Good Enough

Here is my secret: I don't mind what happens.  - Jiddu Krishnamurti

This essay has been edited from its original form, first published to the True Nature community on April 17, 2025

Earlier this month, a couple dozen of us gathered at Daishu-in West for the annual memorial ceremony that honors the temple’s original abbot. We were fortunate that the resident teacher there, the Roshi Ursula Jarand, offered a few words at the abbot’s gravesite.

“In the last year of his life,” Ursula recounted, “whenever anyone asked Daijo how he was doing, he would say, ‘Good Enough.’ What he said was generally misunderstood. He was not saying that things could be better or that he’d like it if something was different and that he was managing to tolerate things as they are, but rather, he was pointing to something else.”

Certainly, whenever I’ve said or heard someone say something like “okay,” or “good,” with neither a morose nor an exuberant tone, I’ve assumed it to convey a kind of stoic acceptance - an expression by a person who has troubles, but also understands that those troubles don’t deserve any special attention and for sure don’t need to be aired as a response to a simple greeting.

What else can “good enough” mean, then, when it isn’t indicative of a kind of placid forbearance? 

Ursula posited that the abbot was pointing to something so vast and whole that any indication of preference, dissatisfaction, or delight would be not only irrelevant, but a mistake. That is, if one is truly unshakeable, does that not by definition mean that there are no exceptions? We were invited to consider that one could be in conditions either brutal or spectacular and maintain a clarity that, to borrow a phrase from Christianity, surpasses all understanding.

People naturally tend toward avoidance of discomfort and pursuit of happiness and ease. Let’s not make the mistake of assuming, though, that happiness and ease are in our best interest simply because we’ve had tastes of those experiences and liked them. Perhaps there is a quieter peace that is more fulfilling than delight, and less distracting from what is most relevant at any given moment. 

With a deeper peace, one can also have access to clarity which, Ursula reminded us, is of utmost importance, and particularly critical in the unstable and stressful times in which we find ourselves at this time in history. In order to see clearly, act skillfully, and be effective, may each of us do what it takes to get closer to “good enough.”

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