No hope in Buddhism?
Daiva
Veteran
Slogan 28 of Lojong practice is: Abandon any hope of fruition -- Don't get caught up in how you will be in the future, stay in the present moment.
And Pema Chodron states: "Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives. In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.” " When things Fall Apart pg 40-41 http://www.shambhala.com/blog/pema-chodron/abandon-hope-and-fear
So, my question to my fellow practitioners is, what's the point? Is the practice of having faith in the 4 Noble Truths and adhering to the 8fold path, in itself an inherent hope to ease suffering and discover our neutral Buddha-state?
The fact that we have goals in our practice, does that in itself negate the purpose of our practice?
I'd be interested in your thoughts on this and this concept of abandoning hope and how it relates to your practice.
Comments
@Daiva
So, my question to my fellow practitioners is, what's the point? Is the practice of having faith in the 4 Noble Truths and adhering to the 8fold path, in itself an inherent hope to ease suffering and discover our neutral Buddha-state?
The fact that we have goals in our practice, does that in itself negate the purpose of our practice?
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Nope!
The 4NT & 8FP are just truths about suffering's cessation that meditation simply illuminates.
What faith is needed when it's so easy to see it for oneself.
Hopes or goals need be approached no differently than any other phenomena.
One thing I felt when I explored Shikantaza over at Treeleaf Zendo was I found it to a "better" letting go as I was always trying to get Jhana or a moment of Vipassana when practicing Theravada.
Lately I've been able to bring the attitude of not trying to achieve anything to my Theravada sits and I feel my practice is more "productive".
Wow that was hard to express with trying not to use any gaining words.
we do have hope. it is here. even if we think we don't and want to kill ourself we still hope that suicide will make us free. but it is just thinking mind. the hope is fine but it is unrealistic the things we hope for in the sense that they are impermanent and suffering when 'grasped'. the lojong isn't (entirely) actual truth itself it is concepts to uproot other harmful concepts.
The only answer is to abandon hope and see for yourself if it was a good or bad idea to abandon.
You don't have to wait for a pure mind beyond hope and fear. You can practice right now.
there is hope in buddhism. It is the hope of one day there is no need of rebirth. That is why we are trying to do wholesome things. This hope came from the realization that there is nothing here on earth is desirable that can last long. Hopefully we will be able to eradicate the defilements of the mind.
By small I mean expecting a particular outcome for myself, such as a certain relationship, situation or experience. For instance, I may hope that I will have a girlfriend with red hair or a job where all coworkers speak my native language. That is very specific and if I emotionally invest in such expectations, I make some problems for myself.
For one thing, such specific situations may be hard to attain just from the probability standpoint. But more importantly, if I bank on something as particular as a redhead girlfriend, I am likely to miss other important considerations. So let's say I do find that redhead but her temper is that of a witch. Or to be with her I need to move away very far and leave my elderly parents alone? Then, was all that effort of finding her not misdirected?
Thus, the "no hope" teaching points to being open to what is coming our way, to being less focused on the future and more on the present. It points to being more flexible and more adaptable. It really makes sense in this changing, unpredictable world.
"Big Hope" that has such a positive connotation in our culture is something different. It is faith that things are going to work out somehow but faith without specifying just how they will work out. Hoping in this "big" way means letting go of our anxieties and opinions and staying clear and positive with the not knowing that remains. To continue with the girlfriend example, big hope would be just saying to myself that my romantic situation is going to be ok, that whatever it is, I will come to terms with it. I don't think Buddhism calls for abandoning that.
OP, I think the main point they're making relates to non-attachment. Don't get attached to your goals; don't project into the future. Just tend to your practice today. Observe whatever your weakness in practice was today, and correct it. Don't compare yourself to others, or to your own future, or to the goal you're striving for. Just work with where you are today. Step by step, every day, will lead you toward your goal. But do have faith that the method will work.
You may have a sadhana, a practice, a series of tasks ... goal orientation is 'when I complete this I will be on the good stuff'. That orientation is not practice, it is chasing a carrot.
This means we should let go of the attachment to the future 'result', hankering after that, fantasising and playing with it. We stay with the practice.
Practice. Practice without future or past. Hard? Back to the present.
What has propelled me on the path to better understand the concept of "abandoning hope" is the fact I've been reading Viktor E. Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning." He is a Holocaust (Auschwitz) survivor and as a psychiatrist, and wrote about his experience from that point of view, attempting to analyze the prisoner's mind and his will to survive.
Essentially, he concludes that those who gave up hope, did not survive:
"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future-his future-was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold, he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay." (pg 7
He tells the story of one prisoner who had a dream and predicted they would be liberated on March 14. That day came and went without liberation. The man soon died on March 31, mostly because of disappointment. Frankl provides multiple examples like this.
This is of course a very extreme example, but it makes me question the Buddhist standpoint, on what defines our will to survive?
As Buddhists striving to stay in the present moment - how is it that we survive without clinging to the future, and that hope that perhaps our suffering will be eased in the future?
What are we sticking around for?
Frankl also writes something as Buddhists I think we'd agree on:
He writes: " If there is meaning in life at all, there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete." (pg 67)
And your comments are very similar to Frankl's:
"Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." (pg 77)
But again, is this not clinging to hope to follow the "right" (8fold path) direction?
Oh, and am not questioning whether to live or die - am just wondering what the Buddhist answer is to such existential questions….
Think again. I am sort of a Buddhist and find no suffering is meaningful.
Good luck with that. Seems rather an incomplete cycle.
Do we not create meaning of Dukkha by desiring the cessation of Dukkha?
Doesn't the acknowledgement of the reality of dukkha give dukha meaning?
Do our lives have any meaning without dukha?
Of course our minds create meaning by labeling things, but is this not the nature samsara?
Can a human life be lived without dukha?
Did not even the most enlightened being, Lord Budha, experience dukha?
@Daiva: hope, fear, desire, belief - please leave all these things aside for a moment and please try to answer the question - what do you really want? and please let us know, what answer you came up with - then we can try to proceed the discussion based on that.
You've just written your very own koan - that last paragraph - that's YOUR koan.
Only if having goals increases our feeling of discontent with the present.
How specific what is hoped for is, and how strongly one is attached to it, is a formula for suffering.
If my practice MUST be a certain, specific way -- say, I MUST be progressing such and such that my in-laws don't drive me crazy -- that is a set up for suffering.
It's hard to put it into words. One can (and probably must) have 'hope', but that hope can be very UNspecific. The cessation of suffering is that kind of hope -- but if you put a time limit on it, or expect 'the cessation of suffering' to happen in a specific way, or look and act a specific way, you'll always be disappointed (ie, suffering). Hope is OK if it is extremely open ended.
I read Frankl's book ages ago, and remember his words about hope, they've stuck with me forever. Frankl is talking about a very unspecific, unattached kind of hope.
What is that song that says "Hold on loosely"?
I have confidence based on experience that no hope for this to be right is needed.
Hope and fear and fish craving [oops what a give away] arise for sure. The draw, the importance loosens its grip. Lets go BUT we are human not Cods in the Clouds.
I once asked my Zen teacher, Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi, one-time abbot of Ryutaku Monastery in Japan, what role belief and hope had in a Zen practice. His reply rings true to me. What he said was, "For the first four or five years of practice, hope and belief are necessary." "And after four or five years," I asked. "After four or five years, they are not so necessary."
In the early going, I think it is normal to enshrine hope and belief as tools to guarantee a fruitful practice. Everyone, I imagine, needs a little impetus in practicing something whose outcome they might hope for, but don't yet honestly know. Hope and faith stoke the fires. Accolades for hope and belief are part of this early agenda.
But with the experience that practice brings, the need to hope and belief dwindles. There is nothing bad or naughty about them and it's not as if you could give them up before you had put them to some pretty good uses. Maybe it is like learning to ride a bike: At the beginning there is a firm belief that if Sally and Peter can do it, so can I. But then there's the actual-factual practice of getting on and falling off, getting on and falling off. Faith and hope kiss the boo-boos better and inspire a renewed effort ... until one day, you can actually ride the bike ... at which point the usefulness of hoping you can ride a bike or believing you can ride a bike becomes extraneous.
Intellectually, hope relates to a future that no one -- that's no one -- can know. And belief would find no footing if it didn't constantly resurrect the doubt it claims to dispel. But these flaws do not mean hope and belief need to be trapped and disposed of like unwanted insects in a roach motel called "Buddhism."
I see nothing wrong with using what is useful ....
And disposing of what is not.
Hope seems like a wish on a star to me. And faith like wishing on a star I have never seen.
Expect nothing but accept everything... Including that everything changes.
@ourself -- Did I miss something or is optimism not a manifestation of hope -- i.e. a manifestation of an expectation that may reasonably be inferred based on the past, but is never assuredly known?
Indeed. Good points you make. I would also suggest this is pragmatic, an optimist is more prepared to involve themselves in solutions.
I once told someone that holding onto Hope was total Hype, because all it held was a big fat zero.
I've also mentioned before, that Pandora Trapped Hope in the box, but that initially the box held all the Evils and Ills of the World.
Hope was included in this number, it wasn't an exception. There was no mention of 'All the Evils and Ills of the World, except one.'
So Hope may well 'spring eternal in the human breast', but not for nothing is it constantly associated with 'vain' or despair.
I frankly simply await outcome, or act according to my best possible evaluation in that moment, and watch what happens.
We all use the word 'Hope' in current parlance... "I hope you are well".... "We hope to see you soon".... or as a response, "Yes, I certainly hope so".... but in my own case, it's far more often a figure of speech than anything else.
So I personally discount 'Hope' in most guises.....
The way I have understood it is that hope has such a sense of wanting things to be different than they are. Sometimes people hope so much that they aren't confronting what is right in front of them. They don't do anything. They just "hope." In the readings I have seen that seems to more so be the point. Pema was a student of Trungpa and he talks about that a bit. It really all comes down to semantics and how you truly view hope and what you do with it.
Do you consistently hope you will exercise tomorrow when you haven't the past 10 years? Do you hope things will be better without doing anything to work to make them better? Instead of sitting on your chair hoping for something to be different, what can you DO instead? That is how I've always understood the teachings where they ask you to give up hope. It is kind of the opposite of fear, which we also need to be giving up. Neither of them really do us any good. We can only do any good by actually doing something about a situation that we can change.
No, not the way I see it anyways. Optimism is seeing the use in what is happening where hope only longs to see.
@karasti;
That's how I see it too. Hallow anticipation.
Hope is waiting for change whereas optimism is to be that change.
@ourself -- OK. I hope it works out for you.
Many thanks. I am optimistic it will but not expecting much so that helps.
In fact it already has and is doing so right now.
If hope truly works for you then I'm sure it will continue to do so.
@Daiva : Have hope, there is no problem with that, but just don't only hope, rather practice and check how things actually turn out to be.
@federica yes, I use it frequently as a figure of speech, too. It's kind of a funny word that way. Recently a friend's son (he is only 37) was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. I truly did "hope" for the best outcome for him and for his surgery and I continue to "hope" for a good outcome for his treatments. I guess because I don't know what other word to use. I can't do anything for him other than support his family and send meals and so on. But I do hope or wish for a good outcome. That said, sometimes the more we hope for something the harder it is when it doesn't happen. I personally feel kind of foolish when I hope for something like a particular outcome and then it doesn't happen. Like, "I'm sorry, I guess my hoping didn't do anything after all" even though I didn't think that it would, lol. My own neuroses
Despite my dislike of the word and the sense of hope, I am actually quite a positive and optimistic person. I just don't like to pin expectations or outcomes on a word that really means nothing. It's just as irrational as fear (to me, the way I understand it). Other than the use as a figure of speech hope has a bit of negative undercurrent to it most of the time. Maybe that's why I dislike it. It's kind of a way of suggesting that there are currently bad things happening and I can't do anything so I'll just wish them away.
Hope and Fear are a negation of the present moment, which is the only moment we have.
Hope sounds sweeter than fear, but it still implies wishing things to be different from what they actually are.
I also read Viktor Frankl's book years ago.
I can imagine that in the prisoners situation in a concentration camp, something we could call "hope" -but which could also be replaced by "determination," "resilience" or "will to survive"- was a necessary tool to keep one going in such dire circmstances.
I also define myself as an optimistic person.
I think it is implicit in one's Buddhist practice.
And it is a proactive attitude: we acknowledge the existence of dukkha, but we know that through our practice, and through development of insight, cessation of dukkha is possible.
And we are the ones making cessation of dukkha happen.
It's not just wishful thinking.
So, my question to my fellow practitioners is, what's the point? Is the practice of having faith in the 4 Noble Truths and adhering to the 8fold path, in itself an inherent hope to ease suffering and discover our neutral Buddha-state?
The fact that we have goals in our practice, does that in itself negate the purpose of our practice?
-I try not to set personal goals. On a good day my practice eases my suffering. I have no doubt that were I to desire that my suffering be eased it would void that "goal." On a good day I have no desire to rid my self or to become, and in doing so I let go and become...
Siddhartha had a goal in mind when he renounced, and that was to discover why there is old age, sickness and death.
This is similar to the Idea of Karma Yoga in Vedanta. Do the right thing (hope for good things?), but be not attached to the fruits of your labors. We are merely vessels cast at sea. Enjoy the good breezes and set your sails! Don't put too much of your heart into your heavy investment in the sails, but rather into the journey --wherever it may lead you.
In the fishing business, "living in hope" and "going through the motions" go hand in hand when we are failing. In other words we do what ever we can to try to be in the right place at the right time with the right gear down there, while knowing from experience that sometimes it doesn't work out.
Mostly, when someone says "I'm hopeful" it means he's not catching, but not ready to give up.
Another cliche we use is "it's not over till it's over".
Hope is pretty important to fishermen.
When the fish are biting there is no time for thinking about such things.
The Dukkha can be overcome. What do you think Dukkha is? If Dukkha cannot be overcome then there is no 3rd noble truth.
@ourself and @genkaku
Optimism sounds like another of the lojong slogans which is something like:
'be cheerful always'
^ that's kind of add to the discussion because some of the slogans are unbelievably hard to practice and like I say they are concepts to work on other concepts/attitudes/habits.
Just meditate more and continue to listen to Pema Chodron.
Once you start to See, to observe, the operation of hope/attachment/desire leading, within you, to your dissatisfaction then you start to see what a "trap" hope is.
"Hope" means ... I am unhappy. As long as you hope, you must be unhappy with What Is.
“Everything is always changing. If you relax into this truth, that is Enlightenment. If you resist, this is samsara (suffering).”
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, “What Makes You (Not) a Buddhist”
Hope means you are not relaxing.
As for a reason to practice, the longer you practice, the more you start to be able to relax into whatever is happening, even the so-called "bad stuff". That is reason enough. But from what I have seen, it takes anywhere from 3-8 years to even get that first little inch of travel on a path of a million miles.
Still, that inch is an incredible difference.
Do the meditation, listen to the teachings, do the other practices. Just DO them.
Buddhism is a process, and not a goal. And the more you are focused on some goal, the less you are involved IN the process.
May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it.
~Irish Blessing
Maybe 'hope' and 'belief' as @genkaku said are like scaffoldings that hold up an early practice and then are no longer needed after a while.
Based on your comments, and the Buddhist understanding it that it's ok to have hope unless it starts to become an expectation. And as we start out in our practices, we sort of need to have hope for the optimist aspect, but at some point as you progress through your practice hope is no longer needed because you are immersed in the action of the practice rather than thoughts/judgment about the practice and life itself.
Traditionally, the Buddha after his enlightenment was disinclined to show the world what he discovered as he had little hope that anyone else would understand what he found. It was only on second thought that he taught the 4 NT basically in the hope that some might understand.
The 4NT is all about hope. There is suffering and the way out of suffering.
Somewhere along the path, one realises that hope itself is an impediment to full liberation. It comes from fear and non acceptance of the way things are. Without these two, there is no need for hope.
Well reminded @pegembara,
Just so!
https://www.facebook.com/thichnhathanh/videos/vb.7691064634/10153000826674635/?type=2&theater
non-hope arises when you realize you do not lack anything. hope could only arise if there was something that you are lacking. so what does this mean? because I can think of a lot of things I am lacking!!
If you are on a dangerous journey there is hope and fear because the journey is dangerous. But once you arrive there is no longer any fear at least about that particular journey.
I should have prefaced what I said previously that my thoughts on the matter are purely my perspective. I don't presume to teach others about their lives or circumstances. My POV is simply to try to experience my life as it is. Hope to me is an idea, a wish for something that is not. My POV only. No harm intended, my apologies if taken as such.
what if it is not beauty?
or what is beauty? (that you speak of)
that reminds me of one of the first thoughts when I heard about beings who were realized. I wondered what would happen to a realized being if they were tortured.
It's the line of thinking that makes me wonder a lot, as well. It's always in the back of my mind.
Hope as a motivation/ hope as a hindrance/
Hope is just one part of many, of a raft's construction, to travel upon to the other shore.
Just because there does comes a time for one to leave that raft behind, it is ignorance to suggest that others should also leave that raft behind when you are not sure where they are on that journey.