Sixty Percent!

   I used to hate getting C pluses in school. There was a time when I was in 7th grade where I was essentially a B and C student, with perhaps the exception of English. I didn't like it but at the same time, I didn't know that I could achieve an A given some diligence and motivation. I later learned the value of self-motivation and study, and I was able to get straight As throughout high school and university. However, this does not translate to getting "A's" in life and beyond.

   Venerable Chang Yuan related how, in his capacities as a monastic, he is often assigned the task of "fix it" person, doing repairs in the center. He mentioned, rather jokingly, that he is only getting "60%" in terms of the quality of what he does. Venerable comforted me at that moment. I am sure that he is underestimating his abilities, but what moved me was the fact that he is still able to perform his duties as best as he can, without worrying that he is at "60 per cent". This is indeed quite heartening--and it suggests that he doesn't excessively crave the praise or the feeling of satisfaction that comes from achieving such grades.

   There is a lot of pressure to "be" somebody in this human world. We certainly don't see it that much in animals or even ghosts, but we see that desire in humans: the desire to achieve, to stand out, to appear as somebody and not "nobody". Being average entails the threat of eventual abandonment or replacement by someone who is "above average". So we do violence to ourselves by saying we are not good enough and need to continually better ourselves, unless that betterment comes from the heart.

 I am convinced it comes from school and childhood. I wonder if my fascination with education and pedagogy comes from my struggles with the concepts of success and failure in life, and how I desperately want to revise them. The boy (or young man) who cried about getting a 79% --in front of his peers--is a boy that needed a different view of life. The grade strangled him, made him emotionally stunted. It can happen to anyone, truly. But Fashi reminded me that the meaning of work is not about achievement or promotion. It's actually about learning to accept when we are 60%, when we are 40%, and know that the 100% is because we got a lot of support from someone or somewhere. That is--don't cling to ideas of success or failure, but treat every experience as a gradual learning process with no fixed end or outcome. Then, indeed, as Ven Chang Yuan put it, I can be a "happy boy" all my life.