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Guided Meditation: Gratitude

So, hello and welcome. And I'm struck as I came to IMC here today and got ready for this teaching on YouTube, how many people have contributed to IMC, their labor, their time, their money to make this place exist, allow me to come here into this wonderful room, who've set up the technology, they've got cameras and recordings and computers and all this stuff that we have here. And many people have come through and offered their loving care and attention, volunteering, and we slowly built up this wonderful meditation center, this wonderful capacity to teach, place for me to come.

And coming here today, I felt such gratitude. I feel so fortunate. In a sense, I feel fortunate in being the recipient of so much goodness, so much love and care and what a wonderful thing. And then there are people, all kinds of circles of people that support IMC, that support our community, support me, support the people in the neighborhood here, and the circles of people who are doing things for each other. It's just phenomenal.

Recently, the electricity company came and trimmed some of the branches from the trees that might interfere with the power lines. And in a way, they're caring for us and caring to make sure there's enough electricity coming here that there's not a damage, and they're caring. People, street cleaners, and garbage trucks come by and they're all caring for things that are essential for the working of what we need here.

And so to sit in a field of gratitude, to sit aware of gratitude not as a should, not as a Pollyannaish thing, but as a source of joy, a source of delight and a source of not being caught up in me, myself, and mine. Not be caught up in a negativity bias where we complain about how there's not enough or people don't do enough for or something, there's things, too many things which are wrong.

As I sit here at this moment in this room, I don't see anything that's wrong. I don't have anything I can think of right now to complain about that's actually here and present in the moment. It's remarkable that that's the case. I can certainly come up with a list of things that are not here, that are in the future, the past, or in other places that are annoying or difficult, challenging. But so much is working.

And from time to time it's really good to take that in, to be nourished by it, to be inspired, to let it bring joy, bring delight, let it be the source of a warm-hearted relationship of kindness, of care, of friendship, of gratitude, of goodwill. So, to sit today with gratitude. So, to assume a meditation posture.

And I know that there's many things challenging in our bodies. Illness, aches, pains, disabilities. At the same time, to be alive means that plenty is working. Plenty is going well enough to be attentive, to come to a meditation, to have the technology to be doing this right now.

And so, for this meditation, let's begin by tuning in to what is working. Not denying that things don't work, that there's challenges, but maybe a different context, a different approach to being aware of all of it because it's rooted in gratitude.

And beginning with the eyes closed, and appreciating this body that's breathing. This body that one way or the other has cared for us, made it possible for us to do what we do. One way or the other has accompanied us with all the things that have happened in our life, maybe it works well more than we realize.

To appreciate this body with your capacity to be aware. As if awareness is a gift. Awareness is food, food of care, of love, of respect, of gratitude, and a receptive gratitude to the next inhale. To the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

Grateful for the mindfulness, the sensitivity of being aware of the body breathing. Maybe a gratitude that predisposes us to be receptive in the awareness. Appreciative of the awareness, the attention that operates even when we are not trying. Right here and now, present moment attention to listening, sensing, feeling, knowing.

Knowing that we're thinking instead of participating in our thoughts. Being aware of this amazing human capacity we have. Grateful. Open. With whatever ability you can choose. Sitting here silently, quietly. Breathing with all there is to be grateful for right here.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, is there something about how you might be a little calmer, settled, maybe more open? Maybe more sensitive after this period of meditation, that allows you, gives you room for more gratitude. More appreciation for what is done for you. It keeps your life going. That supports you both directly, but also so much supports us indirectly.

Gratitude for the meditation. Gratitude for Sangha^[1]. Gratitude for your capacity to care for yourself through meditation. A certain kind of joy. The appreciation that comes with gratitude, comes with a sense of delight, joy of how we've benefited, how we've by so much that's provided to us. Even the air we breathe. The water we drink. The food we eat.

And is there a way that gratitude suggests a way of walking through the world? Not necessarily always grateful. But always receptive or appreciative. Always putting value in what we see, what we touch, what comes our way. What's present that sustains our life. What's present that can support our hearts. Our ability to care and love.

And may the gifts that we receive inspire us to give in return. To give our appreciation, our goodwill, our well-wishing. May we give in appreciation and a wish for others to be well and continue to be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (57) Mudita and Gratitude

So, hello and welcome to this 7:00 a.m. meditation and teachings that for these first three months of this year, I've been teaching about love. And we've come to the point where we're talking about a form of love called appreciative joy^[2]. And to say a little about this love topic, it is certainly not meant to be an admonition to love, that we have to do more and crank it up. It's closer to the idea that embedded in our capacity to be aware, to be attentive in the present moment, to be at rest here and now, we begin to decrease the preoccupations, the reactivity, the ways we close down and shut out, the ways that we are distracted, the ways that we get caught in difficult mind states.

And when these covers begin to come off, when we begin to shed the armor and the preoccupations, there's a simplicity of being with which we're present for this world, present for ourselves. And this simplicity of being itself, in that we can start discovering and sensing and recognizing something we might call love. Maybe each person will experience it and recognize it in a different way. But a warm-heartedness, a care, a delight, an appreciation for not just others, not just oneself, but the amazing miracle of mindfulness, miracle of this practice of freedom, is that we don't have to have an object for the love. Just the capacity for love is there.

So, if I keep my hand in a fist for many years, I forget how sensitive the palm of the hand is. But, finally when the hand opens, the palm is sensitive. And I don't have to want it to be sensitive or try to make it more sensitive. The softness, the tenderness, the sensitivity of the hand can feel the breeze going across it. Can feel the temperature, can feel the smoothness of some surface. That palm of the hand can feel the tenderness of holding a baby's hand or a friend's hand or the hand of someone who is dying, the hand of a lover. In the way that a fist can't. And we don't have to focus on feeling the tenderness, the contact, the exchange, the meeting, but it's right there in the hand. The warmth of it, the gentleness, the softness.

Something like that with this capacity for love. And when we come to appreciative joy, I emphasize this as well, that it's not something we have to kind of figure out and logically appreciate others, but it comes when we're really present to the simplicity of being here and now. That we begin appreciating ordinary things in life. And we appreciate just being alive. We appreciate the colors, the objects, the things, the weather, the sky, the sun, the ground we walk on. There's something about the more present we are, we appreciate the little details.

I just came back from teaching a week retreat. And there on retreat where there are people cultivating the simplicity of being day after day, it's remarkable the sense of delight and joy and appreciation of even a foot coming down to the ground. Even an opening in a door and looking out and feeling the fresh air. We're present to be with it, to feel it, to take it in. We're not distracted from the details of life. And it can feel beautiful and appreciated partly because the fist of the mind is open, the fist of the heart is open. And we're present for what's going on.

So, appreciative joy and gratitude. The simple acts of gratitude. Being grateful. And what's beautiful with the gratitude is it puts us a little bit in the receptive mode. "Oh, this is what comes to us. This is what benefits us. This is what we're receiving." And we receive so much.

And one of the reflections I have is when I go about the town I live in and I see strangers, people I don't know that maybe they have a profession, a job. Maybe they do things that benefit me. Maybe that person works for the sewage plant in the city. Maybe that person works for the street department that takes care of the streets and keeps it clean or fixes potholes. Maybe that person is a clerk at a store that I go shopping at or a stocker in the back and makes it possible for me to go to the store and pick up my groceries. Who knows what this person is doing. Chances are I'm passing people all the time that indirectly I benefit from what they do.

And it's hard to calculate the circles of mutuality and interconnectedness we have. But just simply to some degree it's true. And I just delight in the people around me, even the people who are strangers because we have this shared life and maybe they are also benefiting me. Maybe there's some way I benefit them indirectly.

And so to live that way is very different than going around, which I've done when I was young, which is judging people, seeing what's wrong with people, putting people in camps, the people who were good or acceptable and the people who are not based on their clothes, their age, all kinds of things. And I feel so lucky that that tendency of the mind seems to be fairly absent these days.

And so this gratitude is a foundation of usefulness to help us stay present, stay aware, stay aware in a good-hearted way, an open and unclouded way. And it's a stepping stone. Gratitude is a stepping stone to being able to have appreciative joy, sympathetic joy, to be able to appreciate what's going well for others, to appreciate their successes, to appreciate their joys, to appreciate what they receive and how they've maybe done well in the world rather than being jealous or envious or automatically judging them for something. To share in the joy, to share in the success, to share in the goodness of others. With the idea that just appreciating it strengthens it, brings forth more of it into the world.

And an appreciative joy that again is not a logical thing to do or required thing to do, but it's the contagion that happens when we are in presence with the success and happiness of others that we naturally are delighted. We naturally share in that. And we allow ourselves as opposed to staying shut down, resistant, caught up in thoughts, caught up in our own woes and griefs and complaints.

So gratitude is a means for the growth of appreciative joy, this contagion, this share, this empathy that we want to take in and celebrate and be with when it seems appropriate, when that's what's happening around us. And some people will complain that appreciative joy is Pollyannaish or there's too much suffering in the world to spend any time appreciating things. I think what's true is that our capacity to appreciate the well-being, the joys of others around us, the successes, is what also allows us to open to the suffering of the world, the challenges. It's the opening of the fist of the heart, the fist of the mind that now is available to care for someone who's suffering and to appreciate someone who is happy.

So, in this emphasis on appreciative joy this week, and now gratitude as a support for that, as you go about your day today, see if you can manage to take time to be present, really present, for the experience, what's happening around you, what's happening here, in an undistracted way, in an unclouded way, and see if an open awareness to what's here helps you to take in what is going well, what to be grateful for, to be able to take in and share in the joy of others, to recognize it, name it, go along with it, kind of share it with people. Perhaps there's more joy, more gratitude that you can avail yourself of today that prepares you, that strengthens you, to be able to also encounter suffering, your own and that of others.

So, thank you very much and we'll continue this theme of appreciative joy for another couple of days. Thank you.