USNH Dec. 3, 2017
Beth Robins Roth, APRN, SEP
Sermon: Buddhist Perspectives on Hope and Faith
This Unitarian congregation, along with many other Unitarian congregations throughout the country, has chosen the theme of HOPE as the focus for the month of December. I am speaking this morning about hope from a Buddhist perspective, relating hope to the concept of FAITH, and considering how hope and faith pertain to us as individuals and as a community deeply concerned with the healing of our planet and all its inhabitants.
I begin, as I so often do, by consulting Webster’s Dictionary, which lists hope as both a verb and a noun. The verb hope, as in “I hope” means “to desire with expectation of fulfillment.” Similarly, the noun hope is defined as “trust, reliance, a desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.”
This dictionary definition of hope describes what I will call “ordinary hope.” Ordinary hope is tied to outcomes and thus is connected to the future. Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeauot describes ordinary hope as “an optimistic feeling, or at least a willingness to go on, because we sense that things will get better in the future.” She offers common examples: “I hope I get the job.” “I hope it’s a mild winter.” “I hope the biopsy does not show cancer.” Looking just a bit more closely at ordinary hope, we see it is closely linked to fear. Tsultrim Allione, the first American woman to be ordained as Tibetan Buddhist nun, elucidates the relationship between hope and fear. She writes, “…Hopes are what we are obsessed with, what we long for…hope and fear are closely attached to each other…we often shift back and forth between hope and fear.” She offers specific examples of how we do this. “In our culture we are taught that hopes are good. But really our hopes are often based on our fears. Take a moment and think about your greatest hope. What do you really long for? (PAUSE) Then think about your greatest fear. (PAUSE) Aren’t they the opposite sides of the same coin, both of which generate tension? I hope for love, and I fear loneliness. I hope for success, and I fear poverty. I hope for praise, and I fear criticism.”
Joanna Macy, Buddhist practitioner and international environmental activist, references what she calls “passive hope.” Like ordinary hope, passive hope is linked to outcomes and to the future. It also highlights our inability or unwillingness to envision ourselves powerful enough to realize our hopes. In the words of Joanna Macy, “Passive hope is about waiting for external agencies to bring about what we desire.”
This concept of ordinary hope can be contrasted with what I will call “spiritual hope.” Spiritual, in this sense, is quite different from religious. As the Dalai Lama teaches, there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. He explains, “Religion is concerned with the claims to salvation of one tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps a belief in heaven. Connected with this are religious teachings , ritual, prayer and so on. Spirituality is concerned with those qualities of the human spirit—such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony -–which bring happiness to both self and others.”
Spiritual hope is what Cynthia Bourgeauot calls “mystical hope.” She emphasizes that mystical hope is neither connected to a good outcome nor to the future. “Mystical hope has 3 primary characteristics: 1. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions. 2. It has something to do with presence—the immediate experience of being met, held in communion by something intimately at hand. 3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction…But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, mystical hope seems to produce them from within.”
Similarly, Joanna Macy contrasts “passive hope” with “active hope.” Active hope is a process and a practice. Active hope…” is something we do rather than have…it involves three key steps. First, we take a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.” I’d like to unpack this description a bit. We see here that although Active Hope does relate to the future, it rests on a firm foundation of clear seeing of reality, which in the Buddhist tradition is called wisdom. Our wisdom recognizes that hope is a practice, and that it must be balanced by compassion, reflected in deliberate consideration of our values and ethics, and a deep respect for the health and happiness of ourselves and all other beings. And finally, Active Hope manifests as we choose what to say and do in order to align our actions with the wisdom and compassion of our intention. Intention is vital to active hope, since it is intention that gives rise to our speech and our actions.
As Joanna Macy posits our intention as a critical component of active hope, Tsultrim Allione recognizes inspiration as a distinguishing attribute of what I am calling spiritual hope. To paraphrase Allione, hopes create struggles similar to our battles with fears, except they are attempts to get something rather than to get away from something. Hopes are involved with struggles of desire and longing rather than aversion. It is important to distinguish between an inspiration, which triggers positive energy and optimism without great attachment or tension, and fear, which is connected to longing for something and being obsessed with a certain outcome.
To help me more deeply understand these ideas of mystical hope, active hope and spiritual hope, I turned to the Buddhist concept of faith. The Buddha said, “Faith is the beginning of all good things.” Wayne Muller, a Christian Minister, Buddhist teacher, and social justice worker asks, “How can we reclaim the word faith so that we may use it for our own healing? We may begin by noting that in most ancient scriptural texts, the word faith is not a noun, it is a verb. Faith is not something that one person “has” and another “doesn’t”; faith is not a thing and so cannot be measured or possessed. Faith is a way of being. It is a spiritual practice, a way of discovering what is reliable and true, and a way of expanding trust in our inner wisdom. It is a place inside where we are in a compassionate relationship with what is strong and whole within ourselves… When we are practicing a path of faith, we are in intimate conversation with what is deepest in our mind, heart and spirit.”
American Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg tells us that in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, the word usually translated as faith, confidence, or trust is saddha. Saddha literally means, “to place one’s heart upon.” To have faith is to offer one’s heart or to give over one’s heart. In the Pali language faith is a verb, an action. It’s something that we do. We “faithe.” Saddha is the willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey.”
The Buddha offered a detailed description of this path of faith, a road map of sorts, with guideposts to help us recognize the territory. In the early stages at the beginning of our journey, the faith that is kindled within us is called bright faith. Bright faith is triggered by someone else, something outside of ourselves that inspires us to embark on a new journey. As Sharon Salzberg explains, “The enthusiasm, energy and courage we need in order to leave the safe path, to stop aligning ourselves with the familiar or the convenient, arises with bright faith. It enables us to step out, step away, and see what we can make of our lives. With bright faith we act on our potential to transform our suffering and live in a different way.” Bright faith is often likened to falling in love. And bright faith, like the initial excitement of falling in love, can only carry us so far. It doesn’t last. The Buddha insisted, “Do not believe anything just because I say it, or because anyone else tells you it is so. Put it into practice. See for yourself if it is true.” As we put our developing faith into practice we weigh it against our own experience. We ask more questions, doubt more healthily, wonder more fully, inquire more deeply, explore more openly, and experiment more courageously. Our faith blossoms from within. This type of faith is called verified faith. To quote Sharon Salzberg, “To develop a verified faith we need to open to the messiness, the discordance, the ambivalence, and above all, the vital life force of questioning. If we don’t, our faith can wither. If we don’t, our faith will always remain in the hands of someone else, as something we borrow or abjure, but not as something we can claim fully as our own.”
With verified faith we trust our own perception and experience. We gain clarity and confidence about what is true. Our faith becomes more authentically ours, and we become more authentically ourselves. We begin to recognize and honor what Jack Kornfield calls our “inner nobility.” Here nobility does not refer to medieval knights and courts. The word nobility derives from a Greek root meaning “wisdom” or “inner illumination.” Jack Kornfield writes, “Our belief in a limited and impoverished identity is such a strong habit that without it we are afraid we wouldn’t know how to be. If we fully acknowledged our dignity it could lead to radical life changes. It could ask something huge of us. And yet some part of us knows that the frightened and damaged self is not who we are. Each of us needs to find our way to be whole and free.”
As we discover and trust our dignity and nobility, we see the inner nobility of all human beings. With this vision comes the dedication to alleviate the suffering of all beings. All beings include human beings, animal beings, plant beings, and the natural world. This includes ourselves and others, those known to us, those unknown to us, and those yet to be born.
I close with these words from Sharon Salzberg. “Faith is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment’s experience to the fabric of all of life. It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capable of doing,”
Thank you for your presence and your attention.
USNH Dec. 3, 2017
Beth Robins Roth, APRN, SEP
Buddhist Perspectives on Hope and Faith
Resources
Tsultrim Allione “Feeding Your Demons”
Cynthia Bourgeauot “Mystical Hope”
Jack Kornfield “The Wise Heart: A guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology”
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy”
Wayne Muller “Legacy of the Heart”
Sharon Salzberg “Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience”