Always the Best

Sometimes while reading some little phrase will pass by me with little attention being paid. Yet it seems to cling in the memory and refuses to pass into oblivion. One such phrase recently was of some zen master. Alas what book it was I am unable to recall - just his words have continued to echo. As I remember it, some "searcher" was asking questions, and asked the master what was the best cut of meat in the shop. The master said:- "every cut is the best". 

Is there a best? Perhaps we find one tastier?

At the time I skimmed past, my mind in search of more profound "answers", deeper insights, whatever the mind searches for when not content with what is already "the best"!!

But as said, the words of the master (and I do not even like "masters") have stuck, or at least have continued to pop into my mind as cakes have been baked and other pursuits indulged in.

 "Every cut is the best".

Who is the best master?

I think comparisons can be pernicious. Which flower do we like the best? Who is our best friend? When can I get past this moment and get onto something better? So it goes on. In such a scenario when will anything ever be "the best"?

The master's words have resonance with many other pearls; not quite the very same point being made yet having parallels, correspondences, connections. 

If you wish to know the truth then cease to cherish opinions

Judge not lest you be judged

Beginner's mind

Made to become so of itself beyond our calculations

Nothing like a good calculation

Obviously, if we love "calculating" we can continue to judge, continue to reach for the "better" - surely, surely, surely that is how we "improve" and wend our way towards that "self" that will finally gain our approval. Or the approval of the great Lawmaker in the sky. The self that will be "the best".

But to me the "best cut" means acceptance, trust, faith, grace, mercy, all in the unfolding moment. Which some have called the flowering of emptiness. Maybe that is why the words of the master kept popping up. All I was seeing was that which I already was, for better or for worse.

Trust. But what about jumping from the top of a 100 ft pole without a safety net (as the zens say)?

Related Quotes:-

"Simply the best, better than all the rest" (lyrics from "The Best", Tina Turner)

Just pondering the above and for my own benefit - the words, understood within a Universe of duality, would issue in suffering. While "within" non-duality they can be enlightenment itself. (If I understand Dogen correctly duality can "be" within non-duality, or, better, duality needs non-duality to be known without suffering)

Continuing with another quote, from "Zen Cosmology" by Ted Beringer, which relates to this:- "Of all distortions concerning nonduality, the antithetical polarization of 'duality' and 'non-duality' is the most common and most pernicious. This antithetical polarization results from mistaking coessential foci of nonduality (i.e. nonduality/duality) as independent entities (or unrealities), and thereby seeing them as two distinct, exclusive positions....." 

Well, there you are. We can have our cake and eat it too.

Seriously, it seems to me that much of this complexity is simply to do with language being essentially dualistic and thus not entirely suitable for expressing - or capturing -  reality as it is. Yet life is lived, not thought, and therefore, as the Good Book says, "a little child shall lead them". Or can do, if we let them.