Hope and Fear

Or being with what is right here

For many of us in recovery, there comes a point when it is necessary to make amends for the harm we caused during active addiction. I write “many of us” because I can imagine a case where someone commits to long-term sobriety but is not also compelled to revisit previous unskillful or unwholesome behaviors and how they affected others. Jogen Adam Salzberg, Sensei, the second Zen teacher I studied with, once observed during a Dharma Talk that “All stories are like fossils of a life that has already moved on.” And I can imagine, as part of my larger imagining, someone subscribing to a similar sentiment: what is done is done, and all that is left to do is move forward. That is fine, perhaps even advisable, given other details specific to this imaginary someone.

I am not this imaginary someone, however. When the time came, I took the first step in the amends-making process: I made a non-exhaustive list of the people I harmed during my five-year period of increasingly severe substance abuse. No one required me to do this, though plenty of people supplied encouragement. Some people did this directly, notably Jim P., my first sponsor. Others did this by sharing their own experience. Some of the stories I heard were inspiring for various reasons. Those that stood out involved surprising responses from the ones previously harmed, often coupled with feelings of lightness and ease because of a burden lifted. I started to wonder how much “extra weight” I was unknowingly carrying around, “unknowingly” because I had become accustomed to heavy feelings of disappointment, guilt, and shame.

Step Eight reads:

Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Despite hearing countless times in recovery meetings that Step Eight requires only that we make a list—sort of, anyway—I could not help but get ahead of myself when it occurred to me to write down someone’s name. Before pencil ever touched paper, I began fearing the eventual conversation with that person, hoping for a particular outcome, or some combination of the two. And that can be disastrous—“getting too far out over one’s skis,” as the saying goes.

All Step Eight requires, once more, is to make a list and become willing to amend our relationship with each being on that list. (And “being” because it is not just human beings that are harmed; I continue to make a living amend to my cat Wilbur.) The step does not say how that happens, when, or even if it happens. I recall stories where large portions of someone’s list are set aside; for one reason or another, it is unnecessary to go any further. It was enough to record the person’s name and the reasons and become willing to take responsibility for the harm caused in the past.

For this post, I want to focus on one thing that, in my experience, gets in the way of this seemingly simple step: hope.

The anonymous “they” says, “Hope springs eternal.” This is true in Zen circles, too, even if there is some question about whether and how hope fits into Zen practice.

Suspicions about hope center partly on how hope carries us away from what is happening in our lives right now. In this fleeting instant, we evaluate the past from a particular perspective. Sometimes, that perspective focuses on pleasure and pain; other times, it concerns gain and loss. At still other times, it is praise and blame or fame and obscurity. From those evaluations, we leap from the past, clear of where our feet are, and into the future. Specifically, we start hoping that the future will be a certain way. Meidō Barbara Anderson, Roshi, my Guiding Teacher, sometimes describes this leap as “flying off to La-La Land.”

There are three general ways in which we take flight. If we judge that the past was “good,” then we hope the future will continue to be “good.” For example, if we determine that the past was pleasurable, we hope the future will continue to be pleasurable. On the other hand, if we judge that the past was “bad,” then we hope that the future will not be “bad.” For example, if we determine that the past was filled with pain, we hope the future will no longer be filled with pain. We want either more of the same or its opposite.

You can substitute any of the other pairs mentioned above; which fits best depends on the details of your current perspective.

The third option is a blend of these two. We might, for any number of reasons, not hope that the future will continue to be pleasurable but only not painful. “I would be fine with an uneventful, even boring, weekend,” you might say, “but I cannot be on pins and needles!” Or we might hope that the future will be not only pain-free but pleasurable, too. “I really need some excitement in my life right now, no matter the cost!” Here, we either offer a compromise—though with what or whom, I am unsure—or demand the extreme—though again, from what or whom I am unsure. Which version of La-La Land we desire to reside in largely depends on our assessment of the past.

The past is no more, however, and the future is not yet.

So, at what am I looking when I evaluate something as either good or bad? And to where am I trying to go, fueled by these feelings of hope? One response states plainly: nothing and nowhere. Although there is a before-this-instant and an after-this-instant, “past and future are cut off,” as Dōgen Zenji writes in Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan. Try with all your might; the only place you can ever be is right where you are.

Another response suggests that we live in our heads, which is to say in abstraction. We conjure images of the past, selecting for those features that most concern us. (See the four pairs mentioned above.) The images we call to mind often fit into a larger narrative. And the larger narrative’s theme also fits into one or more of those pairs.

For instance, I might fixate on a person’s comments about me from a social gathering, and only those comments that I judge unpleasant. By weaving them together, I create a narrative that supports an enduring complaint that my desire for respect has not only failed to be satisfied—again, I add—but is actively undermined by this person.

It is not “bad” or “wrong” to do this; sometimes, it might be crucial, especially if we want to illuminate what is happening within us right now. And that is the critical thing in all of this: right now. Playing with abstractions, while potentially entertaining or otherwise stimulating, contributes to looking more and more “out there” instead of “in here,” at what is happening in this instant. We miss the opportunity to be with life; we miss constant offerings to be present as each instant arises, plain and fresh, vibrant and unhindered.

Great Teacher Shitou Xiqian writes in the poem Sōan-ka (Song of the Grass-Roofed Hermitage):

Turn around the light to shine within, then just return.

By not heeding Shitou’s directive, we continually reach for what has vanished or dream of landing somewhere that may never appear, and we suffer in both ways.

It is difficult to say how much we do this. I feel how easy it is to resume my place in the rhythm of looking back, leaping forward, and hoping all over the place. It seems automatic and, at times, both comforting and familiar. Escaping from presence is its own pleasure—some might say its own form of intoxication.

What is the alternative? Shitou writes at the end of Sōan-ka:

Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely
Open your hands and walk, innocent.
Thousands of words, myriad interpretations,
Are only to free you from obstructions.
If you want to know the undying person in the hut,
Please do not separate from this skin bag here and now.

Friendship Garden / O-An Zendo

All the same, there is understandable resistance to banishing hope from Zen spaces. And any effort to do that will fail, even if near-militant means are employed—perhaps especially in that case. Most importantly, though, we are not required to exclude anything from practice. Everything has its place; sometimes, that place is in the back corner of a cupboard or tucked away on the highest shelf in the kitchen.

Thus, some Dharma Teachers offer an alternative understanding of hope. For instance, Jiko Joan Halifax, Roshi has given a series of Dharma Talks on what she calls “Wise Hope.” She describes Wise Hope, from one point of view, as

[…] unprescribed, spontaneous, and can’t be attached to an outcome. It is a response of imagination so free that one has no idea of where it comes from and where it will lead and land.

Thus, wise hope is not the belief that everything will turn out well. But rather that we find ourselves responding from the groundlessness of possibility and […] improbability.

[…]

Wise hope means that we open ourselves to what we do not know, what we cannot know; that we open ourselves to Not Knowing and act from a place of astonishment.

Jiko Roshi’s perspective is influenced by Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Roshi, who writes in The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path:

A bodhisattva would probably not hope for something. (I say “probably” because there are no hard-and-fast bodhisattva rules; skillful means has no limit.) But bodhisattvas are hopeful. Of course they are. In times of great stress or challenge, it is important that bodhisattvas, for their own sake and the sake of those around them, remain hopeful.

[…]

[…] the point is, no one can know what the next moment will bring, how it will feel, what its consequences will be. This is life. Bodhisattvas, deeply feeling this truth, are always hopeful for the next moment of life.

I am compelled to mention Jiko Roshi and Zoketsu Roshi because of my firm commitment to encouraging you to decide the matter for yourself. It is okay, too, if your decision is provisional. That may be the best way of deciding things—always provisionally.

Dōgen Zenji writes in Bendowa (On the Endeavor of the Way):

There are those who, attracted by grass, flowers, mountains, and waters, flow into the buddha way; and there are those who, grasping soil, rocks, sand, and pebbles, uphold the buddha seal. Although the boundless words of the Buddha permeate myriad things, the turning of the great dharma wheel is contained inside a single particle of dust. […] By showing the buddha ancestors’ excellent way [… I hope] that you will become a true practitioner of the way.

“No one can know what the next moment will bring,” Zoketsu Roshi says. And possibility and improbability permeate every aspect of existence, as Jiko Roshi reminds us. So “we open ourselves to Not Knowing,” and from my point of view, we must act from that ever-present, limitless, and ceaseless confidence in ourselves, trust in the teachings, and faith in our communities.

Out here at O-An Zendo, we are preparing for Shuso Hossen (Dharma Inquiry Ceremony) for this year’s Shuso (Head Student), who led the now-finished winter practice period. The ceremony is related to another, called Shosan.

During Shuso Hossen or Shosan, practitioners ask the person in the “hot seat” a heartfelt Dharma question—something that arose during the practice period and remains with them, perhaps confusing or troubling, because of which insight is welcome. The person receiving questions offers a response. Typically, the response arises spontaneously and is directed at the heart of the matter.

Here is an example involving Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi:

In a shosan ceremony, I walked up toward Suzuki and said, “What now?”

He said, “Don’t ask me. Now is now. You have your now. I have my now. That is why now is so important. It is beyond question and answer.”

I agree—and we can add a bit to Suzuki Roshi’s response. Specifically

Suzuki said that rather than having one or more objects to worship, we focus on whatever it is we’re doing at the moment.

The latter quotation amounts to more than the now-banal refrain to “be mindful” of what you are doing precisely because of the word “worship.” The heart of Zen practice is not simply about paying attention, although it might start there. It is about paying attention in a certain way—deep respect woven through with wonder.

There is a Japanese phrase I learned more than ten years ago: Menmitsu no kafu, meaning “with utmost care and consideration.” This is usually the way we treat close friends and family. Our practice is to treat everything this way, including those things that have long lost their shine from familiarity: your toothbrush, the litter box, and loose change on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat in your car. It is not easy to do this. That is why we need to practice.

Why is it so difficult? I suspect that the primary reason is fear. Above, I suggested that hope has the general form of wanting more of the same or its opposite. The other side, I venture, is fear of what is undesirable continuing and the opposite never appearing to replace it. Hope and Fear are the two sides of one single coin, that coin often spinning with great energy.

You do not stop the coin from spinning, however, by flying off to La-La Land. It stops when your hand comes down on top of it. It is not important how your hand comes down, gently or with force; it is not important what sort of sound is made; and it is not important whether the coin shows heads or tails when it is uncovered. What is important is the contact between your hand and the surface on which the coin was spinning—and whether the coin was spinning quickly or slowly, almost wobbly, does not matter either.

Contact. Connection. Right here. Right now. This now. This instant, in which all that is available is offering utmost care and consideration to what is right in front of us.

For some additional reading, you might explore these offerings:

Humility and Conceit

Resistance

Dharma Talk: Limitless, Ceaseless Trust

The quotations from Dogen Zenji are from “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye,” edited by Kazukai Tanahashi.

The quotations of Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi, are from “Zen Is Right Now,” edited by David Chadwick.