good enough, just as you are

Mark Epstein, psychiatrist and Buddhist teacher [1], relates the story of a friend [2] who’d spent a long time with an Indian teacher. Years later, after the guru had died, the man was back in India, staying at the home of the guru’s most devoted Indian disciple.

“I must show you something,” the disciple said one day. “This is what he left for me.” My friend was excited, of course. Any trace of his teacher was nectar to him. He watched as the elderly man opened the creaking door of an ancient wooden wardrobe and took something from the back of the bottom shelf. It was wrapped in an old, dirty cloth.

Photo credit [3]

“Do you see?” he asked my friend.“No. See what?”

The disciple unwrapped the object, revealing an old, beat-up aluminum pot, the kind of ordinary pot one sees in every Indian kitchen. Looking deeply into my friend’s eyes, he told him, “He left this for me when he went away. Do you see? Do you see?”

“No, Dada. I don’t see,” he replied.

Dada looked at him even more intensely, this time with a mad glint in his eyes. “You don’t have to shine,” he said. “You don’t have to shine.” He rewrapped the pot and put it back at the bottom shelf of the wardrobe.

Epstein’s comment: “My friend had received the most important teaching, one that had it origins in the Buddha’s revolutionary approach. He did not have to transform himself in the way he had imagined: He just had to learn to be kind to himself. If he could hold himself with the care Dada showed while clasping the old pot, it would be enough. His ordinary self . . . was precious enough” [bolding added].

[1] Epstein, M. (2013). The trauma of everyday life. Penguin, 31. [2] Das, Krishna. (2010). Chants of a lifetime. Hay House, 172. [3] © https://www.flickr.com/photos/asitrac/31832297638/