Doing "One's Best"

  One of the interesting aspects about meditative practice is that it is about slowing down and being able to enjoy a particular process. It doesn't matter what that process happens to be, but it becomes about valuing and enjoying the intrinsic experience of an action. Now, have you ever heard the expression, "I did my best?" I usually say this to myself whenever I have just completed a task or a long course, with a sense of uncertainty as to how I really measured up in the class overall, or was able to meet the teacher's requirements. In some cases, I hear it in the context of aiming very high but then realizing that one can only measure up against one's previous efforts. "I did my best" almost creates the alter ego of 'me' watching 'me' and evaluating that I was true to my own idea of 'best'. This is quite unusual, in the sense that one becomes one's own grader. And what, after all, does it truly mean, this 'one's best' business?
    I have often pondered about the Chan perspective on achieving things and doing one's best. Is there ever really a sense of 'best', and how do we measure our 'very best'? Quite simply when the mind is clear about what needs to do and it is relaxed and present, there is simply no need to set up a spectator who is always watching to see if one has fulfilled what they were supposed to do. Rather, it becomes more of a connection that a person makes with the things that need doing, and it's the most natural connection possible. I think it must come from letting go of the desire to look a certain way in anyone's eyes, since one is clear that this 'in one's eyes' is not the real self or the real nature of the mind. It is only a kind of fiction, and the more I try to chase after that fiction, the more suffering I incur.
   If one wants to make anything a Chan practice, all one needs to do in a sense is to do it with the wholehearted intention of wanting to do it well, for the benefit of all. This is harder to do than it perhaps sounds, because there will always be questions regarding where one should best or most fruitfully devote their efforts. But I think the point of it is not to set up a 'best' or to imagine that such a thing exists. In fact, one simply does not need that standard when one is exerting effort. For example, as I am writing this blog, I am striving to get a message across to my readers, but my demeanor is relaxed and my mind is fairly focused on what I am doing. I am not thinking about tomorrow or about what I need to do the next moment. If I for once imagined that this blog was being compared to another, my mind would go away from the process of writing it.
    This does not necessarily mean that one doesn't try to follow rubricks or other standards out there. It means that once one has studied the requirement and has a good understanding of what it is about, they needn't keep asking whether they measure up to it. All they need to do in that moment is exert their efforts based on whatever background information they have, as well as previously acquired knowledge and experience. And once the person has finished the task, they can put it down: no need to carry on with it, unless one returns to the same task to tweak it in some way.