Sifu

The first part of the title is “The greatest news to all life” and the second is “Life is perfect”. That is truly the greatest news, but in reality we all know that all life is not perfect. We all experience a lot of suffering. I passed through a lot of suffering with broken legs and so forth; I have experienced many difficult times. Matti has had many accidents and when I met him he was usually very tired, but now he’s much more active. And many others have had many types of suffering: Sean Pig was suffering because of a girl he tried to keep hold of, but who slipped away.

So, we experience much suffering in many different ways, we see many different troubles in this world, and so that doesn’t match the idea of “The greatest news: Life is perfect”. There is a contradiction. Does anyone know what it is?

Giant Dog

Life is perfect because it allows for all potential. It’s not limited to just suffering.

Sifu

Could you make your answer more precise?

Giant Dog

Life is perfect because every consciousness has the ability to make their life perfect. Life can have suffering, it can have joy, but basically it has the potential to do anything, that’s why it is perfect.

Otherwise, if it only had suffering, and life’s whole purpose was for people to suffer, then clearly it wouldn’t be perfect. But if life has suffering and you can still experience joy, there is a contrast in your ability to experience both and obviously follow the one you find more joy in. That’s why it’s perfect: every life has the opportunity to do that.

Sifu

Ok. Anyone want to summarise what he said?

Phar Lap

Life is what you make it. Is that it, summarised?

(Laughter)

Sifu

Anyone else?

Sean Pig

Because you can make life perfect even though there’s all the potential for not-perfect. That’s what makes it perfect.

Sifu

So, the potential to make your existence perfect is in every life. That’s what you’re trying to say, right?

Sean Pig

Yeah.

Sifu

Let’s go a little bit deeper to see the complete view. When we say life is perfect, of course you automatically think from your ego point of view, “My life”. You think, “My life is not perfect, so how can life be perfect?”

When Buddhism talks about “life”, it is not your life or my life: it’s all lives together. And why are “all lives together” perfect? They are perfect because they represent a complete picture of every life in every possibility through their own learning and choices.

Sometimes they choose blindly so they have a bad life. Or they choose something half-blind. Then they get something right and feel enjoyment for some part, and they get something wrong and they feel suffering for some part. And sometimes they choose something completely correct and at that moment they enjoy it: a lot of pleasure, a lot of joy, and a lot of self-confidence.

So, all possibilities are in all our choices. It’s not in the future; it’s here now. It’s present already, perfect in every different space and every different life. So, if you look at the whole picture, everything is already perfect, but the perfect includes the negative: both good and bad are there.

Our instinctive idea of perfection is that there’s no bad. No, that’s not “perfect”. Perfection means that everything is there, including Hell, even something brutal or mean. There are people who murder, there are people who abuse kids, and there are people who will use politics or the military to kill millions of people just for greed. There’re so many crazy things that happen in life.

But bad things are like fertiliser, shit. Shit is bad. But if you know how to change something bad into something good, what happens? Fertiliser becomes sweet fruit.

All the good and all the bad have the ability to become perfect. That’s why life is perfect. Every possibility in the present can transform into perfection, but if you are blind, you won’t see it. Just because you are blind and you can’t see it, that doesn’t mean that life is not perfect.

It’s like a blind person saying, “The sun is not bright.” For people who are able to see, the sun is up there in the sky, shining brightly. But the blind person always sees darkness and says, “The sun is not bright.” The blind person doesn’t realise their mistake. Their eyes, or their seeing ability, are blind.

So, life is perfect. Why blame other people and say, “Oh, life sucks. Life is bad. Other people are shit.” If you are always blaming others instead of trying to observe the mistakes you make in your own life, you will never be able to see that the sun is bright; you will never see life is perfect.

“Life is perfect” is not about your ego. You all know how it is to be lazy… “I was born and everything is prepared for me; everyone serves me. I am like a king: I don’t have to work or do anything, just be as lazy as a pig.” So, we create that illusion, that seeming perfection, and it’s not even perfect.

There was a king who was born rich and powerful; he was so lazy that he didn’t even want to chew. He had people open his mouth with their hands, put the food into his mouth, and move his jaw. It doesn’t make any sense; that’s not a life. The king was so fat that he could barely move. Because he was so fat he lay down in bed too much. Every part of his body was damaged. He had so much suffering that he finally died, riddled with disease.

So, the illusion we create of perfection is not even perfect: it’s actually a way go to Hell. The true perfection is that every potential is there, and because you have to learn to find the perfect way, that’s why it’s perfect. Life is learning the unlimited possibilities of a big school, an amazing gift for you to play with. If you play right, if you find the right way, the right path, then you get out of the trap. Then you see every angle completely and objectively and discover “Wow! Life is awesome. It’s fun!”

You are able to see through all the tricks and enjoy every challenge. Then, from meeting each challenge, you develop wisdom. You develop sharp and sensitive awareness. Finally, you even develop consciousness with compassion to the other. You see other people are caught in the same trap, worried and scared. You have already seen through the tricks, you know how to play the games and get out of the traps. You have no fear; you go back there. You pretend, “I’m lost, just like you. Come with me, let’s try this way…” You accompany them, slowly, slowly. If you say, “My way, my way!” they will say, “No, you lie. Other people have told me that they are already out of the trap, but then they guided me and we all became even more lost.”

Ah, and then it’s a trap all the more, because a lot of people are blind and yet they will go there and tell them, “Follow me.” So people stop trusting each other. Even though you already see the full picture with clarity and you have compassion – you want to go back to help the other people – you don’t just turn up and say, “I know everything!” That kind of ego is useless because no-one trusts it anymore. They already can’t trust their own ego and many other egos have already tricked them.

So if you go there already seeing the complete view and you say with ego, “I know everything,” nobody will follow you. Thus, the truly compassionate have to play a double-tricky game. It’s called the Convenient System. You go there and pretend, “I don’t know the game like you, but let’s calculate and share the answers together.”

Then you calculate how to develop awareness, develop sensitive calculation to analyse, and finally you help them to wisdom. Then they have wisdom like you and see through all the tricks. So this gift and this maze, it could be fun to the point you think it’s awesome and to the point you realise, “Whoa, life is perfect. It’s amazing!”

When you’re trapped, it’s the opposite. You have fear, worry, and distrust. You start to doubt and you create a lot of suffering, you wonder why you are so stressed, why your life has so much pain… all these negative things. But truly, they all come from your own blindness. It’s like the blind person who says, “The sun is not bright”. It’s not a problem with the sun.

So if life is perfect, then the system of life will be perfect, too, because the system of life is the complete way to support every life to develop perfect awareness. And this perfect system, as I said at the beginning, it really is perfect. It has every potential which – as Giant Dog said and was summarised by Phar Lap – means the system is perfect because it includes everything.

Imagine that you’re playing a game for little children; there’s no challenge, no difficulty. After a few minutes you will get bored. The reason a game is fun is because there are many difficult problems which you have to figure out, and the moment when you find the answer: “Whoa, this is cool!”

So, the life game is like that. The life system is perfect, just like the life game. It has difficulties, but they can be overcome through wise choices. The choices don’t come from outside; they have to come from inside.

The first choice is to not blame the world for your problems: it doesn’t help. You have to learn to see that the main cause of your suffering is yourself, so blame yourself. If something goes wrong, why does it go wrong?

I asked Sean Rat what he had learned after so many years as my student. Why did he trust me and want to learn from me? He said many things, but one thing from when first joined – he has lived with me and known me many years – he said, “You never complain.”

I said, “Really?”

He said, “No. But when you complain it’s something you are really going to change. You don’t complain and complain and do nothing. When you complain it means you have already calculated clearly and sharply, ‘This has to change. This is all bullshit. No more of this.’ But if there’s nothing that has to be changed, to be improved, you don’t complain. You observe, and remain tolerant and open: open mind and open heart, always looking at the positive. I never see you complain about anything for the sake of complaining.”

So do not complain as a complaining attitude – as a habit – and change nothing. Do you have this habit: complain, complain, complain, but never change anything? Do you complain about other things, other situations, but never blame it on yourself?

Life’s changes come from inside. Once you change yourself, you suddenly see the world follow your change. When you smile joyfully, people see you and they smile back. It’s not because people don’t want to smile at you if you don’t smile, it’s that they’re stuck in their own world; they have so much fear, so much distrust already. When they see that you aren’t smiling, they think, “Oh. What is he thinking about? Does he want to hurt me? Is he trying to take advantage of me?”

So the automatic distrust between you will bounce back and forth even stronger. But when you’re innocent, when you’re happy… who would have bad intentions toward such a happy, innocent person? Nobody.

When you change yourself, you will realise that the world is a mirror and it reflects your image back to yourself.

So the first good news is that the changing power is not outside; the changing power is in you. Once you know how to change yourself, you will discover that the world will follow your change, and that is the next piece of good news. Life’s system and life itself – not your life or my life, but all life – is perfect because all potential is there.

In all this potential you have to learn to choose the right direction. The first right direction is “Do not complain”. If you feel that want to complain about something, then don’t: just change it. Do whatever you need to have a good effect. Change whatever you have to change in order to make your life better.

Make sure that complaining is not a complaining habit, and do not complain to others. Always double-check: try to change yourself first.

To change your inner self is actually quite easy. You are there all the time, always with yourself. But we don’t want to do things the easy way; we want to do them the hard way. We want to change everyone else instead of changing ourselves. When you try to change everyone else, no-one wants to let you change them. Then you have so much trouble.

When I teach students, I have to help them to change themselves. Listen to that sentence: “I have to help them to change themselves.” They still have to change themselves, by themselves. I just help them to be aware that they need to change themselves.

So, we do have this power to get wiser. We are with ourselves 24 hours a day, so we can truly observe and improve ourselves. The power is within us; our lives are in our hands. If we turn in that direction and want to change and develop our lives, we realise that life is perfect. You have already been given the potential to observe yourself and to change yourself.

After you have changed yourself, then you will see other things won’t influence you and make you feel bad. Then you can communicate what you have learned. You don’t try to change other people; life means free will. If life has no free will, then it’s like slavery or a monkey that has been locked in a cage. Would you like to be locked in a cage? No. So, don’t take away other people’s free will.

Nobody has come to the dojo without free will. Everybody who has come here has asked to learn and to be a student. Sometimes I kick your arse, but I would never go outside to the street and say, “Hey! I saw you do wrong. Come over here. I’m going to kick your arse.” People would say I’m a psycho and put me in jail.

So, free will is what makes life beautiful and that’s also part of the perfection of life: the free will is in you. We worry so much about what other people think of us that we lose our free-will power. We are so deeply stuck in the fear of other people’s opinions that we don’t have free will to deeply think – over and over again – what we truly want in life.

If you don’t truly understand what you want in life, of course you will choose something wrong. When you choose something wrong, the result will come to you, not to others. And finally, when the wrong result comes to you, it will also affect the people you care about, the people you love.

But if you are already stuck in that wrong result and the negative effect is making you unhappy, how can you be happy with others? When you are unhappy you can only show unhappiness to the people you love. Then you will find that you make this poison stronger for the people around you, and that doesn’t make sense.

If you want to love other people, you must learn to love yourself first. If you want to have a happy life, you don’t ask people to find happiness for you; you have to find the right direction. You have to find the right answer for your life and make the right choices to make your heart feel happy first. From there, you can share the happiness, already developed in yourself, with others.

If other people don’t have happiness and come to bother you, you can communicate. If communication doesn’t work, if they still don’t want to change themselves to develop happiness to share with you, what do you do? Put an invisible barrier between you to act as an insulator.

In Buddhism there’s a saying: You cannot take cow shit and pretend that it’s sandalwood. The essence is wrong, the essence is cow shit: it’s not possible to make it smell good. So, if someone wants to stay stuck in their stubborn unhappiness, you can never make them happy. If you want to be ego and go there thinking that you can help them, that you can change them, it’s actually your own way to create unhappiness.

And that is why life is perfect. The potential is perfect. Everything is there. It’s a test: that’s why it’s perfect. The choice is in you: that’s why it’s perfect. The choice to change is in yourself, to make change in yourself and you have 24 hours a day to improve.

See also: Life Is Perfect

This post is taken from a talk by Forever Wisdom Forest on 11 September 2011 at the Sydney dojo.