appreciating what is

i love this trungpa rinpoche quote:

How on earth, how in the name of heaven and earth can we actually become decent human beings without trying to entertain ourselves from here to the next corner?…It boils down to taking interest in what you see. I have a very frustrated feeling, actually, that when I talk about appreciating red, white, blue, and green, I’m not sure whether you actually appreciate those colors or not. Maybe you think I’m trying to tell you that you should be artists or something. And when I say that you should listen to the sounds that go on in the world, maybe you think I’m trying to tell you to be musicians. And when I talk about the textures of your body — sense perceptions and feelings — maybe you think I’m trying to tell you to become salesmen in the garment industry. I’m beginning to wonder.

We are not talking about becoming experts in marketing things, but we are talking about our own situation: how we can actually stop habitual patterns and appreciate the nitty-gritty of the real world on the spot. We can appreciate the bright, beautiful, fantastic world around us; we don’t have to feel all that resentful….Once we put a stop to habitual patterns, the vividness, the magic, will begin to descend, and we will begin to become masters of our world — individually, personally, of course. We will begin to appreciate our world.

-From “Overcoming Habitual Patterns,” in Collected Kalapa Assemblies, pages 266 to 267.

i think there’s a difference between ‘wanting’ something and ‘appreciating’ something that’s pretty key. we could appreciate having a nice car, or a nice house, or a nice well-fit suit. and that appreciation is just appreciation of richness, of contentment. but if we want those same things, to feel like we need to have those things to be happy, then instead of richness we’re feeling a form of perpetual poverty. we don’t feel good enough without them. we’re really selling ourselves short, and forgetting a kind of dignity that is always really available to us. that we *are* good enough and have tremendous richness already…

note: i never would have thought to post this quote because it’s from a restricted text. the kalapa assembly transcripts are restricted for folks who had completed our buddhist seminary program and a few other retreats and therefore presumably understand prerequisite concepts and language. so they aren’t restricted in the sense that they say controversial things, just that they might be misunderstood without the preliminary study. but this quote stands alone just fine and was sent out to a public email list, so i think it’s safe to comment on here.

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