WOLCOTT – Many of us say “bless you,” when someone sneezes, whether we know them or not. Although perhaps primarily a cultural habit, it can also be a warm wish for the person’s good health (and by fearing contagion, our own). A blessing extended between strangers and family members alike. Many of us occasionally say, “Have a good day!” Again a cultural habit, but again a blessing extended to another: “may you have a good day;” a form of warm wishes, a form of “may your day be blessed.”
We have an opportunity in every interaction to give a blessing. We do not need to say “bless you” to do so. When we give someone our full attention, that is implicitly what we are doing. When we give someone our full attention we are giving them our most valuable possessions: our energy and our time. We are blessing them and by extension it reverberates back to us and we receive a blessing.
In one of the Buddhist teachings, there is a monk named “Never Disparaging” (or sometimes translated “Never Disrespectful”) who would always bow to everyone he met and encourage them, seeing only their full potential.
How would it be to be that kind of energy moving in the world? Never disparaging. Never disrespectful. How would we be transformed by that? How would the world be transformed by that?
And even knowing that I am probably not capable of being like that much of the time, maybe today, for a couple minutes, I can give the gift of my full attention and by doing so wordlessly say “bless you.”
Rev. Kenzan Seidenberg is Abbot-in-residence, Shao Shan Temple, Woodbury, within the Japanese school of Soto Zen Buddhism.
