Beyond Hope

"This possibility is connected with seeing our confusion, or misery and pain, but not making those discoveries into an answer. Instead, we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. It is a process of working with ourselves, with our lives, with our psychology, without looking for an answer but seeing things as they are—seeing what goes on in our heads directly and simply, absolutely literally. If we can undertake a process like that, then there is a tremendous possibility that our confusion—the chaos and neurosis that go on in our minds—might become a further basis for investigation. Then we look further and further and further. We don’t make a big point or an answer out of any one thing.

For example, we might think that because we have discovered one particular thing that is wrong with us, that must be it, that must be the problem, that must be the answer. No. We don’t fixate on that, we go further. “Why is that the case?”We look further and further. We ask, “Why is this so? Why is there spirituality? Why is there awakening? Why is there this moment of relief? Why is there such a thing as discovering the pleasure of spirituality? Why, why, why?”We go on deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where there is no answer.

There is not even a question. Both question and answer die simultaneously at some point. They begin to rub each other too closely and they short-circuit each other in some way. At that point, we tend to give up hope of an answer, or of anything whatsoever, for that matter. We have no more hope, none whatsoever. We are purely hopeless. We could call this transcending hope, if you would like to put it in more genteel terms." -- Chogyam Trungpa, Crazy Wisdom (Dharma Ocean)