Hope versus Faith The experience of our day-to-day living situation consists of dissatisfaction, questioning, pain, depression, aggression, passion. All these are real, and we have to relate with them. Having a relationship with this may be extremely difficult. It’s an organic operation without any anesthetics. If we really want to get into it, we should be completely prepared to take a chance and get nothing but tremendous disappointment, tremendous hopelessness. Hope is the source of pain, and hope operates on the level of something other than what there is. We hope, dwelling in the future, that things might turn out right. We do not experience the present, do not face the pain or neurosis as it is. So the only way that is feasible is developing an attitude of hopelessness, something other than future orientation. The present is worth looking at. Student: I wonder whether hope is necessary. All the other creatures love life and strive for happiness. I don’t see why man should have no hope. Chögyam Trungpa: Well, man predominantly misuses his power, and even enjoys his hopefulness in the wrong way. Man is the only animal that dwells in the future. Student: One has to plan. There is a future. It approaches all the time. Chögyam Trungpa: Well, that’s the whole point. You don’t have to be purely living in the present situation without a plan, but the plan in the present depends only on the future’s aspect within the present situation. You can’t plan a future if you don’t know what the present situation is. You have to start from now to know how to plan. Student: Would you explain the different between your concept of faith and hope? Chögyam Trungpa: Faith and hope, did you say? Well, faith is a more realistic attitude than hope is. Hope is a sense of lacking something in the present situation. We are hopeful about getting better as we go along. Faith is that it’s okay in the prsent situation, and we have some sense of trust in that.
— From “Dome Darshan,” in The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume Three, page 539, 545-546.