You haven’t quoted K on hope. Are we to take your word that hope plays no part in every day, ordinary, activity?
No, I don’t expect you to take my word for anything. Find out for yourself. There is a website called Krishnamurti online. Search for that and enter the word “hope” There is a talk, the 10th Talk in Bombay, March 11, 1957. Just one of many discussions on “hope”. Hope is looking to the future. People who are happy, contented don’t dwell on hope. It is the person in despair who looks for a better future, who looks for a better life in the future. You can see that can’t you? If you find out for yourself it will mean more than me telling you won’t it?
I wanted to add this obvious observation: If your life is miserable now hoping for improvement in the future is futile, isn’t it? We have to deal with our problems in the present, understand them, go into them before there will be any chance of change. Not avoid our problems by hoping for a better life somewhere down the road.
Hope is thought and thought is based on the path. Observing one’s self in the present does not involve thought. We have all heard of “choiceless awareness”. That means observing the present without thought, which is the past, entering into the awareness of one’s feelings and thoughts.
In this context, K is saying what I’ve said: hope is vain when the object of hope is fanciful and impracticable. He’s not condemning all hope - just the foolish variety.
When hope is related to the continuance of the self and fulfillment for the self, then it’s divisive and leads to conflict. To hope that I get my crops harvested before frost sets in is practical, and related to the survival of the physical body. It’s not related to the survival of the ‘me’…the self.
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Of course, hope plays a part in every day, ordinary activity. I am cooking dinner. I hope I don’t burn the rice.
No, that’s not what K is saying about hope. It’s unambiguous what K says about hope. Also, what Thomas-Paine is saying about hope is not what K is saying. Hope, the way K talks about it, relates to despair not getting the crops in or winning the lottery. Why don’t some of you people look it up for yourselves instead of guessing or trying to defend your rather shallow beliefs in what K was saying about hope?
Question: In the worst of misery, most of us live on hope. Life without hope seems dreadful and inevitable, and yet very often this hope is nothing but illusion. Can you tell us why hope is so indispensable to life?
Krishnamurti: Is it not the very nature of the mind to create illusion? Is not the very process of thinking the result of memory, of verbalized thought which creates an idea, a symbol, an image to which the mind clings? I am in despair; I am in sorrow; I have no way of resolving it; I do not understand how to resolve it. If I understand it, then there is no need for hope. It is only as long as I do not understand how to bring about the dissolution of a particular problem that I depend on a myth, on an idea of hope. If you observe your own mind, you will see that when you are in discomfort, in conflict, in misery, your mind seeks a way away from it. The process of going away from the problem is the creation of hope.
The mind going away from the problem creates fear; the very movement of going away, the flight from the problem, is fear. I am in despair because I have done something which is not right, or some misery comes upon me, or I have done a terrible wrong, or my son is dead, or I have very little to eat. My mind, not being able to resolve the problem, creates a certainty, something to which it can cling, an image which it carves by the hand or by the mind. Or the mind clings to a guru, to a book, to an idea which sustains me in my difficulties, in my miseries, in my despair, and so I say I shall have a better time next life, and so on and on and on.
As long as I am not capable of resolving my problem, my sorrow, I depend on hope; it is indispensable. Then I fight for that hope. I do not want anyone to disturb that hope, that belief. I make that belief into an organized belief, and I cling to that because out of that, I derive happiness, because I have not been able to solve the problem which is confronting me, hope becomes the necessity.
Now, can I solve the problem? If I can understand the problem, then hope is not necessary; then depending on an idea or an image or a person is not necessary because dependence implies hope, implies comfort. So, the problem is whether hope is indispensable, whether I can resolve my problem, whether there is a way to find out how not to be in sorrow - that is my problem, not how to dispense with hope.
Now, what is the factor essential to the understanding of a problem? Obviously, if I wish to understand the problem, there must be no formula, there must be no conclusion, there must be no judgment. But if we observe our minds, we will see that we are full of conclusions; we are steeped in formulas with which we hope to resolve the problem. And so we judge, we condemn. And so, as long as we have a formula, a conclusion, a judgment, a condemnatory attitude, we shall not understand the problem.
So the problem is not important, but how we approach the problem. So the mind that is wishing to comprehend a problem must not be concerned with the problem but with the workings of its own machinery of judgment. Do you follow?
Talk Three Bombay, March 11, 1953
Yes, and this is all I’m saying.
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What you and Tom are both doing is trivializing hope. K is not talking about our petty desires to win the lottery or get a raise at work or get the crops in on time. The hope K is referring to is the reaction people have to deep depression and despair where they feel totally lost and alone. What you both seem to be referring to are rather petty things in our lives. Read the quote from K about hope I put on here and maybe understand what K is trying to say about hope.
What started this thread was the realization that with every hope comes hope for relief from the burden of hope, regardless of whether the hope is trivial, practical, or vain. To be relieved of hope is to have one’s hope fulfilled, dashed, or revealed to be in vain, and relief is what one seeks by hoping.
To be hopeful is to be in a suspended state of being. For instance, one can hope to “get” what K was saying by being “serious”, by going over everything he said, discussing it with others, and becoming an expert on K’s teaching, but it’s all in service to the hope of being relieved of vain hope. .
Good point, Inquiry. One lives for the future…for a hoped for result. I spend all my free time practicing the piano. I hope one day to be a famous concert pianist. This kind of thing is very common though often in more subtle ways. I did the same with my guitar when young. I lived for that goal of being another Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck.
I respectfully disagree with most of this post. And, no I’m not going to discuss this on twitter. If Dev feels my view is somehow inappropriate, then I will refrain from posting it. Until then you’re not the mod here. I wanted to add, that it’s not hogwash at all in my view that most of us spend our entire lives living in hope/s of one sort or another. Even the Jews for centuries lived in hope of the coming of the Messiah…not believing in Jesus, of course. And that’s one factor preventing them from understanding the conflict in their lives and how they’re living now. Probably many still do believe in the Messiah’s coming. My family was Jewish, I might add, so I feel comfortable talking about their beliefs and culture.
I’ve been given the chance to change my reply that was objected to. I have decided to stick to what I wrote. You aren’t trying to understand the much larger meaning of hope. I don’t care about your petty hopes for success or any other goals you may have. The hope I was speaking of is the hope that springs from desperation and deep despair and how it is an escape from what is. Hope is thought. Thinking will not solve our problems. K made that clear. If one is in despair inventing hope that it will end will not solve the problem. Staying with the problem, understanding the problem in the “now” is the only way to maybe solve the problem. Escaping into hope won’t do it.
And I don’t appreciate you throwing the Jewish thing at me. Kind of curious you would do that. You should have more respect for what the Jews went through. You seem to have trivialize their experience with your complaint about what I previously wrote.
You just make this up? It sure reads like it. I didn’t come to this site to read your opinions. I came here to discuss Krishnamurti and what he pointed out. Do you mind?
It is not easy to discuss a complicated topic of “hope” on the internet. Even the Krishnamurti Talk (March 11, 1953) you shared is utter confusion to me. If you had gotten it, then you need to lay it out and help us understand something that Krishnaurmti himself was unable to do. Despite 60 years of talks, Krishnamurti still admitted that no one has gotten it. It’s not because we are stupid. I am certain that most of us here have had more education than Krishnamurti. Even Bohm - a theoretical physicist - couldn’t get what Krishnamurti was talking about! So, can you be more reasonable in dealing with us?
The post I put up about “hope” is very clear. I can’t help you with it. You have to understand it on your own. As far as Dr. Bohm not understanding K I suggest you read three books that are records of dialogues between the two. They are: THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT Discussions, THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY, THE ENDING OF TIME. If you do you may change your mind about Dr Bohm not understanding K.
Then you make a really grossly uniformed, if I may, comment about …“most of us here have probably had more education than Krishnamurti.” Formal education has nothing to do with what K discovered and pointed out to whomever would listen. It also has very little to do with the kind of intelligence needed to see for one’s self how one is conditioned, has been conditioned by education, religion and all the rest of what we have learned throughout our lives.
Leaving aside the Jewish issue which you’re misinterpreting…I grew up in a very large Jewish family and meant no disrespect…I will stick to my understanding of one aspect of hope…the one I’ve been trying to express. I’m not denying you your right to discuss hope in the manner youve been doing. I see another aspect of hope that is related to the ‘teaching’, that’s all. If you’re not interested in discussing that it’s fine with me. Now lets go on …you are entirely free to discuss as you see fit, and I will discuss what I feel is of importance to discuss. If no one feels any resonance with what I wrote I won’t continue. One quick edit. You write: “Hope is thought”…yes, of course. I think we all see that. If not it should be made clear.
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I find it interesting that you get upset when someone shares their own findings instead of just echoing Krishnamurti. The whole point of K’s pointing things out was to inspire his listeners to inquire into them.
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You mean you really don’t see how utterly petty your discussion of “hope” is? Which do you need to understand more; hope that you win the lottery or the hope that may beset you if you loose a spouse and the grief is over-whelming and you feel lost and destroyed psychologically? That’s why K probably didn’t bother to discuss the everyday, superficial hope that we get something pleasurable.