A Breath of Perfection

I arrived at Hom Cafe today with no inkling what to write. I still don't, but rereading last week's blog article, The Triangle of Pleasure, surprisingly motivated me. My weekly ritual is indeed part of my pursuit of eudaimonia. Especially when I didn't waste a second harnessing time's propulsive power over the past week.

I did not fuss too much about the haze enveloping the region from forest fires in Indonesia. The problem has been around for as long as I can remember. I wrote in 2004 in my blog: 

"Returned to KL today to find the whole city enveloped in haze. After spending almost three consecutive weeks in the pleasant climate of Bangkok, I have forgotten how humid and suffocating the weather is back here. Coupled with the smoggy environment, it is quite intolerable. Among all the cities that I frequent in South East Asia, I think KL has the most unpleasant weather."

I might have been a bit harsh in my judgement of Kuala Lumpur then. I was travelling regularly, hopped from one air-conditioned hotel to another, and was chauffeured from place to place. Back in KL, I had to drive, fight through the city traffic just to reach some dingy basement parking. Perhaps all that 'hardship' coloured my perception of the city. We grow accustomed to life's comforts easily, and any slight inconvenience becomes an immediate annoyance. 

I've since learned to see comfort as a snare. Not that I would want to deliberately inconvenience myself. I see luxury as a blessing that one should not be too attached to. The luxuries of life, should one be fortunate enough to be blessed, are things to cherish. Enjoy them and then file them away in our minds as happy memories. They are not our birthright.  Always treat them as a surprise. That way, you enjoy them anew each time, instead of being accustomed to them. 

In a previous blog article, I've even considered luxury a 'handicap'.  To be simple and resilient is sheer happiness. Simplicity is a great superpower. Being able to sleep anywhere and eat any kind of food makes you adaptable and able to survive in difficult environments, should you end up in one. It is a skill I actively try to cultivate. Every sip of water and every morsel of digestible food is a blessing. That way, every tiny pleasure is a joy.  

Find yourself a convenient reason to be happy. Hey, you are breathing. That's a miracle! You should be ecstatic about it. If you focus on your breath, inhale...and slowly, as you fill your lungs with air, that sense of pleasure at the peak of inhalation is a glimpse of the nirvana mystics talk about. It is the peak of ecstatic perfection, if ever so briefly. 

When you exhale, you expel all the staleness and negativity from your system. The end of exhalation is that pristine state of purity, where you have expelled everything that's impeding you. Relish that state of purity. There, in just a single cycle of breath, you have achieved a micro-moment of ecstasy and purity. Take that as a benchmark. Go back to it whenever you feel down. Perfection is always within reach. 

The haze out there will lift, inevitably, as it has for the past decades. And then we'll go back to complaining about other discomforts of life. But remember, you always have access to that microstate of perfection: that single breath that you can always take. And that's all it takes to be happy.