SERMON: Divine Imperfection

Donna Birdwell

July 18, 2004

OUTLINE

Chalice Lighting: Hafiz, “A Hole in a Flute”

Meditation: Prajnaparamita

Dharma Talk

In the West, the concept of “perfection” runs strong, and when we say the word "imperfection" we do so with a frown of disapproval. When we buy roses, we want them to be perfect. Same with diamonds — if it has an “imperfection” it is of lesser value.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions — “Perfection: [is] A term meaning ‘completeness’, in which sense it is only absolutely appropriate to God...” Matthew 5.48 shows Jesus teaching his followers to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect

There is no entry in this Dictionary for “imperfection.” Apparently, it is not generally recognized as a divine ideal or religious concept.

In the so-called “Enlightenment” period of European history, spurred on by the huge influx of knowledge accumulated during the Age of Discovery, there was an implicit expectation that the study of nature would reveal God — that nature could be studied as the most perfect manifestation of the perfect mind of God. Even Darwin concluded his great work “On the Origin of Species”: “As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.” (quoted in Stephen Jay Gould, “Full House.”)

But the more scientists have studied nature, the more disappointment we have experienced with this search for perfection. Nature did not seem so perfect — there was not a perfect order or hierarchy of beings. The tidy scheme of Carolus Linnaeus in classifying all living things (the foundation of modem taxonomy) turned out to be messier than anticipated. There were creatures discovered on the far shores of South America that did not seem to fit their plan. There were continua of specimens that seemed impossible to divide up clearly into distinct species. The most perfectly adapted — those structured to perfectly fit in with their existing environment — were shown to be also the most fragile, most vulnerable to demise with environmental shifts and changes.

Since Darwin's time, we have also learned that the grist of natural selection — which Darwin saw as the essence of “progress toward perfection” — was neither will nor design, but rather an untidy process called mutation. Mistakes. Imperfections in the process of transferring genetic instructions from generation to generation.

Perfection is not inherent in nature. It is only a concept that we ourselves have invented — and a concept much more deeply ingrained in western thinking than in eastern thinking.

It seems that our very desire for perfection leads to disappointment... There are indeed, moments of great beauty and delight mow experience that we often call "perfect". We hear of people searching for the perfect sunset, the perfect wave, the perfect margarita. But perfection is elusive and never lasts, and so most of the time we are disappointed, left yearning for that fleeting moment of perfection, sorry for its dissipation,... At a butterfly farm on the Island of Aruba earlier this month, I learned about an Indonesian moth that spends 5 months as a caterpillar, another 8 months locked in a chrysalis — and then lives only five days as a gloriously colored and patterned moth. But during that 5 days, it lays eggs (or fertilizes them, depending on its sex), so that over the course of the next year, and the next and the next, the process of being an Indonesian moth continues. It is after all the egg and the nasty looking caterpillar and the silently transforming chrysalis as well as the winged-beauty-that-makes-us-catch-our-breath — all of these are one creature, one being.

In eastern thinking, there is much greater appreciation of imperfection, and nowhere is it more beautiflully expressed than in the Japanese aesthetic known as wabi-sabi.

According to artist Karin Ulrike Soika the origin of wabi-sabi may be traced back to “the sixteenth-century ... Japanese tea master and Zen monk, Sen no Rikyu” of whom the following anecdote is told:

“Sen no Rlkyu desired to learn The Way of Tea. He visited the Tea Master, Takeno Joo. Joo ordered Rikyu to tend the garden. Eagerly Rikyu set to work. He raked the garden until the ground was in perfect order. When he had finished he surveyed his work. He then shook the cherry tree, causing a few flowers to fall at random onto the ground. The Tea Master Joo admitted Rikyu to his school.”

Wabi-sabi is actually two distinct concepts linked together.

WAN: "... wabi is literally poverty, but it came to refer not to the absence of material possessions but to the non-dependence upon material possessions. ... Wabi is simplicity that has shaken off the material in order to relate directly with nature and reality. This absence of dependence also frees itself from indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity. Wabi is quiet contentment with simple things. (And, as such,) ... a way of life or spiritual path. ... The life of the hermit came to be called wabizumai in Japan, essentially "the life of wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity.”

SABI: "Sabi (is a descriptive term) suggest(ing) natural processes resulting in objects that are irregular, unpretentious, and ambiguous. The objects reflect a universal flux of "coming from" and "returning to." They [are marked by] ... impermanence" and asymmetry.

Leonard Koren (Wabi-Sabl for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers)

3 principles of the "wisdom of wabi-sabi" —

• All things are impermanent. [Like the Indonesian moth, or the impossibility of stepping into the same river twice...]
• All things are incomplete.

• When is a plant "complete"? As a seed — this contains all the DNA the plant will ever have? As a leafy shoot, capable of photosynthesis? As a bower of blossoms? Branches laden with fruit?
• Sexually reproducing creatures are never complete ... always either male or female.
• How does an artist know when he is finish? Some actually paint several paintings on the same canvas before finding a point at which to stop... My own personal experience of incompleteness is the laundry...]

These principles seem diametrically opposed to those of the West, which is rooted more in the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection.

One observer notes:

"Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things."

Devotees of wabi-sabi prefer the ceramic pitcher with the chipped handle. Practitioners may intentionally incorporate small cracks or asymmetrical daubs of paint. The aesthetic is also expressed in the collection and arrangement of natural objects — when Sen no Rikyu shook the cherry tree, he invited imperfection into the Tea Master's garden (wabi­sabi beauty).

I have found that over the years, I have collected certain natural objects — rocks in particular — which I now acknowledge that I find beautiful because of the imperfections in them. (Show examples.)

The wabi-sabi philosophy applies to life as welt. Again as westerners in particular, we seem to always be seeking an unattainable perfection. Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book "Going Home" writes about our desires to "go to a place where there is no suffering, where there is only peace and happiness." You may be tempted to consider that the Kingdom of Heaven is such a place, that the Pure Land is such a place. We tend to believe that there is a place where we can go by abandoning, or leaving behind, this world full of suffering, confusion, and pollution. The pollutions that afflict us are anger and hatred, despair, sorrow and fear. When you suffer so much, the tendency to want to leave it behind becomes very strong. I don’t want to be here any more, I want to get out. "Stop the world, I want to get off."

There are two ways in which this desire for the perfect life is flawed.

First, says Thich Nhat Hanh: "Look deeply and you will touch the fact that happiness and well-being cannot be separated from suffering and ill-being.... If you don't know what hunger is, you would never know the pleasant feeling of having something to eat." (etc.)

BUT: there is more to it than that. There is a second point: "... love cannot exist without suffering. In fact, suffering is the ground on which love is born. If you have not suffered, if you don’t see the suffering of people or other living beings, you would not have love..."

The Dalai Lama says that we all desire happiness, although "suffering and pain are inalienable facts of life." "... it is our experience of suffering which connects us to others. It is the basis of our capacity for empathy." (133 in Ethics).

America Buddhist nun Pema Chodron speaks often of the rich, juicy stuff of our lives that is in fact our path to enlightenment. "Don’t worry about achieving," she says. "Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can."

Buddhists like the symbolism of the lotus: This enormous, exquisitely beautifttl blossom stretching to the sky, nodding gracefully above its round green leaves — but rooted firmly and inextricably in the muck and rotting mess at the bottom of the pond. We, too, blossom wonderfully in the compost heap of our own lives, our own society, our own messy families and jobs and relationships. It could not happen any other way.

Suffering is not a defect of the universe nor some punishment for flaws in ourselves — it is a reflection of our misguided aspiration for something called perfection.

If we let go of this desire for perfection, abandon all hope of achieving perfection, and instead embrace the world, ourselves and one another as it and we really are (warts and all!), we may find liberation, freedom to live no longer separate from the world and one another, but firmly anchored in the wabi-sabi truth of mud and water and air and light and lotus blossoms. I will conclude with a thought that has stuck with me for a long time now, though I cannot for the life of me remember where I first heard it:

Do not say that the crack in the bell is an imperfection; it is how the light gets in.

TEXT of READINGS

"A Hole in a Flute" — by Hafiz

I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through —
Listen to this
Music.
I am the concert
From the mouth of every
Creature
Singing with the myriad
Chords.

MEDITATION

Prajnaparamita, the wisdom (prajna) that has reached (ita) the other shore (param) is the wisdom that leads to complete awakening.

{My editing of the translation of the Prajnaparamita Sutra from the Chinese by Thich Nhat Hanh, based on the above definition... }

The Bodhisattva Avalokita, while moving in the deep course of the Transcendent Wisdom, shed light on the five aggregates and found them all empty. After this insight, he overcame all pain.

"Listen, Sarlputra, form is emptiness, emptiness Is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same thing is true with feeling, perception, mental functioning, and consciousness.

"Here, Sariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor immaculate, neither increasing nor decreasing. Therefore, in emptiness there is neither form, nor feeling, nor perception, nor mental functioning, nor consciousness; no eye, or ear, or nose, or tongue, or body, or mind; no form, no sound, no smell elements (from sight to mind-consciousness), no interdependent origins (from ignorance to death and decay), no extinction of death and decay, no suffering, no origination of suffering, no extinction, no path, no wisdom, no attainment. "Because there is no attainment, the Bodhisattva, based on the Transcendence of Wisdom, finds no obstacles for his mind. Having no obstacles, he overcomes fear, liberating himself forever from illusion and assault and realizing transcendent Nirvana. All Budddhas in the past, present, and future, thanks to this Transcending Wisdom, arrive to full, right, and universal Enlightenment.

"Therefore one should know that the Transcendent Wisdom is a great mantra, Is the highest mantra, is the unequaled mantra, the destroyer of all suffering, the incorruptible truth. A mantra of Prajnaparamlta should therefore be proclaimed. It is this:’Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, gone together to the other shore. O Awakening! All hail!"’

Om, gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, swaha.