One morning during zazen, Suzuki Roshi gave a brief impromptu talk in which he said, “Each one of you is perfect as you are . . . and you can also use a little improvement.”
He had a nice way of putting things into perspective. This was the mid-sixties, when young people were breaking out of the old societal structures and experimenting with psychedelics and mind-expansion techniques related to self-improvement. One time around the fourth day of sesshin when there was enough pain and discomfort to go around, he began his talk by saying slowly, “The problems you are experiencing now . . .” (will go away, we were sure he was going to say) “. . . will continue for the rest of your life,” he concluded. The way he said it, everyone laughed. (Thank goodness for laughter!) This seems like the last thing a student wants to hear from a teacher: You are doomed to be who you are for the rest of your life. Suzuki Roshi’s radical statement turns our whole world back 10,000 miles. He grants us that improvement is okay. But if improvement is our goal of practice, it is easy to think that some future moment could or must be better that this present moment. After all, if we had an improved future we would have fewer problems. Wouldn’t we? He liked to say, be careful; that solving the problems you have now might give you a bigger problem. He wasn’t against solving problems, he was simply trying to help us understand that if we neglect to live fully in each moment, sacrificing this moment for a future time, we miss our life, which is only this moment with its joys and sorrows.
Our present problems are our equipment or tools for practice. Gifts of our karma. Because we don’t understand and appreciate what THIS is, we tend to think that there must be something better than this. Master Dogen begins his Genjo Koan, the koan of our daily life, with the statement, “When all dharmas are Buddha Dharma . . .” etc. When we can approach the world as a field of practice, responding to the ever-changing circumstances with a non-assuming, open-minded, and compassionate attitude, the way unfolds . . . one moment at a time.