Appreciation

With palms together


Good Morning Everyone,



As the title of one of Maezumi-roshi’s books shouts, appreciate your life! Appreciation of every sense, sense organ, and object of the senses is a foundational practice of Zen. What does this appreciation really mean?



I recall classes in college called Art Appreciation and Music Appreciation. They were intended to offer students a sense of the subject matter and often amounted to little more than a survey of the art or music scene and their histories.



Appreciation, however, goes far deeper than a surface scan of a subject. Dates, appearances,, patterns are important, but the work of appreciation is internal. What does it really mean to truly appreciate something?



The Oxford English Dictionary says that appreciation is the ability to estimate a value of something, be sensitive to it, to esteem it, and to be grateful for it. How meaningful, in other words, is something that sits before me? Do I have the ability to value it for itself? Am I grateful for its presence?



It is one thing to like a piece of art, it is a wholly different matter to appreciate it. Dharma dhatu, or the 18 sensory domains, are there for us to appreciate, but not cling to. Because each is fleeting, we should take a moment to be grateful to them not just for making our universe sensible, but also for being points where an emergent buddha touches the universe.



Be well.