Too much need for ‘perfection’, when the real perfection is underlying it all – all that I consider not up to scratch. Or not even that ... it’s more that it’s meshed within it – within the blowsy roses and the half-wild garden and the green plastic chairs with the scratches and the dull-grey summer day. It’s pressing through to the surface of everything that doesn’t try and doesn’t care a bit. It has nothing to do with my ‘standards’. It has nothing to do with what I think I have to do to prove that I am who I think I want to impersonate. None of that really has anything to do with perfection. Yes, I put a lot of energy into impersonating a yoga teacher, and then everyone adds their projections and the illusion is complete, but it’s only ever that: an illusion. And none of it has anything to do with perfection – nothing at all.

As soon as I made the link with Samye Dzong – offered the lunchtime meditation sessions and they accepted – I realised how much I want not to be a part of the one institution – any one institution – or even to be a student of the one teacher. What I want is to be the yogi up in the mountains, growing my dreadlocks and living in a cave. Actually, ‘want’ doesn’t come into it; it’s just a predisposition. I can try to counter it, but I’m going against my own grain. I seek practices that cut me loose and expose me to my own wildness, that lead me up the creek without a paddle and abandon me there. Of course, ultimately, all practices lead you up that creek, even when it looks as if there’s a big institutional safety net or a teacher holding your hand. And, yes, at the same time there’s a need for surrender of the will, and on a dualistic level that appears to be at odds with self-determination and the mandate – the absolute mandate – to follow your own path, your own, but only on a dualistic level.