Part Six · 11 of 11

Already Whole

The Chinese Zen master Huineng once said ben zi ju zu (本自具足): originally complete in itself.

What a comforting idea.

It means that from the moment you’re born, you are already whole. You don’t depend on possessions, fame, status, or anyone’s approval, because everything you need is already within you.

We don’t become whole because of what we acquire. We are whole to begin with.

It’s just that, as we grow up, layers of anxiety, desire, comparison, and fear come to cloud our hearts and minds. The confidence, ease, and purity we had as children weren’t things we later learned. They were already part of us. We were simply pulled away from them by all the voices outside.

Our anxiety, our inner conflict, our constant fear of gaining and losing don’t come from being inadequate. They come from forgetting that we were whole all along.