Perfect, with Room for Improvement

Sea Boots by Andrew Wyeth, 1976

There are flowers in the desert that only bloom at night. Not that I noticed them—at first. My bunkmate at the meditation retreat I just attended was the one who pointed them out to me. She danced all giddy, doing her best to remain silent while beckoning my attention to the bouquet of green shrubbery just outside our sleeping quarters.

I stopped to behold. Out of a flower plot as big as our living room, only two of the peniocereus greggiis had fully blossomed into their moon salutation. On a dozen others, I could see white pedals preparing to burst from the green shells in which they spent their days. I’ve never seen a butterfly emerge from its cocoon. But I imagined it’d be like this.  

The stars blazed from the wild. The Milky Way stretched across the sky like a singular cloudy ribbon, managing to slice the heavens in half. We were so deep and down in the Arizona desert, Mexico was just a long walk away.

How long do you think it will take for the rest of them to bloom? I asked my bunkmate, imagining it as a charming occasion to savor—to witness a floral birth imbued with starry-eyed magic. I’ve always wanted to be the kind of man who patiently waited for things like that.

As night fell, I was tucked snugly into a small bed that seemed to attract not only mosquitoes but also a lone cricket and a curious mouse; I slipped into a lucid dream… I was seated in the retreat’s meditation yurt, in the company of a venerable sage. His long, wispy white beard and matching eyebrows reminded me of Pai Mei, the Shaolin priest and Kung Fu master who taught Uma Thurman the Five-Point-Palm-Exploding-Heart-Technique in Kill Bill. I studied the lined face of my teacher, and asked:

So, even if a million napalm bombs were launched tomorrow and destroyed all of *this* in flames, would everything in the universe still be perfect?

His “yes” was a nod, and nothing more. A sharp ache in my chest pulled my gaze away from him. Not knowing what to do or say, I found my body rising from the ground. I knew, in my bones and fascia, that I no longer cared if I lived or died, and somehow that gave me the courage to take my leave. Just as I reached the threshold of the yurt’s exit, I heard the master ask:

Still perfect, yes!—but, Al, what of the burnt?

The next dawn, the morning jays woke me with their song. The memory of Pai Mei remained vivid. I often ponder dreams. Every person, night after night, escapes the confines of their waking mind and steps into this mysterious realm. With some frequency, my dreams bring me ever-back to the stuff of Pai Mei’s paradoxes, firmly lodged in my psyche like a pebble you can’t get out of your shoe.

Life, in its current state, is utterly perfect; yet there is room for improvement.

As with life, so with me: I’m flawless, with space to grow.

Like those flowers that only bloom at night. They pirouette between the twin faces of reality—being and becoming. For being and becoming are, upon close examination, the same gesture. The resounding echo of a single hand clapping.

Later that day, ascending the desert hill to the *actual* retreat yurt, my feet encased in a layer of red dust, I sensed the ghost of bygone days behind me. It trailed like a predator, poised for the instant I stray from truth and start spinning lies again, far away from her. The sun above made its presence known.

Walking up that hill in the oppressive heat, I became acutely aware that I missed Grace. One time, after cooking a meal together in the foothills of the Sierras, she placed her hand tenderly upon my chest and rubbed it, a familiar gesture of hers. She whispered: Baby, there’s nothing you can ever do wrong. A tear welled up in the corner of my eye, and I averted my gaze. Those words had never been spoken to me before. The weight of their truth was too much to bear. The rest of the night, I could barely face her.

I often reflect on the experience of being someone like Grace, radiating beauty both within and without. I’ve had to devote thousands of hours to meditation, I’ve sought solace and wisdom in rehabs and jungles and with tribes around the world, yet I’m only half as kind as she. How much longer until I become the type of man who takes a moment to savor the unfolding of night flowers? To gaze upon her as she truly is and quietly acknowledge: You are perfection, my dove.

Sometimes, at the rate things are progressing, I wonder if I’ll end up like Ramana, so elevated from the body, little rodents can nibble at your feet without you noticing before someone tells you: Dude, your shit’s infected. Sitting amidst the desert’s emptiness poses no challenge for me. When I want it to, my mind can shred every sensation, emotion, thought, and perception of time and space, reducing them to incinerated bits of confetti, when the experience of my life appears as nothing more than exquisite fireflies briefly illuminating a vast dusky sky. That’s neat.

And yet, once I bid farewell to the retreat and arrived in Tucson for a tardy lunch, the inevitable moment came when I had to switch on my phone. I read the messages waiting for me, listened to voice notes, briefly skimmed the other unremarkable newsletters, and couldn’t help but think: Why are people such fucking tools? Almost instantly, I hated myself for the thought. It became apparent that the wheel of samsara was spinning once again, and I was just as much a part of it as ever.

This time, however, my fear wasn’t as fierce as it once was. I had a home to travel to, a destination in sight. Grace keeps me tethered to this three-dimensional realm. Her presence and our relationship have taught me that true growth, the refinement of something already flawless, unfolds within the context of relationships—for reality is intricately woven with relational strings.

My growth-boundary can no longer be found (solely) when seated half-lotus in a yurt, even though I sought it in that manner for nearly a decade. Today, I find it when: the same commenter continually misinterprets my writing; when my “friend” won’t stop taking digs at me; when Grace erupts in tears because of words I’ve uttered; when I curse Bay Area politicians for essentially legalizing crime; when a writer whose words are as clickbaitingly banal as Austin Kleon is considered erudite; when I see spiritual influencers wearing those big stupid hats; when I realize I was avoiding my phone after the retreat and I remember that aversion of any kind only leads to more addiction, more suffering, more samsara—when all my judgments (or projections, as the case may be) are triggered by friends, foes, tools, or the very land itself.

If growth is a relational process, would that nocturnal flower unfurl her petals if there were no one there to pause and ponder her splendorous bloom?

Perhaps Pai Mei would say: But, Al, what of the bees who eat her nectar?

Having gobbled a rushed meal at the gas station in Tucson en route home to Grace, I peered back at the desert mountains from which I had just come. I realized then that the awareness that experienced those mountains and nocturnal flowers and sensory fireflies and, surely, bees, was the same awareness now suffering deserved heartburn from ill-advised gas station food.

Perfect, I thought, with room for improvement.