Hopeful Pessimism: Asking the Dharma Tarot

In these days of international, national, and personal difficulty (I want to say impossibility) I've been eagerly anticipating Mara van der Lugt's new book, Hopeful Pessimism. She argues that optimism taken at its most simplistic, crude manner can be a vice, and hopeful pessimism, linked to activism, not to fatalism and resignation, is a virtue. Hope can be bleak, it can be heavy, but it can also be compatible with determination and perseverance. Hopeful pessimism is the certainty that we will strive for a better world, even if we're doomed. That the striving is worth it. We keep going because that's what a bodhisattva does. There is no other way. 

I asked the cards:

What are the dangers of mindless optimism?

2 of Cups (Bhadda Kapilani & Mahakasyapa). 

Here are partners, people who have fully found their Person. Emotionally they are two--can they extend that further? They may easily start to believe that their life is available to everyone, that every person is in full control over their life--the bootstraps approach, The Secret approach, the ignoring of social justice. They may see people who suffer, who do not feel optimistic, as deficient and sad. Often optimists aren't good at seeing the other side--they're afraid that the bad times will come to them, and thus they pretend that the Law of Attraction is the Way, that all their joy is of their own doing, and not also luck, circumstance, history and privilege. 

What are the dangers of unchecked pessimism?

10 of Incense (Jizo).

Optimists often find pessimists alarming and scary. When people hear that the first noble truth is the truth of suffering, they get upset. When they hear the Dharma Seal that emotions, influenced by delusions, are suffering, they become troubled. Pessimism unchecked by determination and perseverance leads to exhaustion, hopelessness, and utter despair, the thought that there's no point in it all. It's not a place that helps us or others. 

How can the two be integrated in ways that can support ourselves and the world?

8 of Incense (Koans) , Page of Flowers (Shariputra), Queen of Incense (Green Tara).

Mind/breath and body/embodiment come up here. Koans tell us to drop our preconceptions about these concepts that we give opposite names, to drop as many of our preconceptions as possible. We don't know the future, so we cannot know what will be "good," what "bad," in the "end." Koans remind us to not hesitate when difficulties arise and we can't seem to break through. They are a challenge, an invitation. 

The goddess tells Shariputra that his thinking has created his fears. Fear leads his senses to take advantage of him. Shariputra is loyal and focused, but also stubborn about following rules. His stubbornness is tested when a goddess changes him from male to female, when he learns that male and female are ideas, words, with no inherent existence. Shariputra explores the world, always searching, always teachable, always persevering.

Green Tara is committed to work for the benefit of all beings, as quick as lightning, She tells the truth with compassion, so her words don't scare others away.  She embodies enlightened activity, automatically doing what's needed in each moment for the benefit of all beings. Is Green Tara an optimist? I don't know, but I do know that she just keeps doing the work of the bodhisattva, no matter what happens next. If there is good to do, do it. If you can help others, help them. Green Tara is not passive, even when she despairs. She harnesses what van der Lugt calls the "wild power that is harnessed only when life's darkest forces are gathered into the strange alchemy of hope."