When we contemplate the future, it may seem like we have only two options: dread, or hope. If we can’t summon hope, we may avoid thinking about the future at all in order to escape dread. Fortunately, the Buddhist Middle Way offers an alternative. Instead of getting stuck in dread or clinging desperately to hope, we refuse to get caught in either extreme. We can walk a dynamic path of practice, facing the future with eyes open while remaining responsive and free.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Future: A Gloomy Outlook for 2022
The Buddhist Middle Way as a Third Option Besides Two Extremes
Extremes When We Contemplate the Future
The Middle Way When We Contemplate the Future
Finding the Middle Way Between Hope and Dread, Denial and Obsession
Here we are in a new year, 2022. When you think about it, the designated of a “new” year, arriving on a particular date, is an arbitrary human idea. However, the concept of the new year is culturally significant – a time when we reflect on the past year, on the state of our lives, on what might come in the next year, and on what we might want to change in our lives in order to keep them on the course we want them to be going.
The Future: A Gloomy Outlook for 2022
Across the planet right now, it seems there is a significant amount of trepidation about what 2022 will bring us. Hope can seem pretty hard to come by, and even if we can summon hope, it has defiant edge to it rather than simply being a bright and happy feeling. The common attitude about 2022 was perfectly conveyed in a new year’s cartoon by Pat Byrnes, which I encountered in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but which you can see online (I purchased a copy for the Zen Studies website). In it, as the baby 2022 is arriving, he encounters old man 2021 on his way out. Following the traditional imagery, over the year 2021 has gotten old and wizened, sporting a long white beard and leaning on a staff. Traditionally, of course, 2022 would be a cherubic baby, fresh and eager for his coming year, but in this case 2022 already has a long white beard, a staff, and puffy, sad, tired eyes. 2021 says to him, “You talked to 2020, didn’t you.”
If you don’t relate to this sentiment and are instead full of cheer and hope, good for you! I’m not here to rain on your parade. However, at least to some extent you probably relate to this. You may have stressful things going on in your personal life, but even if you don’t, there are many things to worry about as we face a new year: The worsening climate crisis, including crazy storms, heat waves, floods, and fires; the fact that our governments seem incapable of taking responding to the climate crisis anywhere near fast enough; the 2022 elections in the U.S. and the degradation of democracy around the world; and, of course, ongoing uncertainty about the pandemic.
Every one of us has an attitude toward the future, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We can’t not have some kind of attitude, even if all we’re doing is trying not to think about what’s going on. Your thoughts about the future may be full of dread, resulting in anxiety, depression, pessimism, despair, cynicism, or anger. Your everyday life may be affected, as dread preoccupies your thoughts, affects your decisions, and impacts your relationships, sleep, health, and happiness.
Or maybe you experience some of these feelings – anger, despair – when you allow yourself to think about the future, but most of the time, you avoid thinking about it. You just concentrate on what’s in front of you, avoid reading the news, and try to enjoy your life as best you can. In the background, though, dread lingers – a subtle source of stress, a gloomy backdrop against which the drama of your life plays out.
Or, perhaps, your outlook is positive! “We’ll figure things out. It will all be okay. It’s not as bad as we think. People have always thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket.” I’m not here to dismantle your positive worldview if you have one! But Zen is about facing the truth… so it’s important to examine, for yourself, whether some part of your positive outlook might be denial. Not that I would blame anyone for using denial to avoid despair.
The Buddhist Middle Way as a Third Option Besides Two Extremes
What attitude should we take toward the future as Zen practitioners?
In early December (2021), I released an episode called “What Does Practice Look Like When Your Country Is Broken?” In that episode, I talked about how Buddhism doesn’t promise a rosy future of peace on earth, now or in the future. Or in some kind of permanent heaven realm. Instead, when asked why the world can be such a tough place sometimes, Buddhism says, “What did you expect?” That may sound like a bleak and unhelpful answer, but it offers strength and freedom. I explained that December episode (Episode 188) how valuable it is to free ourselves from dependency on our narrative about what’s going on, and how we can find courage and empowerment by balancing the three practice ingredients of Facing the Truth (Bearing Witness), Staying Strong (Taking Care), and Taking Action (Engaging the World with Generosity).
Today I want to discuss what attitude toward the future is authentic, helpful, and healthy? What attitude helps us face the truth but also stay strong and take appropriate action? In particular, I want to frame my answer to these questions in terms of the Buddhist Middle Way.
The Buddhist Middle Way means refusing to be caught in extremes, but it is not some watered-down, middle-of-the-road compromise.
The Buddha’s very first teaching was about the Middle Way. He arrived at this piece of wisdom through his own experience; early on, the Siddhartha Gautama’s life was one of extreme indulgence. He led a life of luxury, protected from all hardship and ugliness, but still was not truly satisfied. Then Siddhartha spent many years engaging in hardcore ascetic practice, coming close to starvation and striving in meditation to within an inch of his life. Eventually, however, he concluded that neither the path of indulgence nor the path of asceticism led to the kind of spiritual insight and liberation he was after. Instead, he remembered a natural form of meditation he had spontaneously entered as a child, and thought, “Hmmm, maybe that’s the way.” He ate enough food to give him strength and then meditated until he achieved the enlightenment he had been seeking so long.
After awakening, in the very first sermon he gave, the Buddha began by describing the futility of the two extremes of sensual pleasure and self-affliction, and said he had avoided both extremes and realized the Middle Way. The Middle Way he described was the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhist practice, “leading to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding.”[i]
In other words, the Middle Way the Buddha was talking about was not simply about eating a moderate amount of food, or making a medium amount effort in practice. The Middle Way was totally different option, a path unto itself. You might call the “Middle Way” the “Third Way” or the “Other Option You Are Likely to Overlook as Long as You’re Caught Up in Duality.”
Extremes When We Contemplate the Future
We should contemplate the Middle Way whenever we feel stuck with only two bad options. In the case of our attitude toward the future:
One extreme, one bad option, is dread. We cultivate dread when we contemplate all the bad things that can happen or are likely to happen. We can do this with respect to our personal lives, trying to anticipate disaster and imagining how terrible it will feel. If we read or watch the news and try to inform ourselves about what’s going on in the world, it can seem like the number of awful things down the road vastly outnumber the positive. The forces of good can seem small and weak compared to the unstoppable forces of greed, hate and delusion.
The other extreme conditional hope. Conditional hope is clinging to a narrative about how everything will be okay no matter what. It’s based on a belief that certain positive outcomes are likely or even guaranteed. For example, conditional hope is a belief that technological interventions will prevent climate chaos from causing unimaginable suffering, or that our democracy will miraculously heal itself over the course of the next year, or that someone you love will inexplicably escape from a terminal disease. Some of us find this hope very difficult to come by. When this is the case, it’s discouraging to think the only other option is living with dread.
If you happen to feel conditional hope, if you have a generally positive outlook on life and deep trust in human institutions and in your own capacity to deal with whatever comes, that’s fine. I’m not suggesting you should abandon your optimism. Please, keep it and be grateful for it! However, I invite you to explore conditional hope and ask whether there is value in also cultivating the Middle Way with respect to your attitude toward the future, which I will describe in a moment. Conditional hope can be fragile. What happens when disaster strikes? Perhaps your conditions will be fortunate throughout your life, but what kind of conditional hope can you imagine feeling if, like so many people in the world right now, you were facing war, oppression, grinding poverty, or unjust imprisonment, with no end in sight?
It isn’t pleasant to contemplate the misery in the world, or to imagine yourself in terrible circumstances, I know. I’m not trying to depress you. However, if we cling to a positive outlook because we believe the only alternative is dread and despair, we may end up caught in denial. Pay attention to whether maintaining your optimism requires you to avoid or dismiss information or alternative points of view. In order to keep your peace of mind, do you need to stay away from the news and those who are trying to call attention to injustice, destructive greed, corruption, and the severity of the climate crisis? If so, maintaining your conditional hope is requiring a lot of effort, and means you have to keep reality at arm’s length. Fortunately, there is a better way.
Before I get that better way, though, let me offer another way to frame the extremes when it comes to our attitudes toward the future. Dread versus conditional hope describes our feelings, but obsession versus denial describes our activities. When we’re obsessed with what might happen in the future, we dwell on the topic a lot. We feel compelled to inform ourselves about all the possibilities, past the point necessary for making good decisions. With a morbid fascination we imagine doom-like scenarios, and maybe we also feel compelled to prepare for them. We exhaust ourselves emotionally, trying to anticipate and place ourselves in relationship to the misery happening all over the world now and in the future.
The extreme of denial means we try not to think about the future at all. This requires shutting out many sources of information, whether it’s a friend expressing anxiety or reading the newspaper. While our Buddhist practice of mindfulness encourages us to live in the present moment, and to realize only this moment is real, mindfulness does not preclude contemplation of the future – and how we should respond to it or plan for it – as the activity of this moment. Denial, on the other hand, has a hard edge to it because it’s protecting us from mental and emotional distress.
The Middle Way When We Contemplate the Future
What is the Middle Way, then, when we contemplate the future? If dread and hope, or obsession and denial, are the extremes, what is the “Third Way” or the “Other Option You Are Likely to Overlook as Long as You’re Caught Up in Duality?”
As the Buddha said in his first teaching, the Middle Way is our path of practice. It is not one attitude. It is not a fixed view. Our practice is to live deliberately in order to minimize suffering, and maximize real happiness, peace, and wisdom. As we contemplate the future, our practice should include awareness of the extremes of dread vs hope, obsession vs denial. If we cultivate mindfulness of our own experience, we can notice when we’re getting caught in either extreme, and then ask ourselves, what is the Middle Way? What is it to live fully in this situation without getting caught?
Our practice attitude might be best described by our physical and mental attitude, or posture, in zazen. We sit unmoving and centered, but not rigid. As we sit upright, we are neither anticipating nor avoiding anything, but letting things come. Our minds and hearts open, we aim to be attentive and intimate with reality. We shut nothing out, but we also turn the light within and explore our own experience. Reality includes our thoughts and feelings about the future, but we can recognize the truth of those thoughts and feelings without having to believe we are right.
As we sit, we practice letting go of the effort to anticipate and control, which is a manifestation of our sense of small self. Over time, we can gain confidence in the life force of which we are a part. Just as we respond to this moment, we will respond to future moments. Things will arise, some of them will be painful, some of them wonderful, responses will arise within us, and things will pass away.
Experience in practice, in getting familiar with our own minds, we become more able to face the truth but refrain from distancing ourselves from that truth by creating a narrative – either a positive one, or a negative one. In Zen we call this cultivating “don’t know” mind, and it’s important to realize this is not denial or passivity or refusal to engage. It’s not “I don’t want to know” mind! Instead, “don’t know” mind includes within “the truth” that we’re only operating with a limited set of facts, a limited point of view, and the only guarantee we have is that the future won’t unfold exactly the way we expect even if the things we dread come true.
In addition, through our zazen, through our practice in daily life, we can access a sense that everything will be okay. You might call this hope, but it’s an unconditional hope. It’s not based in a belief that any particular thing is going to happen or not happen. It’s based in a deep faith in practice, a deep faith that whatever happens, there we will be, and until our last breath we have the option to practice. Human civilization may crumble but this faith will remain intact.
What solace can practice give us as we contemplate the future? In Episode 188 – What Does Practice Look Like When Your Country Is Broken? I talked about how we can learn to ground ourselves in the present moment and deepen our connection to the independent dimension of reality, the dimensionless dimension of this moment, in which nothing is compared to anything else. There is just this, a seamless, luminous reality within which life plays out beautiful and tragic dramas. In this moment, free from expectation or comparison, what else would there be?
Finding the Middle Way Between Hope and Dread, Denial and Obsession
Practically speaking, how do we find the Middle Way between hope and dread, denial and obsession? We start by reminding ourselves that the Middle Way is not a fixed place, it’s a path of practice. It’s probably best described as not getting stuck in extremes. Not falling into duality. Being real.
You may find it helpful to think of your practice, as I do, as containing three essential ingredients. As I’ve discussed a number of times (TK), the ingredients are facing the truth (or bearing witness), staying strong (taking care), and taking action (engaging the world with generosity). Only you can know how that balance should manifest in your life, and it’s a balance that has to be maintained. That’s why I like to call these “ingredients” – like you’re constantly cooking your life. As conditions change, your practice will need to change.
Here are some practice questions to explore as you seek the Middle Way in your attitude toward the future:
How much time do you spend obsessing over the future – reading the news, the predictions, imagining what might happen in your personal life or in the world? Can you recognize this as obsessing, and invite yourself to balance this with Zen practice – zazen, time with Sangha, mindfulness, Dharma study, spaciousness? Or taking a temporary break from the news, or balancing regular media with sources that deliberately emphasize positive stories and innovations? The important thing is to expand your experience beyond obsession and dread so you can free yourself from an extreme and open up to other possibilities.
Or… do you try to avoid thinking about the future because it’s just stressful or depressing? Are you keeping yourself informed as a citizen? Are you living your bodhisattva aspiration when it comes to the beings suffering in the world, or to our children’s future? Are you sticking your head in the sand because you don’t know what else to do? Can you recognize this as getting caught in an extreme, and ask what other option there is? Can you experiment with exposing yourself to the truth a little bit at a time, and then taking the attitude of zazen toward it? Letting the truth be, letting your responses arise and pass, recognizing your innate strength, recognizing how you don’t need to have all the answers? Exploring the miracle of how it actually feels better to allow things to flow through your experience instead of bracing yourself against them or shutting them out?
Or… if you find yourself clinging to a shallow narrative of hope, pushing away the details and the warnings in favor of a vague confidence that the forces of good will win out no matter what happens, no matter what you do, can you recognize this, also, as getting caught in an extreme? Note: This is questioning you do within yourself, and it requires courage. It’s not a questioning you inflict on others when you judge their hope to be shallow and you want to wake them up. Each of us has to do our own practice. Is your hope a subtle form of denial? Is it keeping you from facing the truth and responding appropriately? Can you relax your grip on your positive narrative a little bit, in favor of resting in “don’t know” mind for a while? It doesn’t mean embracing a negative narrative. It means opening up to intimacy with life.
We are living in stressful and frightening times. Are they more stressful or frightening than any previous age? Who knows? Although I believe humankind is facing an existential crisis for the first time, and this has a profound affect on all of us whether we’re conscious of it or not. We either get our act together or we face a very scary future. We can’t even count on nature to continue in her implacable rhythms while we humans figure things out. It can seem like there is nothing in this world to rely on. However, this existential crisis for humanity may end up being a turning point, a time of positive transformation that will defy our imaginations.
Whatever happens, we will be happiest and best equipped to respond if we practice the Middle Way, refusing to get stuck in extremes, neither living with dread nor clinging to conditional hope, neither living in denial nor obsessing over the possible negative futures. Facing the truth, staying strong, taking action, being real.
Endnote
[i] “Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion” (SN 56.11), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.than.html .