Welcome.
This is a meditation on wise hope.
In Buddhist terms hope is a tricky concept.
Hope can be seen as making our present moment more bearable.
Pema Chodron says hope and fear are two sides of the same coin.
They both come from a feeling that we lack something,
That all is not well,
That things are precarious.
She suggests that hope in its efforts to look forward can rob us of present moment.
Hope is tied to craving for things to be other than they are.
Hope is an expectation based on some desired future.
It is holding on to promises for a reality which has not yet happened and which might possibly never happen at all.
Here's a quote from Nick Cave and he says hope and optimism can be different,
Almost opposing forces.
Hope rises out of known suffering and is the defiant and dissenting spark that refuses to be extinguished.
Optimism on the other hand can be the denial of that suffering,
A fear of facing the darkness,
A lack of awareness,
A kind of blindness to the actual.
Hope is wised up and disobedient.
Optimism can be fearful and false.
However there exists another form of optimism,
A kind of radical optimism and this optimism has experienced the suffering of the world,
Believes in the subordinate nature of hope and is forever at war with banal pessimism,
Cynicism and nihilism.
Suffering in our life is normal.
The artist Mark Rothko called it the tragedy of being human.
Hope does not lend our difficulties all the dignity they deserve.
It waves orange banners and sunny colours at us and tells us to cheer up.
We've been bamboozled by the assumption that life will be a jolly journey which lays riches at our feet.
But the first noble truth in Buddhism is that there is discontent and suffering and this is what it means to be human.
Life does break its promises to us but acknowledging this truth is also the doorway to freedom and the glimmer of wise hope lies there.
Roshi Joan Halifax calls it wise hope.
She said,
Wise hope is not seeing things unrealistically but rather seeing things as they are,
Including the truth of suffering.
It's when we realise we don't know what will happen that this kind of hope comes alive.
Wise hope is about facing our realities and recognising that what we do matters.
Vaclav Havel said hope is the certainty that something will make sense regardless of how things turn out.
Whatever happens there will be change.
So now let's take up a position that's comfortable for meditation.
I'm going to lead this meditation as if you are sitting.
So do find this upright yet easeful posture where you can find alignment in the spine,
A harmony within the body and I invite you to gently close your eyes and gather your awareness inwards.
At first there is nothing to do,
We just allow time for our body to settle,
Time for our awareness to absorb itself into the body deeper and deeper.
Where do we need to let go in order for our awareness to penetrate deeper within the body and how can the breath help us with each out-breath releasing,
Settling,
Relaxing,
Grounding the body,
Centering the mind within the body,
Within the breath.
The mind becomes body and breath and we let our awareness tune into the emotional center of our body.
Where is that for you?
What is present in this emotional center?
And we can ask ourselves are we holding any hopes there?
Do these hopes have any corresponding fears?
How would it be if these hopes did not materialize?
What sense of agency do you sense related to these hopes?
Can you come into relationship to both the difficulties and the opportunities present for you right now?
Can you have wise hope and sense the freedom in the truth as it is right now?
And you can sit with these questions for as long as you like but when you're ready let's come back to the body and the breath,
Just sensing our body sitting,
Breathing,
Just letting go of any effort and in your own time you can gently open the eyes.
