consciously acting in the present with our own personal skills to bring about this future. It's the difference from sitting on the couch and hoping to lose 20 pounds this year from going for a 2 mile walk and hoping that if you keep going for walks you will lose 20 pounds this year. One kind of hope releases us from responsibility and action but keeps us in whatever situation pains us. The other empowers us to know our present is our future.

Or, so I have come to understand from my own readings and ponderings.