Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Buddhist meditation is not usually associated with beauty. More commonly, people associate it with clarity, calmness, or concentration. And yet, the Buddha described a person proficient in samādhi—a word that can mean both meditation and concentration—as someone skilled in the beauty of samādhi.   Attuning oneself to this beauty is one of the wonderful discoveries of meditation.  It is a “spiritual beauty“, that can be a companion, foundation, and guide that teaches us freedom from maliciousness, possessiveness, and conceit, qualities that are not beautiful and do not lift the heart. To live with beauty delights the heart.

That beauty has a central place in Buddhism is illustrated by the Buddha’s much-repeated statement that the Dhamma is “beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, and beautiful in the end.” While the Dhamma can refer to the Buddha’s teachings, which certainly have an exquisite profundity, the Dhamma is also the personal experience of truth, goodness, natural order, and freedom revealed through Buddhist practice. Associating these qualities with beauty associates them with states of mind that we don’t create, and which are hard to appropriate as “mine” or as “me.” These are states we learn to recognize, value, and nurture.

Spiritual beauty is an experience that does not lend itself to attachments because when we experience our inner life as beautiful, it becomes clear that this beauty dims when we cling to anything, including beauty itself. When we know the Dhamma is beautiful in the beginning, middle, and end, we become increasingly disinclined to grasp, diminish or overlook this beauty. To live a Dhamma life is to live in beauty.’ (from the Insight Retreat Center website)