Always Perfect

Scott Bradley

Zhouzi took his seat before the assembly and said, "Ever since Jiaozi realized unity by virtue of seeing it in an ant much of the community has been astir trying to duplicate his experience. Your intentions are commendable, and I would not dissuade you from your endeavors. Thus, I have asked Jiaozi to further explain his experience, as much as that is possible, so that your endeavors might proceed with the greatest possibility of success."

Jiaozi addressed the assembly saying, "What I saw in the ant was its perfection in being precisely what it is. Being entirely integrated in itself, it is entirely integrated in Dao. Being an ant, it requires to be nothing other than an ant or the particular ant that it is. It is an expression of Dao, not as other than Dao, but as Dao itself. These are the words; the experience of realizing it in oneself is beyond speech."

"What is true of the ant," he continued, "is also true of all things. All things are an open gate to the realization of unity. It seems only the human, through the gift of self-conscious awareness, consciously fails of this unity, and only thus do we speak of 'gates' and 'realization'. The ant is realized, but does not realize it. The human is realized, does not realize it, but can. Our task is thus to simply realize what is already true of us. This is nothing other than the Master's 'no-conditions-to-meet'."

"What a gift!" exclaimed Zhouzi. "What a burden! All things arise and pass, yet only the human makes of it a suffering. All living things struggle and strive to maintain their existence, but only the human makes of it a burden. Yet the sublime joy of our awareness is commensurate with the greatness of our burden. Even now, just as we are, we are perfect in our expression of Dao, for there is nothing in us that is not that expression."

"Occupy yourself!" exclaimed Jiaozi. "The totality of you is affirmable. In affirmation is transformation. We transform, but never are we other than perfect in our transformations. Seeing it in things we see it in ourselves. The courtyard tree, lightening struck, half-dead, and of truncated crown is utterly perfect just as it is!"

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