i threw a lot of feathers in the air last year when i somewhat accidentally revealed my feelings on this thing called 'hope' and solidified a few friends suspicions that i was adopted from the addams family. i really dont subscribe to hope. or what i believe to be what most people mean when they say hope. or at least, i struggle to get behind that concept as a motivator or comforter.
i think the toughest part of this argument is the slickness of the term, the many ways it can be specified or generalized without being technically right or wrong... i cant add much to the discussion and i can see how Pema Chodron (an american female buddhist monk) holds hope to a definition that others might not, or at least excludes some of its various menaings, but i will post what i read in her book that i found in cambridge on saturday. i was just flipping through and this stood out on the open page like a pop up:
"The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and nonBuddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there ís some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there ís always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves.
Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. We sometimes think that dharma is something outside of ourselves; something to believe in, something to measure up to. However, dharma isn't a belief; it isn't a dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change. The teachings disintegrate when we try to grasp them. We have to experience them without hope. Dharma gives us nothing to hold on to at all. Nontheism is realizing that it ís not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.
For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We're all addicted to hope; hope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move. As long as weíre addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer.
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."
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can't simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what ís going on, but that there ís something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world. Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look."
yeah! she actually said 'peice of shit.' it took me back a step too. and then i decided i liked her very, very much.
2 comments:
Side note: Apparently Pema Chodron attended Miss Porter's school.
That’s one of the best things I’ve read in a very long while. It makes me get those butterflies where it feels like someone has tapped into your brain and you just wish that everyone, right at this moment, could understand what they do… and that they had minds open enough to consider it in the first place. Theism can do some startling things to people – most notably take away their innate need to question, as the idea of God placates their curiosity. When I start asking things such as “What purpose would God serve?” or “What came before him?” his infallibility is no longer a sensible question. My personal belief is that religion was created in order to end those “Why?” questions, both physical and metaphysical.
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