Perfection and Imperfections
You are not under any obligation to be perfect. Alright!
Your incompetencies, your deficiencies are all welcome. They are part of the game. Just be alive and alert. And then even out of your own botched up action, something auspicious will happen. Like Shabri (A woman from the Epic Ramayana), she doesn’t know how to welcome a King. So, all she can do is to taste the fruit and give it to him. It’s a very botched up action. Yet something auspicious is happening out of it.
You are imperfect, alright. But even in your imperfection, there is a lot of perfection. Be sure of that. The demand for perfection is a great arrogance of the ‘ego’.
To demand this out of yourself that I must be perfect is a great arrogance of the ‘ego’. How can ‘I’ be content to anything less than perfection! ‘I’ deserve the ultimate!
No, you don’t deserve the Ultimate. You are alright as you are. And in that, there is perfection. Getting it?
Do whatever you must and dedicate it to perfection.
Dedicate all your imperfections to the perfect. I could do only this much. The body is limited and thought is limited and the body could move only this much. The words could express only this much. Now, the rest is upon you. Take care! I am imperfect and I know that fully well. For me, there are only twenty-four hours in a day. I have only two hands. I have a mind that can have only this much information. And I use words that are so limited in their communication. So, I can do only this much. Now, the remaining is upon you. You take care! And this is perfection.
What do you think…you will be perfect? And what will you look like in your perfection? Lord Krishna with a thousand arms, forty-thousand feet tall! You will be this (some hand gestures), not even six feet tall, over-weight, not very pretty, beldam, having bad breath and uncertain mood.
All those things that come with the body and mind, these are the necessary accompaniment of the body, the mind. I am perfect! What do you do the first thing in class, you belch. Mr. Perfect is belching and if that was not sufficient then Mr. Perfect comes up with a loud and incredibly, smelly fart … and then you say now I am perfect and now I can teach the students.
This is what you are as a body, a mass of flesh which has his own mechanics.
What do you mean by perfection?
Imperfection will always be there, enjoy it.
Live with it! Don’t Identify with it.
Why should you be so harsh upon yourself, tell me?
You were once a rabbit. And the rabbit was always being chased by dogs. The rabbit saw two or three friend rabbits being killed in front of its own eyes by dogs. Now, the rabbit always has to be alert that the dogs might be around. Suspicion is there as the very substance of the rabbit’s mind, something is wrong somewhere. The nose is always twitching, the ears are always trying to sense something. And you were once a rabbit. You are carrying forward that suspicion from there. Why are you being harsh on yourself? It’s none of your faults. It’s alright.
The rabbit had some experiences and those experiences have come to you. It’s DNA, what can you do? Why be so harsh?
Listener: But we see even in the name of spirituality, people say, “You must get rid of patterns and that you must work upon the patterns.”
AP: Remember, Ramana Maharshi died of cancer, Ramakrishna Paramhansa Died of cancer. The patterns of the body cannot be broken.
L: So, feelings are also the pattern?
AP: The pattern of the mind.
One can disidentify that is possible but don’t think that the patterns will go away. Breathing is a pattern, break it!
L: But this is spontaneous.
AP: Every pattern is spontaneous. Show me a pattern which doesn’t appear to be spontaneous. Breathing is a pattern, digestion is a pattern, day and night are a pattern. All these are patterns.
What we call as being human is a pattern. You cannot break it. You can stand at a distance from it, which is alright.
The Buddha died of a stomach disorder.
Identifying with anything is equally disastrous.
Identifying with hatred is disastrous, identifying with affection is equally disastrous.
L: And what if identifying with bliss?
AP: You don’t identify with bliss, you are in bliss; that is another matter. When you identify with something, it’s always from some center. Bliss is the dissolution of that center. You don’t identify with bliss. You don’t say, “I am identifying with the Truth.”
