"To be beautiful
means to be yourself.
You don't need to be
accepted by others.
You need to accept yourself" — Thich Nhat Hanh
In striving for an authentic life, I realize that accepting myself as I am is the secret to humility. By being humble enough to be myself, I am empowered by unconditional love to accept myself.
By loving myself as I am, I realize that the key to self perfection is the ability to accept myself. No matter how imperfect I am, becoming perfect is a guide to a better life.
However, I do not seek to be perfect. Perhaps I am perfect by accepting myself, warts and all.
It is said that the pure mind is recovered after calming the mind until its pureness is revealed. After calming the mind through breath meditation (samatha), I am able to stay still, for there is no need to keep moving to prove that I am alive.
For I am beautiful enough to humbly accept myself as I walk on this journey called the authentic life.
Reference:
The pure mind mentioned in this article is the amala consciousness, the ninth consciousness of Yogacara Buddhism.
For details on the nine consciousnesses, see: http://operationmeditation.com/discover/levels-of-consciousness-a-buddhist-perspective/
Showing posts with label perfection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perfection. Show all posts
20140117
Perfection (satire)
Some people who know a little about nanotechnology think it could create superior human beings with greater intellect, reasoning abilities and, as a consequence, morality. However, the possible risk of death from taking a pill to cause this evolution into Homo Sapiens Magna has dampened research into the use of nanotechnology to make us smarter and morally superior to the average person.
This is because greater intellect does not preclude insanity, which is validated by schizophrenic people being of a higher intellectual capacity than a person with a mood disorder. Even though bipolar people are highly creative, their tendency toward anxiety in novel situations when not manic tends to moderate their intellect.
As for narcissistic peoples, the only thing they know about the most is themselves, so they would apply their intellect once they confirm what's in it for them, which implies the appearance of high intellect without a corresponding sense of compassion for other people. Were anyone to confront them about their past stupid mistake, things could get really ugly in no time.
Even if we were to evolve, the higher intelligence and reasoning abilities might result in the ability to learn to follow a strict moral code as well as the strong sense of compassion and mercy with the strong risk to develop schizophrenia due to sensory overload caused by too much deep thought.
While it would be cheaper to genetically engineer a human being with superior intelligence and reasoning, it would be impossible to correct the inherent genetic destiny of schizophrenia genetically since most schizophrenia is not due to a genetic predisposition but to not learning successful coping skills in response to stress.
In short, there is no gene that gives you superior coping skills. It has to be learned through experience. Thus, the superior man is not born to cope with life. Rather, he learns how to cope with life through his life experiences.
In conclusion, I reject the nanotechnology and the genetic engineering route for creating the perfect man.
Instead, all it takes is Buddhist learning to perfect the man. This includes daily meditation sessions to develop the calm mind (samatha) necessary to solving koans (vipassana).
Though, the easy way to perfect the man is to chant the Nembutsu or even the Nichiren daimoku "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo". This form of meditation is easy to do, and only requires five minutes or less of chanting daily.
Meditation itself helps Buddhists to discover that Buddha Nature inherent to their own live. Buddha Nature can be considered the perfect qualities of the Buddha which passed into the consciousness stream when he died. Superior intellect, reasoning and morality are three of those perfect qualities.
However, I won't consider this exclusive to Buddhists. Christians use the Sinner's Prayer as an aid to perfect, chanting "God have mercy on me, a sinner" out of humility. Indeed, humility is the essential key to perfection, not the science of technology.
YMMV
This is because greater intellect does not preclude insanity, which is validated by schizophrenic people being of a higher intellectual capacity than a person with a mood disorder. Even though bipolar people are highly creative, their tendency toward anxiety in novel situations when not manic tends to moderate their intellect.
As for narcissistic peoples, the only thing they know about the most is themselves, so they would apply their intellect once they confirm what's in it for them, which implies the appearance of high intellect without a corresponding sense of compassion for other people. Were anyone to confront them about their past stupid mistake, things could get really ugly in no time.
Even if we were to evolve, the higher intelligence and reasoning abilities might result in the ability to learn to follow a strict moral code as well as the strong sense of compassion and mercy with the strong risk to develop schizophrenia due to sensory overload caused by too much deep thought.
While it would be cheaper to genetically engineer a human being with superior intelligence and reasoning, it would be impossible to correct the inherent genetic destiny of schizophrenia genetically since most schizophrenia is not due to a genetic predisposition but to not learning successful coping skills in response to stress.
In short, there is no gene that gives you superior coping skills. It has to be learned through experience. Thus, the superior man is not born to cope with life. Rather, he learns how to cope with life through his life experiences.
In conclusion, I reject the nanotechnology and the genetic engineering route for creating the perfect man.
Instead, all it takes is Buddhist learning to perfect the man. This includes daily meditation sessions to develop the calm mind (samatha) necessary to solving koans (vipassana).
Though, the easy way to perfect the man is to chant the Nembutsu or even the Nichiren daimoku "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo". This form of meditation is easy to do, and only requires five minutes or less of chanting daily.
Meditation itself helps Buddhists to discover that Buddha Nature inherent to their own live. Buddha Nature can be considered the perfect qualities of the Buddha which passed into the consciousness stream when he died. Superior intellect, reasoning and morality are three of those perfect qualities.
However, I won't consider this exclusive to Buddhists. Christians use the Sinner's Prayer as an aid to perfect, chanting "God have mercy on me, a sinner" out of humility. Indeed, humility is the essential key to perfection, not the science of technology.
YMMV
20110610
Self-Disclosure as Therapy
Writing about my life is therapeutic.
In my family of origin, I was deemed the problem child.
At the root of it was the shame my mother experienced when it was learned I was born with two birth defects. Much of this shame was due to her mother-in-law and my father, despite the fact that his brother was born with epilepsy and died of it.
In reaction to being shamed, my mother developed anxiety about it and passed that onto me. I recall being shamed by her, too. Also, my father used to shame me, too.
I remember one incident of being told by my father to straighten out my arms, and being made to feel as though it was abnormal not to have my right arm be straight.
In reporting this, by exposing this hurt to light, it will be impossible to feel ashamed for being born less than perfect.
For I know it to be true that no one thinks of himself as being perfect, for we are all human and prone to error.
Yet there is still room for spiritual healing to help me recover from the childhood years of neglect and abuse, and especially to remain forgiving towards my parents.
In my family of origin, I was deemed the problem child.
At the root of it was the shame my mother experienced when it was learned I was born with two birth defects. Much of this shame was due to her mother-in-law and my father, despite the fact that his brother was born with epilepsy and died of it.
In reaction to being shamed, my mother developed anxiety about it and passed that onto me. I recall being shamed by her, too. Also, my father used to shame me, too.
I remember one incident of being told by my father to straighten out my arms, and being made to feel as though it was abnormal not to have my right arm be straight.
In reporting this, by exposing this hurt to light, it will be impossible to feel ashamed for being born less than perfect.
For I know it to be true that no one thinks of himself as being perfect, for we are all human and prone to error.
Yet there is still room for spiritual healing to help me recover from the childhood years of neglect and abuse, and especially to remain forgiving towards my parents.
20110207
AA Journal Entry: January 11-25, 2011 - Two weeks of Confession and Spiritual Healing
Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 10:20 AM
IMHO, at the root of all my issues is the social conditioning known as never say "No" to others in need.
Yet, to avoid saying "No", often I will stay at home.
Actually, after careful reflection, the reason why I stay home as a recluse has to do with a blatantly honest picture of myself as physically imperfect.
In contrast to this self-perception, I have concluded that a pure heart-mind implies a perfect soul, the concept of which was gifted to me at age 16.
So I had worked at perfecting my mind from an early age, despite the errors which crept up into my life due to shaming.
Age 1, I was hit in the head by my brother with a hoe. My crime was not yielding his fair share of the sandbox on my family's property.
Age 2 or 3, pressured into lighting a match by my brother, I nearly burned the barn down. Both my brother and I suffered for this.
Yet I was innocent then.
Because of those errors' effect, I acted out. Perhaps it was out of a sense of shame that my youth was a descent into madness.
If I defied my mother, then she punished me. I was constantly blamed for anything wrong that happened at home.
Then there were incidents outside of the home which eventually helped me to learn that my acting out would lead to harmful repercussions.
If it weren't for learning to read and write in public school, and for computers later in life, then I might have been in a sorry state.
Today I have learned the wisdom of non-action clearly. While thoughts may come and go, this body remains, another day older and deeply indebted to the mercy that God has shown me through His creation.
Even though each person is equally capable of great good or great evil, I view my currently life as balancing out the innocent evil done as a child.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 10:50 AM
Dear Lord, help me to see my life with the innocent eyes of a man redeemed by God's gift of salvation. I knew that You walked by my side as a child to help me realize today that my life before majority was innocent of guile.
Sunday, 16 January 2011, 2:49 PM
Since God has been with me since the day I was born, then my soul has been with me since then.
Soul is an abstract thing which I should take care not to reify unnecessarily, lest my understanding of it be muddied, rendering a fallacy of which I'll now explain.
The fallacy is that the soul is an object which is precious due to the process of reification, which means to make it a personal object which is more valuable than my life and the world around me.
Reification is also called hypostatization.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 4:43 PM
Life moves in mysterious ways, for which only God knows the reasons.
20100430
The World's Divine (poem)
As a child, the world's divine,
and perfect in every way
for my heart was once unstained.
Then I grew up, and clearly saw
my world is not so perfect,
and such ideals were all in vain.
Through endless practice,
calm insight liberates me
from perfection's stain.
Freed from ideology, one is able
to show respect for all life, and
to see the world as divine, once again.
and perfect in every way
for my heart was once unstained.
Then I grew up, and clearly saw
my world is not so perfect,
and such ideals were all in vain.
Through endless practice,
calm insight liberates me
from perfection's stain.
Freed from ideology, one is able
to show respect for all life, and
to see the world as divine, once again.
20060715
Direct realization and the spiritual journey
It is a defect in language that words suggest permanent realities and people do not see through this deception. But mere words cannot create reality. Thus people speak of a final goal and believe it is real, but it is a form of words and the goal as such is without substance. The one who realizes the emptiness of objects and concepts does not depend on words. Perfect wisdom is beyond definition, and pathlessness is the way to it.
The wise one treads this path for the direct realization of impermanence and for the direct realization of understanding. This, then, is perfect wisdom. Such a one should tread this path knowing that attachment and attractions are neither good nor harmful, even enlightenment is neither good nor harmful, because perfect wisdom is not meant to promote good or harm for that person. However, even though there is no intention of good or harm, it does confer endless blessing. — Prajnaparamita
Reality, not being permanent, thus cannot be accurately described by words.
In doing so, one paints a picture of reality.
Since reality is transient, how accurate is that picture a moment from now, let alone tomorrow? A year from now?
The sooner a person transcends reality to seek enlightenment, the better off she is.
Yet the best way to do so is to ground oneself in reality.
One only falls when one is suspended in the air.
Once you firmly plants your feet upon the ground, the journey of enlightenment begins.
The wise one treads this path for the direct realization of impermanence and for the direct realization of understanding. This, then, is perfect wisdom. Such a one should tread this path knowing that attachment and attractions are neither good nor harmful, even enlightenment is neither good nor harmful, because perfect wisdom is not meant to promote good or harm for that person. However, even though there is no intention of good or harm, it does confer endless blessing. — Prajnaparamita
Reality, not being permanent, thus cannot be accurately described by words.
In doing so, one paints a picture of reality.
Since reality is transient, how accurate is that picture a moment from now, let alone tomorrow? A year from now?
The sooner a person transcends reality to seek enlightenment, the better off she is.
Yet the best way to do so is to ground oneself in reality.
One only falls when one is suspended in the air.
Once you firmly plants your feet upon the ground, the journey of enlightenment begins.
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