Tao Te Ching
Hope
Though described as an important virtue in the Christian traditions, the East as well as Western mystics look on it with more skepticism. A prime motivating factor in the rampant materialism of modern culture, hope also sets up much unnecessary pain and suffering, confuses clear seeing, and helps alienate people from themselves, their friends, and communities.
Hope lures possibilities into view
But often blinds us to what’s true
While Illusion often helps us through
The yin and yang of hope stay true.
Chogyam Trungpa described “The bandits of hope and fear.” Bandits because they so easily and frequently steal our awareness away from nowness, from the here-and-now immediacy of our lives; hope and fear most often determine our decisions, guide our vision, enslave our creativity and uniqueness. And yet fear cautions our choices, keeps us from too much danger, and prevents foolish judgment. Hope seduces us with unrealistic fantasy; yet without this, creativity, innovation, and new ventures would die as merely flickering thought. Our fear of failure may much more often become true; but, without seemingly unrealistic hope, we would never accomplish anything innovative and meaningfully helpful to ourselves and to the world.
Quotes (72)
“Discontent springs from a constant endeavor to increase the amount of our claims when we are powerless to increase the amount which will satisfy them.”
“Focused on uncontrived awareness, not seduced by hope and fear, grasping and fixation; they are not swayed by a desire for change.”
“Shut out from sight the things of desire so that the people's hearts shall not be disturbed.”
“The cause of suffering is the desire to change things, to try to make them different, or hope they change.”
“Elevate your mind above desire and hope... Let us triumph over thirst, let us uproot desire, let us empty out our bowels! Do not say, 'I want to die,' or 'I do not want to die.' Say, 'I do not want anything.'”
“Hope is man's curse... whenever a city has to vote on a question of war, not man ever takes his own death into account but shifts this misfortune to his neighbor”
“Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest.”
“How can a soul that hopes be free? Whoever hopes is afraid both of this life and the life to come; he hangs indecisively in the air and waits for luck of God's mercy.”
“Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t. Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
“So long as the object of our craving is unattained, it seems more precious than anything. But once it is ours, we crave for something else.”
“Abandon hope and fear. Let go of trying to accomplish something or exhibiting anything.”
“The Bodhisattva’s mind is like the void, for he relinquishes everything… all action is dictated purely by place and circumstance, subjectivity and objectivity are forgotten... no hope of reward is entertained.”
“The worldly hope men set their hearts upon, like snow on the desert's dusty face, lighting a little hour or two—is gone.”
“We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”
“The wise know they have everything they need within themselves. Hence, they do not seek anything outside themselves.”
“Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.”
“we never live but only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will neer be so.”
“One day everything will be well—that is our hope.
Everything's fine today—that is our delusion.”
“In politics, as on a sickbed, men toss from side to side in the hope of lying more comfortably.”
“The nature of realization is the absence of hope and fear.”
“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”
“Here lies your iniquity: you have given the laborer nothing but his daily food—not even his lodgings… his wages—thanks to your competitive system—were beaten down to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the possibility of saving a farthing.”
“'Hope' is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul –
... Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.”
“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
“The wise expect nothing, hope for nothing, and therefore avoid all disappointment and anxiety.”
“as in all metaphysical questions, both are true; Life is—or has—meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.”
“In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”
“Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”
“The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.”
“All that produces longing in the heart deprives the heart of freedom.”
“In the depth of your hopes and desires likes your silent knowledge... like seeds dreaming beneath the snow”
“the man who either hopes for heaven or fears hell cannot be free. Shame on us if we continue to become intoxicated in the taverns of hope or the cellars of fear.”
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.”
“the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.”
“Regard life with passion to see its manifest forms, do away with passion to see the Secret of Life.”
“Forget everything and discover something quite new and different moment after moment... As long as we have some definite idea about the past or some hope in the future, we cannot be serious with the moment that exists right now.”
“What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering.”
“Optimism disregards the present but is a source of inspiration, of vitality, and hope when other have given up. It empowers us with confidence and enables us to claim the future instead of abandoning it to an enemy.”
“Learn to see everyday life as a mandala in which one is the center and be free of the bias and prejudice of past conditioning, present desires, and future hopes and expectations… be natural and spontaneous, accept and learn from everything.”
“Unless there are conscious efforts to the contrary, wants will always rise faster than the ability to meet them.”
“Hope is really a thought that maybe it will be different someday... If you hope, you're thinking. The reality of practice is just to be.”
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.”
“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something… We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.”
“Hope is the source of pain, and hope operates on the level of something other than what there is. We hope, dwelling in the future, that things might turn out right. We do not experience the present, do not face the pain or neurosis as it is.”
“The bandits of hope and fear are subdued and all experiences are transformed into crazy wisdom.”
“There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”
“Ironically, we never truly appreciated the experience for which we are nostalgic because we were too busy clinging to our hopes and fears at the time.”
“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity… We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. We can only be somewhat shocked-how can they be as wonderful as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us?”
“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't—surrender to events with hope.”
“neither myths nor mysteries can hold a candle to the most infinitesimal spark of hope.”
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