Oren Jay Sofer, Sister Clear Grace, and Ayya Yeshe look at the meaning of hope in Buddhism and what it means in today’s world.
From left to right: Oren Jay Sofer, Sister Clear Grace, and Ayya Yeshe. Photos by Lauren Rudser, Thay Yasha, and Ayya Yeshe.
Question: What is the Buddhist view of hope? Is it just
another delusion that pulls us out of the present moment and causes
suffering, or can it also motivate us to work in a way that creates a
better future?
Oren Jay Sofer: The Buddha’s teaching is
fundamentally hopeful. It affirms that there is a reliable way to
release ourselves from suffering, to protect other beings, mitigate
harm, and build a better world.
I suffered from chronic illness for a few years in my thirties. For
the first few months, with each new doctor, my mind soared with hopeful
expectation for promising treatments, then crashed in fearful despair
when it failed to deliver. Those years taught me a lot about the
difference between hope based on craving and the steady energy of wise
aspiration.
This practical hope is the foundation of the path.
What we might call “ordinary hope” directs our longing for happiness
in an unskillful way. It places our well-being on an uncertain, imagined
future beyond our control, thereby feeding craving and fixation. When
the wished-for outcome isn’t realized, we are crushed.
Dhamma practice channels our longing for happiness, harmony, and equity in a skillful way. This begins with saddha,
most frequently translated as “faith” or “conviction.” Saddha refers to
one’s aspiration and confidence in the path. It is the intuitive sense
that there is something worthwhile about being alive, that inner freedom
is available for each of us.
To avoid being co-opted by craving, aspiration is supported by refuge
and guided by wisdom. Refuge connects us with a tangible sense of
emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety here and now. Refuge
protects the heart, helping us to engage with the world from a place of
love and acceptance rather than fear, anger, or reactivity. Those years
of illness demanded I learn to touch this place of refuge amidst pain
and uncertainty.
From there, it takes wisdom to meet life and respond to challenges
without betting on fantasy, burning out, or sinking in despair. The
wisdom of equanimity understands that we choose neither the
circumstances of our life, nor the results of our actions. Both are
beyond our control. What we can choose is how we relate, and how we
respond.
Right View understands that actions have results. What we say and do
right now, how we respond with our mind and body, matters. We can affect change—both internally and externally.
All of these factors work together to form what we might call
realistic or practical hope. It’s a stable outlook that starts from
where we are, acknowledges the reality of what’s happening, and assesses
our own internal resources to respond.
This practical hope is the foundation of the path. When our actions
are guided by wisdom and compassion, we can grow in resilience and in
our capacity to serve. And we can steer toward inner freedom, clarity,
and well-being.
Sister Clear Grace: In the Anguttara Nikaya
3:13, the Buddha teaches us that there are three kinds of people in the
world: “The hopeful, the hopeless, and the one who has done away with
hope.”
My very existence stands on the back of hope, a hope dependent upon a
complicated reality of causes, conditions, and context. I am here today
partially because of the seeds of hope for emancipation. Those before
me tell of great songs sung to acquire hope, songs like “We Shall
Overcome” and “A Change is Gonna Come.” They tell of political slogans,
like King’s “I Have a Dream” and Obama’s “Yes We Can.” They tell of
poetry, like Langston’s “I, Too” or Maya’s “Caged Bird.” They tell of
Biblical passages once used to oppress, turning instead into paths of
freedom, giving enslaved Africans a profound sense of hope of overcoming
in the midst of suffering. This sort of transcendent hope can be a way
of relating to suffering amidst continuity and change. In this way, hope
sustains life or becoming, and offers a belief in the possibility of
positive outcomes that help us develop intention in the face of
obstacles.
Hope acquired through direct experience gives us insight into change.
In the wake of Covid-19 there is much to feel hopeless about: the
senseless murders of Black bodies, xenophobia, classism, and racism.
These realities are not to be denied and did not just arrive with the
pandemic. For many, the virus has only re-exposed a divide or a type of
social distancing that has been amongst us all along. The racial,
economic, gender, citizenship status, and class disparities have
exacerbated the very inequalities that Black, Indigenous, People of
Color, elders, migrant workers, incarcerated, and detained people have
always actively opposed in the hope of creating a better or more
equitable future. As people rush to return to “normal,” many of us are
concerned that our imperfect past will evolve into an imperfect new
normal. We must take care that our hopes for a different now or a better
future don’t lead us to fall into despair.
Hope acquired through direct experience gives us insight into change,
rather than just the wanting of change. This wise hope can allow us to
see things as they are—that nothing is inherently permanent or fixed.
The Buddha directs us to a path that is wishless or without expectation.
It is from this very space that we are then able to create and be the
very hope that we wish to see.
Ayya Yeshe: Hope may seem like a very Christian
concept, and a dualistic one at that. Hope is often tied into desire and
craving, which Buddhists regard as a form of suffering. Hope (for
happiness) and fear (of suffering), fame and infamy, praise and blame,
gain and loss are the eight worldly dharmas—states of mental grasping
that keep us locked into deluded ways of being.
But what if we look at hope as something different from desire? What
if we acknowledge that we are not enlightened yet, and that hope as
resilience—a long-term commitment to practice and social justice and
compassion, equanimity, and watering the seeds of joy and happiness in
ourselves—is a necessary part of the courage, strength, and endurance
needed to become bodhisattvas, to become enlightened, and to create a
more just world? Equanimity does not mean apathy, it means a balanced
mind that can see the bigger picture, a calm and objective mind open to
different points of view.
We must keep alive hope.
For someone deeply involved in meditation and concentrative states
who has gone far on the path of dharma, hope probably is not that
important. When we see that wisdom and joy are our natural state, the
clarity beneath our projections, and our rich fundamental nature, there
is no need to grasp for something good coming in the future, because we
are already complete. However, we are not always connected to that big
awakened mind. So in the meantime, we need a bit of happiness,
self-care, humor, and kindness as well as a long-term vision. Hope could
be compared to relative bodhicitta (the compassionate wish to liberate
all beings including yourself from suffering and rebirth)—the mind that
has not yet realized emptiness or perfect compassion but has a glimmer
that such joyful natural goodness is possible. It’s like the great sun
on the horizon, even as our heart is moved by the mess and suffering of
the world. We hold both realities in our heart, the mess and the
potential to awaken. Moving into ultimate bodhicitta (the realization of
emptiness and true interconnectedness of all that is), one can leave
behind smaller pleasures and the need for hope; one is complete, joyous,
and free of duality. The gap between these two bodhicittas could be
months, years, or lifetimes. We practice the six perfections
(generosity, morality, patience, energy, concentration, wisdom), and we
keep going. Because we have tasted peace and compassion and we know a
better world, our better natures are possible—within and without.
In his final speech, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took a long-term
view of hope: “I’ve been to the mountaintop …Like anybody, I would like
to live a long life … I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there
with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get
to the promised land.” We must keep alive hope, not because we need
illusions to comfort us in this cruel world, but because separation and
cruelty are the illusion—and we need to wake up. More than that, we need
to act for justice.
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