By Ann
Having just experienced my familiar difficulty with technology, I am wondering about the accuracy of what I want to talk about with you today… the belief that each of us is perfect, in this second, in the experience of this moment. As I tangle with the headset, placing the mic in my ear, I could easily say “I am not perfect in this moment.” And yet I am, as this moment has already come and gone, and could not be made different. It was perfectly what it is/was.
We all carry expectations of ourselves, about how we “should” be or “should have been” and yet that time has past. What was for a brief time is no more that way. There is no way to make a past moment other than what it was. It just is. And it could not have been any different.
Shunryu Suzuki of San Francisco Zen Center once said: “You are perfect the way you are, and you have more work to do.” What is meant by the latter part of that statement? Does it mean we need to intensify our efforts to do the work? Does it mean to put all our focus on being perfect, without flaw, without error? To some degree we do need to show up and do the work. Whatever that is.
But a Zen teacher recently reframed this latter part…more work to do. He introduced the idea of “the work” being to let go, to allow one’s unfolding, which is a natural part of manifesting who we really are in our perfection. I think that image is really lovely because I am not sure how much of my own life or my reactions I actually control. It/they are just there, and then gone.
Students come to Zen for a lot of reasons: to sleep better, to solve a relationship problem, to make sense of the world, to address something in the physical body. And then, as we sit, we begin to see ourselves from a different perspective. One might notice we are sleeping better, that we reacted from a more centered place, that we begin to accept. We have not consciously “fixed it”, but somehow we have begun to allow ourselves to be accepting and allowing ourselves to be perfectly imperfect. And we feel more peaceful.
In some traditions….like certain streams of Christianity…there is a sense of safety in surrendering to God. In other traditions there is a more intense sense of the individual and the outcome. And then there are other traditions that say: just be who you really are, not who your ego says you “should be.”
None of these are wrong. Each speaks to what is needed, at that time, to each individual. A person, at any time, may need to become more disciplined, another to trust that there is a power or energy or God. Only to flip the need at another appropriate time in their life. Or maybe it’s some combination
I do hope you will hold on to this: You are perfect as you are, and you have more work to do. Accept and allow your unfolding. This is the work.
Hakone Zendo 