Zen story: When is near enough, good enough?
By emptychair
@innertalks (23740)
Australia
October 17, 2020 9:54pm CST
The Zen master, Zircone Ripschoke, used to tell a story about the apprentice fence builder.
The apprentice was putting in the heavy upright posts, and he was measuring their straightness with a spirit level.
He measured one, and it was 87 degrees to the ground, not 90 degrees.
He asked the master if that was good enough, or near enough, to be ok.
The master fencer said,
“No”.
“It has to be exactly 90 degrees to the ground.”
The apprentice had another go at straightening the post.
He measured it again, now it was exactly 90 degrees.
“Now, it’s exactly 90 degrees,”
he said to the master.
The master fencer smiled, as he remarked,
“Now, it’s near enough. Now, it’s good enough.”
The Zenmaster smiled at his students too, as he told them:
"To reach God it is not enough just to reach him in your mind in thought, you must feel his uprightness perfectly next to you with your own spirit level too, or with your heart, for God to be real to you too."
"God will not appear to your mind at only 87 % perfection."
"God needs the full perfection of your heart added to your mind so that the mind plus the heart is then greater than perfection, and this is the only time that God will appear to you, at levels greater than perfection.
"Your mind can approximate perfection; only your heart can live it."
Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com
"When is near enough, good enough?"
When is good enough, good enough?
When it's perfection!
1 person likes this
1 response
@Shiva49 (28385)
• Singapore
18 Oct 20
Even the supposed upright, faithful, and devoted, compromise a lot thinking there is a lot of leeway in terms of living in God's love. The gap of compromise between love and what we settle for is hypocrisy.
Sadly, we take a lot for granted as we get carried away by material possessions knowing well that what we hoard beyond our needs become a burden to not only us but to those who inherit them.
We need to strive for perfection and keep God in mind not only during trying times.
Life is not a game of hide and seek - hiding from God in good times and seeking him in dire times. .
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23740)
• Australia
18 Oct 20
Love should not be a game of hide and seek either.
God sits above, below, and in all things, and there is no place where God is not, but he is not in our mind until we think of him, and then he reaches up from our heart, and embraces all of us again then too.
"Before you can find God, you must lose yourself."
Baal Shem Tov, (1698 to 1760 ) the great Jewish mystic said this.
So, he is saying that perhaps both life and love are games of hide and seek,
We must lose our self to find God; we must let go of our hold on life to find life.
He might be right, but at least with love, I think that I am more right.
If we play hide and seek with love, we are not being loving.
Love should remain an open book, and we should never fear love, nor hide from it either.
@Shiva49 (28385)
• Singapore
18 Oct 20
@innertalks I think what he meant was we should not think of separateness through our ego but embrace the oneness of creation.
That is possible only through living in love.
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23740)
• Australia
18 Oct 20
@Shiva49 "Before we can be ourselves, we must lose God."
This reverse statement is not true, so I expect his statement is just a clever play with words, and not true either.
It is never a good idea to lose our hold on our real selves, and lose ourselves to ourself.
We should more strive to find our real self, and then we will find God by finding our real self within God.
And yet, some masters tell us to contemplate on the "I am" so much that it disappears, and all that is left is the truth of God, and his oneness.
We lose ourselves in the oneness of God, perhaps, that is what he might have had in mind too.
Or, perhaps as you suggested, he was a friend of Freud's, and his idea of losing ourself, is losing our ego-self
