Finding Hope in Hopelessness, by Margaret Wheatley. From the March 2003 issue of the Shambhala Sun magazine.

Reflections on the plenary session “Strategy at the Edge” led by Adam Kahane, Margaret Wheatley, and Jim Gimian,
June 26, 2008, by Susan Szpakowski.

Comments in the aftermath of this year’s Thursday plenary ranged from “very provocative and brave” to “manipulative” to “What was that?!” Thursday evening and the following day there were a few conversations, some jokes, and then everyone left for home. Although much time has now passed, I’d like to offer my own reflections and open a space to continue the conversation.

There are two lenses for reflecting on that session: the process and the content (the actual messages conveyed). Here I propose focusing on the second lens, as I suspect this will have more enduring value.

The key messages in that plenary, as I recall them: It is possible that our most cherished beliefs are false. If we are not open to this possibility, we become blind and deaf to disconfirming data (to what is actually going on). It is possible that our best efforts will not succeed. We must therefore transcend hope as well as fear. The opposite of hope is not fear, but fearlessness.

These sentences may be easy to read here, but when contemplated deeply, personally, and unexpectedly in a hot room near the end of an intense week, they can elicit shock, relief, despair, anger… all of which were “in the room.”

I would like to bring in some further background. The theme of hope and fear, and the need to transcend both, is not new to the Institute. Fourteen years before Institute programs began, Trungpa Rinpoche brought a particular message and lineage stream into the Western world that gave rise to the Shambhala Institute community, among others. He brought both the essence of the Buddhist teachings and the vision of Shambhala as an enlightened society that can withstand the forces of a dark age. Having escaped from Tibet as a young meditation master, and having seen the devastation of the spiritual and cultural traditions of his country, he arrived in North America in the early 1970s. Over the next 17 years he showed up in many forms – meditation teacher, trickster, revolutionary, poet, flower arranger, military general, prophet, king. He saw the gathering clouds of darker times and conveyed a sense of urgency, yet he was always contagiously cheerful and down to earth.

Although he died in 1987, the spirit of Trungpa Rinpoche continues to haunt those of us who studied with him. It is a spirit of truth-telling and shape shifting, of not becoming seduced by hope or habit, or paralyzed by fear. Of discovering joy and freedom within disciplines of mindfulness and nowness. Of discovering delight in elegance and simplicity, and tapping into the power of “ordinary magic.” Of celebrating human goodness and dignity. In Colorado, Trungpa Rinpoche founded Naropa Institute with the slogan “When East meets West, sparks will fly.” He would have loved the Shambhala Institute.

At a time of spiritual seeking and new age rebellion and romanticism, Trungpa Rinpoche warned about the seduction of goal-oriented “spiritual materialism” and the “myth of freedom.” He talked about the wisdom of hopelessness—of giving up the continual and often subtle strivings of ego, no matter how seemingly noble or spiritual, because these strivings are ultimately a source of deception and suffering. They leave us smaller than who we truly are.

Trungpa Rinpoche talked about hopelessness as the foundation of the spiritual journey. Does this message also apply to the context of leadership? As agents of positive social change, many of us depend on hope. Isn’t hope the antidote to apathy and despair? Isn’t hopelessness the real enemy?

So far we have not said much about this topic at the Shambhala Institute. It seems that the conversation could easily become philosophical or righteous, especially when led by people who are comfortably distant from those living and working closer to the burning fires of the world. But at this year’s summer institute some of us were feeling that heat. One of the presenters, a resident of South Africa, described that country as “ready to explode.” We were also receiving emails from friends in Zimbabwe, which was increasingly tense and dangerous in the lead-up to the elections, when opposition or even non-compliance was being punished and crushed.

These situations illuminate the real and practical danger in clinging to hope. If South Africa falls into chaos, if Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe does not survive, if U.S. politics go the wrong way, if our project fails, will we go on? And what if our core beliefs don’t hold? Will we plunge into despair? Or will we resist despair by tightening our grip—by holding onto our beliefs so fervently that we are unable to really listen and see? Will we become ever more dogmatic about our truths, our community, our methodology, our way?

All of these threads were present in the plenary session. The challenge was given from the front of the room in a way that made it difficult to hear for some. But I think it is an important challenge for our time.

At the final banquet, I asked a question that was very alive for me at the time: What do we come back to? If it isn’t our hope and our core beliefs, what can we depend on?

I think there were many clues about this during the week’s meditation talks, Aikido lessons, and arts exercises. It is not just about cultivating a state of mind; it is also about posture. When we are rooted in the earth below and connected to an expansive space of vision and possibility above, we are like a willow tree, both open and resilient. We have a strong back of engagement and courage, and an open front of accommodation and tenderness. Our experience, our intention, and our humanity are continually arising. We are not being pulled forward by hope or pushed from behind by habit and fear. Through practicing in this way, a natural knowing and compassion begins to strengthen and radiate. In my opinion it doesn’t matter if we call this posture hopeful or hopeless. It is grounded and it is real.

I am realizing that coming back to the simplicity of this posture is a core leadership practice, and a way to discover fearlessness that is beyond hope and fear. I have heard this from my teacher and I am gradually discovering it to be true. After this year’s Summer Institute, I have a heightened sense of the need to use the privilege of my own circumstances to strengthen this posture.

As the Art of Hosting and Berkana folks remind us, we can also come back to community – to loving relationships among people who are working together for a common purpose. This is also a core leadership practice for our time – building networks of trust and commitment.

A month later, the voice that has stood out most vividly for me is that of Marianne Knuth, whose mid-program email reminded us that renouncing hope is not necessarily existential or heavy, and in fact is a source of strength and joy:

“When we have no hope left we have let go of attachment to outcome. It does not mean that we no longer do the work that we are called to do, or that needs doing, but that we do it without being caught up in how it is all meant to turn out. I feel that in many ways we have been working from this place at Kufunda for many years now. Not a place of despair, but a place of simply doing, not dampened by any external negative contexts – and in that we have found so much joy and gratitude for small yet enormously meaningful shifts in ourselves, in the people we work with, and in their communities.”

Marianne also relates that “simply doing” may not be enough to keep despair at bay when external pressures become overwhelming:

“These days, I am realising that as the situation has worsened – significantly, in Zimbabwe, it is ever harder to stay in this place of no hope, or perhaps I should speak of it as the place of not needing hope…. We need to find ways of continuously returning to the energy and practices of turning on the light. When everyone is crying over what is being lost, or rallying in anger against the injustice, generating a stronger field of despair, we have seen that we need to stay in the light. Stay with the beauty of what is right now, stay in community, stay present, stay open hearted.

“It doesn’t mean we wish to pretend that we are good and happy. Sadness and grief can be a part of that too, but when we come together in circle – even in our grief, we find a sweetness – and a different power – of being simply together in a place of love and appreciation. Steven, a young father at Kufunda, spoke to what faith is in his church – it is the appreciation of what is not yet, believing it, and what’s more, appreciating it, and through this calling it into being…. In the midst of the deepest darkness that we are living through right now, we are learning to appreciate a different way of being with each other; and believing that this light will one day be the way of our land. (But of course it will!) And so our most important task is to stay with that. With a field of light, of companionship, of open heartedness.”

I personally don’t see any contradiction here. When we come together for a week at the Shambhala Institute, when we sit in circle with trusted colleagues, when we prepare a good meal for family or friends, we are “turning on the light” of a tangible current reality and also a possible future. In this case “hope” is a raising of our spirits, not a dependence on outcome. It seems that the practice of authentic leadership is to create these spaces for ourselves and others—to create new social realities that are beyond the distortions of naïve hope and fear. Although we don’t know the outcome of our efforts, or how the story will end, we do know that it is good to be together this way—with dignity, compassion, and courage.