WHAT DO YOU MEAN, BY SAYING THAT LIFE IS PERFECT?

I mean exactly that. Life is perfect. But I understand why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because you have some ideas about perfection, and life does not fit with your ideas hence you call it imperfect.

When I call life perfect, I don't mean that it fits with my idea of perfection -- I have none. When I call life perfect, I simply mean there is nothing else to compare it with, there is no ideal. This is all there is; it has to be perfect.

Your perfection is always comparison, my perfection is just a simple statement of fact; it is not a comparison. You compare, you say, "Yes, this is perfect, that is not perfect," and you have a criterion of what is perfect.

I have heard about a Sufi master who was talking to a few people in the coffee house and he said an old Sufi saying,"Life is perfect, everything is perfect, everybody is perfect."

A hunchback was listening, he stood up and he said, "Look at me! I am the proof that life is not perfect. Look at me! Is this not enough to disprove your idea that life is perfect? Look at me -- how ugly I am, and in how much difficulty. I am a hunchback."

The Sufi looked and said, "But you are the most perfect hunchback that I have ever seen." The most perfect hunchback....

Once you start seeing life as it is and you have no idea how it should be, everything is perfect. Even imperfection is perfect. What I mean when I say life is perfect is a simple thing: I mean don't bring your ideals to it; otherwise you make life imperfect, because once you bring the ideal then you are creating the imperfection.

If you say man has to be seven feet tall and he is not, there is difficulty. Or if you have the idea that man has to be only four feet tall and he is not, then there is difficulty. Life simply is. Somebody is seven feet tall and somebody is four feet tall. One tree grows to the clouds, another remains small. But all is perfectly well, all is as it should be, because there is no 'should' in my mind. I simply listen and see life as it is. I have no idea how it should be. That's why I say it is as it should be, there is no other life.

The message is drop comparing, drop judging; otherwise you will remain miserable, and just because of your judgments and comparisons. Look at life without being a judge. Who are you to judge? What do you know about life? What do you know even about yourself? Who are you to judge? Judgment comes from the idea that you know, judgment is knowledgeability.

Look at life with a state of not-knowing, through a state of not-knowing, look at life through wonder -- and suddenly all is perfect. Yes, sometimes it is cloudy, but it is perfect. And sometimes it is sunny and it is perfect. And sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn't rain, but it is perfect. As it is, it is a blessing. To be in tune with this blessing is to be prayerful.