This verse from the Isha Upanishad is radical. The notion that you and I and everything the world over is complete (purnam) seems absurd. Today you can find a million and one things wrong with the state of affairs—wars, famine, racial injustice, the high price of groceries. But this teaching reminds us that our lives are complete just as they are.
Now when it comes to our sense of self, this view is particularly subversive. For we spend our days believing that we are deficient and we must fix ourselves to be better. Like dust on the surface of the lens of the eye, we perceive ourselves as inadequate, or worse condemned (the Catholic view on original sin does not help matters any here). Even if you own a 10,000 square foot house or have hundreds of followers on Instagram, a sense of lack may still linger. Spiritual practices aren’t immune to this. In yoga practice, we feel the need to improve ourselves—to make ourselves more trim, more enlightened, and more peaceful. A yoga practice can easily default to a self-improvement project. And there are zillions of wanna be gurus who will claim to show you the way.
So firm is the conviction that we are not good enough—that we don’t have enough or know enough—that the idea that you are whole and entire is almost impossible to fathom. However jumbled and messy the circumstances of life, what is required is a switch of mind and heart. What is needed is radical acceptance, embracing this wondrous gift we are given. As Zen master Haquin once said, “This very body is the Buddha body. This very land is the Buddha land.”
Doubt, mistrust and an attitude of lack keeps you from belonging to the world. So you have to catch yourself pecking, needling and picking at yourself, antsy to set yourself right. Always hankering to make yourself better is to live with a restless soul. The celebrated composer John Cage put it this way, “It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”
So try putting this into practice. Sit in deep relaxation with a full and open heart. Calm your spirit and be right where you are, and know that way down deep, you need nothing more, or less.
