One Time, One Meeting

Shundo Aoyama Roshi

If there is one commonly held value in our divided culture, it is the idea—and the ideal—of perfection. We would like to eat the perfectly cooked burger (or steak, or ratatouille). We would like to go on the perfect vacation. We desire perfect health, a perfect relationship, a perfect retirement, and even a perfect death, whatever that might be. That the goal of perfection, whether in work or love, is elusive and for many unattainable only heightens the intensity of the struggle.

To this familiar but often destructive system of values, Zen teachings offer a salutary alternative. In her book Zen Seeds, the Soto Zen priest Shundo Aoyama Roshi (b. 1933) describes the characters on a hand-painted scroll hanging in a tea house. Some of the characters are misaligned, and one is missing. As Aoyama explains, when “ordinary people” practice calligraphy, they “go to great pains to achieve perfect alignment and would consider missing characters inexcusable.” But from the vantage point of classical Zen teachings, perfection is not necessarily a virtue. “When the line wavers,” wrote Zen master Murata Juko (1422-1502), founder of the tea ceremony, “and characters are omitted . . . the effect is superior.” And, in the words of Yoshida Kenko (1284-1310), “When everything is carefully regulated, it’s boring.” By contrast, imperfection can be a source of interest, truth, and beauty, whether the context be visual art, the natural world, or the conduct of everyday life.

According to Zen aesthetics, such works of art as brush painting and ceramic wares reflect the impermanence and imperfection inherent in existence. Like such ordinary objects as ceramic bowls and wooden utensils, artistic forms have arisen from formlessness and are devolving, however slowly, into that same formless state. “Your cup,” an old Zen saying reminds us, “is already broken.” Accordingly, the beauty of a work of art resides as much in its transience and its perceived flaws as in its purity or perfection. Viewing artistic works in this way, we can value them at any stage of their creation, duration, and eventual dissolution. And rather than judge them by some Platonic notion of perfection, we can endeavor to appreciate them just as they are.

This same principle applies to the natural world. As Aoyama observes, “In Japan when we talk about cherry-blossom viewing, cherry blossoms must be in full bloom; if we talk about moon-viewing, it is understood that the moon has to be full. But it is possible to enjoy buds before they open, or to enjoy the scene of the petals floating to the ground in the wind or, even more so, to savor the bare trees in winter, bereft of leaves. Rather than a bright moon in a cloudless, clear night sky, what about a moon adorned with clouds?”

Beyond the supposed imperfections in art and nature—the misaligned characters, the clouds across the moon—there are the imperfections intrinsic to the human condition. These may manifest in the world external to the self and beyond its control: the flight delayed for hours, the household appliance that fails in a year or two; the uneven public sidewalk. They may be observed in our ever-aging bodies: in skin no longer pliable, in eyesight sorely in need of correction. Most disturbingly, imperfection may be experienced in our inner, emotional lives: in the ups and downs of our emotional thermometers, the fear and courage, anxiety and calm, anger and tenderness that may occupy our hearts in a single day or even a single hour. Whatever states of mind we may experience, lasting perfect happiness and enduring equanimity are unlikely to be among them.

To accept such imperfections, wholeheartedly and unconditionally, is not only a way of coping in times as perilous as ours. It is also a mark of spiritual maturity. In an essay on that theme, the Vipassana teacher Jack Kornfield identifies spiritual maturity with “nonidealism,” by which he means a view of ourselves and our lives that does not compare them to some posited or inherited ideal. “The mature heart,” he writes, “is not perfectionistic: it rests in the compassion of our being instead of in ideals of the mind. Nondualistic spirituality does not seek a perfect world; it does not seek to perfect ourselves, our bodies, our personalities. . . . Thus, it does not seek to gain or attain in spiritual life, but only to love and be free.”

To be sure, if your New Year’s resolution is to seek a perfect world, or to perfect your imperfect body, more power to you. But what Kornfield is suggesting, and what Zen practice over time confirms, is that abstract ideals of the perfect, whether in art, nature, or human relationships, are not only the “enemy of the good.” They can also undermine the deeper aims of meditative practice: to live as wisely as we can and to cultivate compassion for ourselves and our fellow beings, however imperfect we may be.

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Shundo Aoyama, Zen Seeds: Essential Buddhist Teachings on Effort, Gratitude, and Happiness (Shambhala, 2019), 19-20.

Jack Kornfield, “Spiritual Maturity,” A Path with Heart (Bantam, 1993), 309.