You are perfect!

If you are told that you are perfect the way you are, would you be like most people and identify a variety of reasons why that is not true? I certainly do! Yet, many Buddhist teachers explain that you are exactly what you are meant to be at any particular moment. Perfect - even with the supposed flaws. This just seems like a circular argument but wait - it's not. We are meant to have imperfections, flaws (e.g. humanness) and what is going on at any given moment is the way it is meant to be.

That is a very difficult position for most of us to take. This is really so given that our society is full of images, sayings and stories about the various imperfections that we carry around. How many of these can you identify with:

• not smart enough
• not tall enough
• not pretty enough
• don't have the six pack
• can't lift heavy weights
• don't have the right clothes
• don't have a good enough job
• my kids aren't achieving what other people's kids are
• my house isn't decorated, big, located in all the right ways
• I don't live in the right neighbourhood
• I didn't go to the right college

If you look inside what might you see?

These are all themes related to how wrong we are in some way and therefore not deserving of acceptance or recognition by others. Even worse, we are not deserving of acceptance by our own selves. To use a popular phrase, all of the above (and many more) are alternative facts. You really are who you are meant to be.

Does this mean we don't work for change. No. What it does mean is that you will never be perfect as an imperfect society describes that. You are who you are meant to be and that can be the biggest change you need to make - acceptance.

People who have the material goods, the six pack, the clothes - are not happier because of those things. They may well have way more ego as a result of defining success that way -  but that is not happiness.

Meditation is learning to see the self and coming to accept it.

This also does not mean that social action is unnecessary. To the contrary, social action is about the material realities of people who are being persecuted, tormented, beaten, isolated, started and so on. You might notice how much social action matters when you come to accept self and no longer need to boost your own ego or position through judgment of others.

This is hard work. It is easy to fall into the trap of self judgment and self denigration. Not only will you pay a price for this, but so will others whom you judge. Judgment is the action of the self onto others as a way of trying to minimize the impact of self judgment - feeling better at the expense of the other. Meditation is the antidote to permit knowing the self and coming to see you are perfect at the moment.

The other

I am fat

You are fatter

I am unhappy

You are miserable

I can't life 180

You can only lift 159

My car is old

Yours is older

I bought my shoes at The Bay

You must have bought yours second hand

No matter what my problem

Yours is worse

Why do I  not feel better?

Can I see the beauty in you

if the beauty in me is opaque?

© Peter Choate 2017