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Happy Hour: Pillars of Joy (6/8) -- Gratitude

Introduction

Welcome. Welcome to Happy Hour. It's lovely to have you all join each other, co-creating this time of practice. Good evening, good morning, good everything, given all the different time zones.

For today's practice, we are going to continue with the theme we've been exploring over the past few weeks. We've been exploring the eight pillars of joy, inspired by The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. We have covered the various pillars, sometimes spending a couple of sessions on them, and maybe we'll spend more on them in the future. Today, we've made our way to the sixth pillar, which is gratitude. This makes sense, of course—gratitude, joy, and happiness. We intuitively understand the relationship between the two.

Science these days—psychologists and neuroscientists who have an interest in meditation and these practices—have done lots of research. Psychologists specifically, like Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough^[1], have done a lot of work on gratitude, the effects of it on happiness, and the relationship between gratitude and happiness.

Just to set the framework and set the stage, I wanted to share a couple of things before we get into our guided meditation together and explore for ourselves. First is a quote by Brother David Steindl-Rast^[2], who is a Catholic Benedictine monk and a scholar who spent a great deal of time in Christian-Buddhist interfaith dialogues. The way he puts it is:

"It is not happiness that makes us grateful; it is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment, with all the opportunity that it contains. The gift within every gift is the opportunity it offers us. Most often it is the opportunity to enjoy it, but sometimes it's a difficult gift. Sometimes a difficult gift is given to us, and that can be an opportunity to rise to the challenge."

I love the way he puts it. Whether the moment has challenges and difficulty, or whether it's one to be enjoyed, we may not have another moment like this one, rich with this one. So there's a sense of gratitude for this moment itself, or the opportunity that this moment gives us. It's an interesting perspective on gratitude. There are so many different ways we can approach gratitude, of course, for blessings we have in our lives, things, people, opportunities. And yet the perspective that he brings is, right here, right now, this moment is a gift. Whether it's challenging or not, I really appreciate that radical perspective on gratitude. Wow, this too is a gift, whatever it is bringing.

Another thing to consider is that in Buddhism, we're invited to consider gratitude for everything. It's one of the teachings. Our most precious spiritual teachers are challenging people—people who push our buttons. I don't like to call them the "difficult people," because they're not difficult as far as they're concerned; they might think we're difficult, right? It's just people we're entangled with for whatever reason. In Buddhism, we're invited to be grateful for the people we have challenges with as our most precious spiritual teachers, because they help us develop our spiritual practice and cultivate goodwill, compassion, and equanimity, even in the face of adversity.

Again, having referred to Robert Emmons's research, his colleagues Michael McCullough and Jo-Ann Tsang found that when you express gratitude, it's not as if you become a Pollyanna^[3] and only look at what's good. Their studies show that grateful people don't ignore or deny the negative aspects of life; they simply choose to appreciate the positive as well, not just focus on the negative. Because as we know, all of us human beings have a negative bias anyway.

They also say that people with a strong disposition towards gratitude—which we can develop, which is why we practice it—have the capacity to be empathic and take the perspective of others. They tend to be more generous, and more helpful to their social network. Other research has shown that people who actually do this gratitude exercise, not just as a sitting practice but by writing out what they're grateful for, exercise more often. They had fewer physical symptoms^[4], they felt better about their lives, they were more positive about the week ahead, and they made more progress towards important goals in their life. It seems like gratitude is not demotivating; it's in fact motivating. It's not as if you just rest on your laurels^[5] and say, "Oh yeah, I'm just grateful for everything," but it actually motivates you because it shifts your internal experience.

One last thing I wanted to say before we start our meditation together is that the simple act of smiling for as little as 20 seconds triggers positive emotions. It releases neuropeptides that work to fight stress, and various transmitters: serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. Serotonin is an antidepressant. Dopamine stimulates the reward center. Endorphins are natural painkillers. Smiling not only makes you happy, basically, but it's a gift to others. It's contagious; it makes them happy too. So just smiling is something we can be grateful for.

I've tried this, actually. Years ago, I was having a lot of physical symptoms, and I was feeling really down. I decided, you know, I'm just going to experiment with smiling. I'm just going to put on the perspective, I'm just going to smile. I walked around and smiled and acted as if I was happy. And what I noticed in my mental space was that it actually shifted the way I was feeling about my physical symptoms and pain. All of that shifted by actually just smiling. It's faking it until you actually become it. So, plenty to motivate us if we aren't ready to practice gratitude!

Reflections and Q&A

Thank you all for your practice. I will change the settings now so that you can type in chat, where everyone will see it, or unmute yourself. If you would be willing to share any reflections from your practice, that would be lovely. You don't have to raise your hand because I don't see all of you, you can just unmute yourself and go.

Marie Christine: This is Marie Christine. Simply beautiful today's meditation was just glorious. Truly, truly glorious. I'm really touched by it, this was one of my favorites.

Nikki: I want to thank both of you, both Marie Christine and I think Claire was the person I heard. Thank both of you for your beautiful glorious practice, that your heart opens up to appreciating the beauty, the glory of gratitude. Hallelujah! Hallelujah. Any other reflections, please?

Casey: I found it really difficult...

Nikki: And that's okay too, Casey. It can be anything, these practices. That's why they're called practice. They're not called perfections, they're called practice. Anything you'd like to say, you don't have to, just an invitation. If you'd like to share a couple of words about it, it might be helpful to others probably too, only if you wish.

(Silence)

Nikki: Okay, I'll take your silence as either technology issues or passing on the invitation. I will say a couple of things about finding this practice of gratitude challenging. It could be a lot of things coming up. It could be a sense of the mind turning towards scarcity, towards, "Oh, there's nothing to be grateful about." And again, none of these might have been the case for you, but I'll mention them. If at any point anything like this arises during the practice, then turn to yourself with kindness. Let yourself hold yourself with kindness and with compassion. It becomes a compassion practice.

The invitations I give are all invitations. You don't have to follow them; it may not work for you, it may not be what you need in this moment. So turning towards yourself and holding yourself with compassion. And then maybe there would be gratitude for, "Oh, there's a little bit of compassion, there's some gladness. Oh, I'm able to access kindness and compassion, yay!" Gratitude for that. So start wherever possible. It doesn't have to be universal and big and cosmic. It can just be, "Oh, gratitude for... I have a roof over my head right now." There are so many people in the world right now that live in refugee camps, they're not sure of what their next day is going to bring for them. Wow. Not to bring guilt—and again some people's minds can go towards guilt, it's not your fault—but to appreciate there's so much to be grateful for in this moment. You have a roof, you have electricity. Just start simply, wherever it's easiest.

Casey: Thanks, Nikki. Sorry, I'm ready to speak now, I was just trying to figure out my technical issues.

Nikki: All good. Hopefully I didn't interrupt you when I just spoke.

Casey: It's fine, yeah, but I'm ready to speak if it's convenient. I think it wasn't all of it that was difficult. It was just the section on gratitude for the semi-difficult person or the difficult situation. Because the last year or two, I've been inundated with so many stressors that I don't really feel like I have the capacity. I asked myself today, "What's the lesson behind it?" And it's just been really hard to get perspective. I feel so like the cup is over full, like I just can't take anymore.

Nikki: Yeah. I'm very glad you figured out the technology stuff and reflected that that was the piece that was challenging. Of course, of course. And that was an invitation that I tried to give very gingerly. Like, don't use the most difficult person. Choose it if it's possible; if it's not, don't push it, drop it. So it can be challenging, and what you spoke to is exactly an example of that. If that's a challenging practice right now because your cup is full of stresses, you don't have to push it. There might be another time that your mind, your heart naturally opens up to that. All of these are invitations. Thank you, Casey.

I want to attend to a couple of comments and make sure we have time for small groups. Billy offers, "Unable to focus, mind wander everywhere and little lost after 15 minutes." No problem, no problem. I really appreciate seeing that sometimes it's like this, sometimes it's the distracted Buddha. I have that too in my practice sometimes. Call it the distracted Buddha, and can there be gratitude for actually coming back? "Yay, I came back after 15 minutes." It could have been 30 minutes or an hour. So there are always so many perspectives we can have to have gratitude. Thank you so much for sharing that, and I have gratitude for you, for your courage and uprightness for just saying that, "Yep, it was like this." So much gratitude for you to actually open up and put it in the community. Beautiful.

And Forest offers, "I was surprised to appreciate living in a peaceful society relative to war." Oh, that is huge. Yeah, that is huge. Sometimes when I do longer gratitude practices or have more sessions, I'm more prescriptive and I talk about the peaceful society you're living in, not having lived through a war myself. There's so much to be grateful for.

So dear ones, before we run out of time and wanting to save a couple of minutes at the end for more reflections, I'd like to invite us into small groups. The prompt is this: In groups of three, we'll go around and each person will just share one thing they're grateful for. You'll be amazed how joyous it is to hold witness to others when they share something they're grateful for. Your heart can open. They'll say something and say a few words about it, maybe 30 seconds. Not just to say, "I'm grateful for my health." Well, "I'm grateful for my health because maybe earlier I wasn't feeling so good, but today I was able to go for a swim." Wow, I'm so grateful for that. So giving it some context. See how your heart feels both sharing your blessing with others and also holding space for theirs. I've done this practice and it's lovely. If you need to go, that's okay too, grateful that you could show up. But if you can stay and participate in that, you might actually enjoy it. So here we go, I'm creating the rooms.

[Breakout rooms session]

Welcome back. I'm going to mute you because there seems like some people who are unmuted and there's feedback. So great. We have just a couple of minutes. If you'd like to share, what was that practice like? Especially if you haven't spoken before. Rebecca, I see you're unmuted.

Rebecca: I was just delighted to be with someone who commutes from Singapore to the US, back and forth. I thought that was delightful that he seems to be all over the world, so I was grateful for that.

Nikki: Oh, great sense of gratitude, lovely. Anybody else want to share? First round. Kim?

Kim: I found myself full of joy by the end of that exercise. It really works, gratitude and joy. Thank you.

Nikki: Great, thank you, lovely.

Dawn: To echo what Kim just said, it was just very joyful and touching to hold space and hear what others are grateful for. And the nuance of being grateful in a time that's very difficult for our species. So I'm very grateful I stuck around for the group.

Nikki: Great, I'm grateful you did too, that's lovely. Beautiful. Well, dear ones, it's seven o'clock and I want to thank you all. I'm grateful to every single one of you for having shown up and practiced together, supporting each other in this way. What a beautiful practice, especially as Dawn brought in, at this challenging time. This is a very challenging time. One reason why I'm covering the pillars of joy is because we do need joy to support us in this crazy, crazy time, especially in the US. International people, please send us your compassion. Thank you all for showing up, for practicing. May our practice together support us, support all beings in joy and in freedom.

Okay, thank you all and you can unmute yourself and say goodbye. Blessings, good night, take care, bye.