[Buddha-l] Beyond Hope

[curt]

Is "hope and fear chase each other's tails" really an old Buddhist 
saying? Maybe one of the old Buddhists on this list can verify that for 
us? At first I thought it might just be something that Jensen read in a 
Hallmark card - but then I found out that he probably picked it up 
during a fawning interview he did with world renowned Sanskritist and 
authority on old Buddhist sayings Marc Ian Barasch: 
http://www.healingdreams.com/interview.htm .

Although in one way it amounts to nothing more than "guilt by 
association" I think it's worth noting that Derrick Jensen takes John 
Zerzan seriously, and John Zerzan takes the "ideas" of Theodore 
Kaczynski (the Unabomber) seriously. After all, some associations are 
worse than others. Here's a link to an interview of Zerzan by Jensen: 
http://www.altpr.org/apr12/zerzan.html (Jensen calls the interview "a 
meeting between two anarchists"). Jensen is part of the "lifestyle 
anarchism" movement - he is often labeled an "anarcho-primitivist". He 
is also buddies with Dave Foreman, the co-founder of the narcissistic 
softcore-terrorist outfit "Earth First!".

Anyone who is interested in anarchism as a real political movement that 
has been based in the struggles of working people around the world for 
centuries, rather than a bunch of dilettante posers spouting doomsday 
histrionics and hallmarkesque platitudes, should check out the wikipedia 
entry for "libertarian socialism" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism , Daniel Guerin's 
books "No Gods No Masters" 
http://www.akpress.org/2004/items/nogodsnomastersak , and "Anarchism" 
http://www.akpress.org/1996/items/anarchismguerin (with an introduction 
by Noam Chomsky) or the excellent collection of on-line resources at 
this link: http://flag.blackened.net/index.shtml - or just do a google 
search on "noam chomsky" or "libertarian socialism".

- Curt

Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
> jkirk schreef:
>
>> http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-3om/Jensen.html
>>
>> Excerpts:
>> ".....Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because 
>> of the lovely Buddhist saying "Hope and fear chase each other's 
>> tails," not only because hope leads us away from the present, away 
>> from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future 
>> state. I say this because of what hope is.
>>
>> More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. 
>> You wouldn't believe-or maybe you would-how many magazine editors 
>> have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to 
>> leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At 
>> a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned 
>> the question back on the audience, and here's the definition we all 
>> came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you 
>> have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless......"
>>
>> ".............At one of my recent talks someone stood up during the Q 
>> and A and announced that the only reason people ever become activists 
>> is to feel better about themselves. Effectiveness really doesn't 
>> matter, he said, and it's egotistical to think it does.
>> I told him I disagreed.
>> Doesn't activism make you feel good? he asked.
>> Of course, I said, but that's not why I do it. If I only want to feel 
>> good, I can just masturbate. But I want to accomplish something in 
>> the real world.
>> Why?
>> Because I'm in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with 
>> baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders 
>> crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your 
>> beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don't determine 
>> whether or not you make the effort. You don't simply hope your 
>> beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love 
>> doesn't cause me to protect those I love, it's not love.
>> A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you 
>> realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that 
>> giving up on hope didn't kill you. It didn't even make you less 
>> effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased 
>> relying on someone or something else to solve your problems-you 
>> ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the 
>> magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant 
>> tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself-and you just 
>> began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself...."
>>
>> "...And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect 
>> the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous 
>> indeed to those in power. In case you're wondering, that's a very 
>> good thing."
>>
>>
>> What are we, as members of this list, or as humans, or as Buddhists 
>> maybe, doing to solve some of these problems ourselves? Do we care? 
>> or did we just give up and turn to solipsistic recourses?
>> Joanna
>
> Poetic and profound, Joanna. It reminds me of Albert Camus, who 
> considered Sysiphus a wise and happy person, because he had completely 
> given up hope. But Camus distinguished hope with a big H (espérance) 
> from practical hope (espoir). The last one is OK, it makes sense to 
> say 'I hope to see you soon' or 'I hope to finish this piece before 
> six o'clock'. But the hope for a heaven with 72 virgins or a promised 
> land has made more vicitims then any natural disaster so far. That's 
> whu I gave up the hope for sukhavati.
>