The selling points of perfectionism are the feelings of being clean, pure, and right. It offers the chance to buy into a dream that there is some safe zone of “the good” out there if only you can work hard enough and endure long enough to find it. It allows you to tell yourself that you are better than other people or work harder or just deserve goodness more. It keeps you busy and distracted so you don’t think about difficult questions, like “am I even happy?” or “where is this path leading?”

By Claire Parsons

 

Renunciation. Say the word out loud to yourself.

Notice what comes up in your mind and body as you do. Unless you’ve thought about this deeply or heard a great dharma talk on the subject recently, the odds are that this word comes off as kind of a bummer. The dictionary definition of the term is, “the formal act of giving up or abandoning” something. This means that loss and rejection are built into the very concept of renunciation. This is bad, right?

Of course, loss is hard for any of us to deal with and nobody likes rejection. But that assumes something fundamental. It assumes that the thing we are losing or rejecting is something we want or need.

Renunciation Can Be Confused with Deprivation

The renunciation from Buddhism that I have come to know and appreciate is different. When I first learned about this concept, I got the wrong idea that it was an unending version of lent that I experienced as a kid in Catholic school. As I understood it as a kid, that version of renunciation meant a promise to give up something you like for a few weeks before Easter to show how good, disciplined and holy you were.

Being the good girl that I was, I always tried to give things up every year, ranging from sweets to cuss words when I got older. I always failed. My final Lenten renunciation was giving up Catholicism as a college freshman in a smartass comment to my dad.

Flash forward many years to one of my early residential retreats, the teacher gave a talk about renunciation. Like a lot of teachers do, she focused on renunciation of sense pleasures. She emphasized how to not get hooked by Vedana. She encouraged us to explore what it could look like to let go. I had tunnel vision then and missed the point.

My Catholic-educated brain couldn’t let go of my Lenten failures. As someone who loves to cook because I love to eat, all I could feel was shame and overwhelm. How could I ever let go of sensory pleasures? All my Lenten experiences had ended in disaster. Dieting in college had only led to an intense, but fortunately short-lived bout with disordered eating. The truth was that I was hooked by Vedana. Many kinds of Vedana. How could I stop that?

A Broader View of Renunciation

It wasn’t until years later, meaning when I was today years old, that I figured out that her talk was not so restrictive. Sure, you can’t truly separate renunciation from sensory pleasures. You can’t keep indulging all sensory pleasures without limitation and claim you are participating in renunciation. But let’s think here about sensory pleasures.

Food, drink, sex, and luxury items are one kind of sensory pleasure. They are an enticing kind, and we should all watch out for them. To say the least, we are all well advised consider renunciation when it comes to these things. That is in part because these substances can be addictive and adversely affect our finances and physical and mental health, not to mention lead to massive inequality on a worldwide scale. Some of them can also induce and perpetuate great delusions in us over which we can quickly lose control as individuals and as a society.

But these aren’t the only kinds of sensory pleasures that can have a malevolent effect on our lives. Some other varieties can be just as pernicious, even if they are more subtle and are praised as noble in certain contexts.

I’ll name specifically what I am speaking about here: perfectionism.

Seeing Suffering in Perfectionism

Now, you may be thinking, how on earth is perfectionism a sensory pleasure? If so, then you should count yourself lucky that you have never been embraced in this warm cocoon of ego and delusion. For too long, I was. While I have come to realize that, on balance, perfectionism is a bad bargain from a sensory pleasure standpoint, it has some pretty damn enticing features.

The selling points of perfectionism are the feelings of being clean, pure, and right. It offers the chance to buy into a dream that there is some safe zone of “the good” out there if only you can work hard enough and endure long enough to find it. It allows you to tell yourself that you are better than other people or work harder or just deserve goodness more. It keeps you busy and distracted so you don’t think about difficult questions, like “am I even happy?” or “where is this path leading?” or “why am I so tired all the time?”

Although those feelings are fleeting and quickly replaced by emptiness, shame, and exhaustion from never-ending self-applied pressure, they do feel good at least for a time. They help you believe for a while that you are doing good, and that you are good.

Though I have historically sucked mightily at giving up some sensory pleasures, like the taste of chocolate and the lovely release that comes with dropping a well-timed F bomb, Buddhist teachings and practice have helped me let go of (some of) my perfectionism. It didn’t start with a solemn vow. It happened gradually over the course of years and with a lot of trial and error. To be honest, it’s still a work in progress and I expect it will be for the rest of my life.

Letting Go Is a Variety of Wisdom

What happened truly was that I gradually woke up to the reality that the so-called pleasant feelings I got from my perfectionism didn’t come close to justifying the cost. Sure, I loved feeling good, and clean, and right. But feeling that way came with a lot of alienation, loneliness, and so much pressure. Absolutely, I loved doing great things and earning the admiration of people around me. I’m a lawyer after all. We’re suckers for that kind of thing.

On the other hand, I lived through so many examples where my effort was vastly disproportional to my emotional investment. Yes, in a way, the world of the perfectionist felt safe, but it was a safety held at knifepoint. This faux safety was maintained with a subtle threat: one wrong step and I would be in no man’s land.

When you put it this way, you can see how renunciation can become something you want to do. When you see it this way, renunciation feels like something you can do. This is where the conception of renunciation as joyful and liberating becomes realistic. Because, at a certain point, with some things, we can see that all those sensory pleasures that used to draw us in are really baked together with a whole lot of dukkha. For me, I started to see that the clean, safe, perfect space I concocted in my delusional mind was in truth a big, fat, dukkha pie.

Who wants a dukkha pie? Nobody. At least not us Buddhists.

That’s why we practice. That’s why we study. That’s why we ask each other for help and guidance. And eventually, that’s why we learn to let go. Because we try and fail and try and fail again, and then we see a better way, a kinder way, a way that is more sustainable, a way that doesn’t feel so fake or forced and one where we can just breathe for a moment and be who we really are.

Renunciation Includes Letting Go of Suffering

That’s what renunciation can offer. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about learning to be at peace with the imperfect. It’s about seeing there can be joy, vibrancy, freedom, and a great life when we let go of our ideas about how life should be and how we should be in it.

And honestly, if I am ever to make progress on any other form of renunciation—you know the kind that might help me pass on chocolate and French fries and F bombs—I must make peace with imperfection. Because sensory pleasures of all kinds are enticing. They will be forever enticing, at least until I become enlightened and I don’t see that happening any time soon. Though renunciation can be joyful and liberating, it’s not instantaneous or angst-free. That means I have keep remembering that letting go can be as hard and frustrating as it is mind, heart, and world-expanding.

What that really means is that I must be kind and patient. Perfectionism never helps me do that.

So next time you think about renunciation, I encourage you to consider it in a new way. I hope you remember it can be joyful. In many ways, it can be plain common sense. But be careful not to confuse perfectionism with renunciation. In fact, renunciation of perfectionism itself might be a great place to start.

Because when we let go of perfectionism, we lose an unsustainable ethos but gain access to the whole imperfect universe.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

Do you enjoy Claire’s writing? Check out her new  book: A New Year’s Present: A Mindfulness Fable about Less Stress, More Calm, and Leaving One’s Ghosts in the Past for Lawyers (and Other Busy People) Inspired by A Christmas Carol

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