How do we cultivate integrity and what Don Juan called 'impeccability'? The ideal of complete integrity is like a character MRI or x-ray, if we sit still long enough and plant our feet in the courage of truthful insight, the crevasses in the fabric of our integrity leap out at us with volcanic intensity. You can not grow up without being fractured! Of course you can grow up with a fine moral character, but nobody escapes all the things that split us within, the suffering of family interactions, identity development, disappointments of youth, the struggles of love and care taking, the inherent struggle between internal and society values, and the I-Thou conflicts of establishing intimacy with people who have needs and personalities different than our own. Along the way pieces of our integrity become compromised. This is true for everyone, but how many are willing to put their actions, attitudes, emotions, and character under the microscope of self examination for the entirety of their lives?!
The double bind of moral and integral development for an adult spiritual seeker is the dynamic tension between loving yourself completely as you are, and acknowledging and steadfastly working with gaps in your integrity. I think Suzuki Roshi made a definitive remark when he says that 'you are perfect the way you are, and you can use some improvement'. In my Zen practice, this gap has been the cutting edge of facing the truth of the harm I have caused myself and others through habit, inconsideration, denial, impulsiveness, compulsions, ego inflation,...yikes....starts to read like a list of the seven deadly sins, and of course we can all simply reduce our lists to greed, hate, and delusion, the Buddhist triumvirate of the loss of integrity. When we are sensitive to our 'character defects' or limitations of integrity gaps, we can collapse in shame or guilt, we can become our own worst enemies, which adds insult to injury and itself becomes an integrity hole.
The perfection of integrity, of sila, isn't about striving to be perfect, in fact, it isn't about the attainment of a perfect moral character! It is about the effort you are willing to make to walk the path of truthful self examination. When we walk a path the scenery changes. This is climbing the Zen mountain. It is also falling on your butt and getting up again and again. The lyrics 'there ain't no success like failure, and failure ain't no success at all' comes to mind. As a student of Zen, my effort is to keep practicing and facing myself as I am and things as they are. Integrity is every growing, not a static ideal.
Stepping on toes
Bowing with regret
One step after the next
Sila Paramita: Integrity
