Pondering and Pontificating upon Perfection, Padre

"Lightning hits! 
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But areté. Excellence. Dharma! Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric." - Robert M. Pirsig

I was in the shower last night and the hot water on my scalp, being the mysterious Muse that it is, put me into a trance-like state.  I began thinking about the idea of "Perfection".

Is Perfection a noble pursuit, or does trying to be perfect just make you a cocky self-absorbed asshole?

From there, I somehow deduced that there is no such thing as perfect.  The concept of something perfect is wrong.  Not wrong in the moralistic right/wrong, good/evil, sense of the word. Instead, wrong in the mathematical sense.  Does not compute.  Invalid.  Inaccurate.  Not applicable to the situation at hand.

You see, nothing is ever perfect.  There is no such thing as attaining a state of perfection.  Any person, place, thing, object, thought, piece of art - anything at all - can always be improved upon.  It is because we live in a reality of infinite possibility that this is the case.  It is also because the concept of perfection is subjective in nature.  I might think that the 2013 Triumph Speed Triple R is the perfect motorcycle at the moment; however, add a custom exhaust and some custom paint and guess what?  Perfect just got better.  If something perfect can be improved upon, it is logically impossible that it was truly perfect to begin with.

Apply this to the person.  Have you ever met a perfect human being?  Me neither.  It's an impossibility for a human to achieve perfection.  I turn to Robert Pirsig for some help explaining this:

"Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself."

Replace "Quality" with "Perfection" and you should be able to follow what I'm talking about.  (Though I admit it might help if you've read all of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and share my strange disposition for pointless deep thought).  There simply is no such thing as perfection.  It is a false concept.  An impossibility.

Does this mean we should not seek to perfect our lives?  Is chasing something that is impossible to attain a waste of time?

I hope your answer to the questions above was a screaming, emphatic, one fist held high in the air screaming to the gods: "NO!"

The journey of perfecting your life is not a waste of time just because the seeming end-goal is unattainable.  It is much like the quest for the Holy Grail: even though the knights never find the grail, many of the quests can be called successful because it was the quest itself and the lessons learned that were the whole point!  In fact, I submit that knowing and admitting that the goal of perfection cannot be attained, but embarking on the quest anyway, makes the quest even more righteous than if you thought you would someday attain the end-goal.  This is why the righteous atheist has the moral high-ground over the righteous believer of heaven: If you do good only for the promise of reward, that's great, but you're still acting in your own self-interest.  However, if you do good for the sake of doing good alone, with no promise of reward, that's righteousness.

Now, apply this to the Buddhist concept of Enlightenment.  If the Buddhist concept of enlightenment is an impossibility to attain (like perfection or quality), then pursuit of it is even more noble a path to take.  I believe this to be the case.  There's no way Enlightenment  is an end-goal.  If it were, why would the Buddha still meditate and require daily practice even after becoming the Buddha?  Why would the Zen saying go "before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment chop wood carry water?"  Instead, I believe that Enlightenment is more like having a clean floor: it's clean right now because you just swept and mopped it, but you're going to have to sweep and mop every day to keep it that way.  Or, you could say that Enlightenment is like fitness: you're fit now because you exercise and eat healthy every day, but you have to maintain that practice in order to maintain that fitness.  Likewise, Enlightenment is not and end-goal, but instead is a temporary state than can be achieved  for a moment and requires constant practice to return to...

So what's the point of all this philosophizing?

I don't know.  I don't know if there is a point.  Like I said, the Muse decided to kick me in the ass while taking a shower and I've dared to follow the train of thought that she gave me, put it to paper, and put it out to the world.  Like Hemingway said about writing, "There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."  I can't tell you if this is right or wrong or if there is a point or if it makes any sense at all.  I truly don't know.  I'm just bleeding........Not good enough?  Fine.  I'm not even sure if there's supposed to be a point, but I'll make one anyway:

Let's seek Perfection.  Let's seek Enlightenment.  Let's make our lives an epic quest to be the best they can be - even if there is no reward, no piece of cheese at the end of the maze - just because it's the right thing to do.  Take the moral high-ground.  Be righteous in all endeavors.

To start you on your quest of perfecting your life, I leave you this, as well:

Live your life that the fear of death
can never enter your heart.

Trouble no one about his religion.

Respect others in their views
and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long
and of service to your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day

when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting

or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,

for your life, for your strength.

Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.

If you see no reason to give thanks,

the fault lies in yourself.

Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes

wise ones turn to fools and robs their spirit of its vision.

When your time comes to die, be not like those

whose hearts are filled with fear of death,

so that when their time comes they weep and pray

for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.

Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

Tecumseh - Shawnee