FROM THE MAILBAG: Buddhism and Hope

by Danny Fisher

Today’s mailbag question comes to us from a professor of psychology doing preliminary research for a new book. She’s interested in doing a robust study of hope as it is understand in a wide variety of contexts, and was referred to me in her search for literature on the subject from the Buddhist religions. I’ve done my best below to offer some helpful pointers, but I confess that I don’t know a lot of sources on this topic. Your help–particularly your article/book/talk recommendations–would be most appreciated by both myself and the professor. And, as always, please feel free to leave your observations, opinions, reactions, questions, quibbles, and so on in the comments below.

DEAR DANNY: I was wondering whether you might be able to guide me to sources on the subject of hope in either the scholarly or practitioner-oriented literature in your area or any other discipline in which you might have encountered it. — ANONYMOUS

DEAR ANONYMOUS: This seems an interesting topic to address, especially considering all the projections in the West about Buddhism being a negative or pessimistic religion. (In his piece “Engaged Buddhism in German-Speaking Europe” for Christopher Queen’s Engaged Buddhism in the West, Franz-Johannes Litsch offers an excellent and pithy break-down of how the various European interpreters of Buddhism throughout modern history–including Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Weber, and Pope John Paul II–contributed to shaping such erroneous notions about Buddhism.) Buddhists, as you might imagine, have understood their tradition(s) a bit differently. Some modern scholars have even characterized the goal and/or path of Buddhism in terms of hope–Winston L. King even titled his ruminations on Buddhist morality In the Hope of Nibbāna: The Ethics of Theravāda Buddhism. W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s book Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines: Or, Seven Books of Wisdom of the Great Path, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering also includes a section in the general introduction entitled “The Joyous Optimism of Buddhism.” And in his piece on “The Practice of Jodo-Shinshu” for Alfred Bloom’s Living in Amida’s Universal Vow: Essays on Shin Buddhism, Taitetsu Unno observes:

    Buddhism is a path of supreme optimism, for one of its basic tenets is that no human life or experience is to be wasted, abandoned or forgotten, but all should be transformed into a source of vibrant life, deep wisdom, and compassionate living (pg. 65).

Other scholars and teachers, though, have tended to talk about Buddhist as a way of looking at the world that doesn’t necessarily encourage or need hope. Rigdzin Shikpo, for example, authored a book called Never Turn Away: The Buddhist Path Beyond Hope and Fear. One of Ken Jones’ works of Engaged Buddhist Studies is titled Beyond Optimism: A Buddhist Political Ecology. And in her book, Soaring and Searing: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Religious Issues, Rita M. Gross qualifies a moment when she uses the word “hope” with “insofar as a Buddhist is permitted to hope” (pg. 54).

As far as more substantial treatments of the subject, though, I’m not aware of very many. The first I can think of is a piece by Maha Bodhi Society founder Anagarika Dharmapala, called “The Constructive Optimism of Buddhism”, which he wrote for the Maha Bodhi Journal in 1915. You might find that helpful. There’s also a whole chapter of Thomas Tweed’s book The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian Culture & the Limits of Dissent entitled “Optimism and Activism” that has a lot observations and insights that you might appreciate. And, in the epilogue to his and Charles S. Prebish’s The Faces of Buddhism in America, Kenneth K. Tanaka reflects on Tweed’s thoughts in light of the various “colors and contours” of American Buddhism today. Lastly, in an interview with Tricycle: The Buddhist Review for their Fall 1995 issue (vol. 5, no. 1), the great Allen Ginsberg offered a memorable response to the question, “Is there any cause for optimism?”:

    Well, personally, yeah. Everybody’s got a life to lead and they’ve got a bodhisattva tendency, everybody wants to do good, so I just think on a personal level, yeah. On a larger scale, there doesn’t seem to be any hope unless compassion becomes a more widespread important teaching on how to live. Compassion to self and others.

That’s all I’ve got. But perhaps some of the blog’s readers can leave you some helpful hints in the comments. — DANNY

Got a question for me? You can send it to me via email, Facebook, Twitter, Tricycle Community, or Myspace. Or you can just leave me a comment in this or other posts.

NEXT TIME: I’m definitely going to do the Buddhist military chaplains question next. : )