the simplest of pleasures

It is not often that a yoga teacher will start class with a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Usually, after an opening "om" or two, the lithe and glowing woman at the front of the room will share a kernel of wisdom from the likes of Sri Nisargadatta, or someone of his ilk. The Buddha, even. But tonight, she began by describing a Nathaniel Hawthorne story called "The Birthmark." I myself have never read this story, but apparently it's the tale of a brilliant scientist with a beautiful wife. The wife was physically perfect in every way. . . except for the big, round, red birthmark on her left cheek. This anomalous marking drove the scientist crazy, so he worked and he worked until he devised a special potion that would remove it. He applied the potion, the birthmark fell away, and shortly thereafter his wife died.

And the teacher, whose class I had never taken before, wove that theme of perfection throughout the hour and a half that we spent together. As she directed us to bring our right feet forward into lunges, and windmill our arms up into warrior pose, she spoke of the yogic wisdom that we are all already perfect, exactly as we are. That this form, this life, is not a mistake.

She reminded us that of all of the myriad, untold forms that Life could have assumed here in this grand drama of existence, of all of the gorgeous ways that previously-unassociated molecules could have assembled themselves into functioning organisms, Life chose to manifest itself as each one of us. So each of us is a piece of Life's perfection.

I chuckled to myself. Good evening, universe. Yes, I got it. Mm-hmm. Thanks.

I sat in the back of the bus today, on the way home from work. I was listening to my mp3 player, but even over the music I could hear the muffled din of my mind. What was it saying? Oh, I couldn't tell you precisely, but I know that it was just a variation on a theme I know so well, that so many of us know so well here in these modern times: there's something wrong with you. You didn't work hard enough today, you don't look good enough, you should've done this, you shouldn't have done that. On, and on, and on.

But I remembered what the incredible Buddhist teacher Cheri Huber said, when I heard her speak last night at a church in Berkeley -- if you can be there, actually be there, to meet your conditioned mind, you can choose to be present instead of falling victim to a story about your limitations.

So, there on the bus, hours before any surprising literary references were made, I relaxed. I decided to practice unconditional self-love, radical acceptance, by saying to myself, "I am perfect." Just as I am, just as I appear and feel and be, I am a perfect creation on this earth.

The thought made me smile. My heart softened; the stern, judgmental voices quieted down. I felt a spreading warmth in my limbs. And then I looked outside at the people walking down the street and beamed at them, because they were perfect too. And I noticed that if I angled my body a certain way, as I sat tucked there in the very back row of the bus, that I could feel the 6 o'clock sunlight on my face through the bus' big back window. So I closed my eyes and let the setting sun warm my cheeks. It felt so good.

And soon enough, I was home.

In the bluish evening light suffusing my kitchen, I blended up some sundried tomatoes that I had soaked all day on a whim (might that make them re-constituted tomatoes?), dark green pumpkin seeds, and olive oil. I layered this delicious spread onto a thin cracker with some goat feta. (Note to self: as much fun as it is to have one kind of cheese in the house, it's surely more fun to have more cheese.) It tasted nutty and pungent. It tasted red. Its boldness, its fortitude surprised me. And all I had to do to experience this unlikely blessing was to mix three ingredients together in the cuisinart.



Food is a miracle! Food is eager to please, to offer up an undulating and ever-expanding spectrum of sensory experience. When approached with care and received with consciousness, food -- like the slow sweep of a lover's fingertips across the collarbone, like the foaming rush of sea tide around bare ankles, like sunlight caressing a cheek through the scratchy bus window -- does not hew to any abstract standards of perfection.

The pleasure of food is its unexpectedness, its newness, its flavors like light through a prism; mutable, slowly turning. To impose arbitrary standards of "perfection" -- upon one's food, one's world or one's self -- is to close a door on life's opulence, spread out like a banquet here in this moment.

I think we haven't learned that too well yet, here in America. I mean, I know I certainly missed the memo. So we make discoveries for ourselves, make mistakes, and teach each other. We light the way for the companions around us. The brighter your heart is glowing, the easier it is for me to see the path -- so please, friends, for my sake as well as yours, go on and glow.

Namaste.