Happy Hour: Gratitude For What We Take For Granted

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Happy Hour: Gratitude For What We Take For Granted. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 23, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Happy Hour: Gratitude For What We Take For Granted

Introduction

All right, formally, hello and good evening everyone. It's good to see you and good to be back. I missed you last week.

For this evening, or whatever your time zone might be for this moment in time, I was thinking, given that in the United States right now it is the week of the Thanksgiving holiday—which of course has its historical complications as we know and acknowledge—let's bring in the theme of giving thanks.

It is a beautiful practice in Buddhism and in so many traditions to give thanks, to be grateful, to have a grateful heart. We land into appreciating the goodness and all the gifts that we receive as human beings in this life that we often don't acknowledge. Often we focus on what is lacking, what is missing, what we don't have, or what is not going right. Instead, we can turn our hearts and turn our minds to so many gifts every moment that we receive that sustain us.

So, with the guided meditation today, I'll introduce a couple of ways for us to engage with the practice of gratitude. Now, there is so much research on how the practice of gratitude makes us happier and makes us feel more connected to others, to this flow of goodness, the giving and receiving circle, the sense of interconnection. The practice of gratitude also makes us feel more abundant, so we become more generous and in turn share our abundance with others.

There are so many beautiful aspects to this practice of gratitude. It's not just that we only do it to make ourselves happy—well, that's good too! It's lovely to nourish the heart and mind so that we can contain more joy and be available for more challenges and more suffering, which every one of us has plenty of in our lives. So let's have more joy to be more available for that, to be able to be with challenges with more grace when our heart is full, when we're aware of what is nourishing and what is good in our lives.

It also has this other dimension, not just the obvious dimension of gladness, goodness, and generosity. I want to point out for us to become aware of this other dimension of gratitude: that it is liberating. It supports our freedom. Instead of our vision being tight and just focusing on what is challenging and difficult, it expands our vision. It expands our capacity so that more insight can arise—freedom, liberation, Nibbana^[1], a rose by any name.

With that as the invitation for tonight, or setting the stage, let us land. Let us begin the practice of meditation.

Guided Meditation

Let us land in our bodies. See what your body needs. Maybe you need to move, shift a little bit left and right. Land in this body. Land in your seat, in your chair. Hello, body. Ah.

And as always, we start with tilling the soil. Collecting the mind and the heart before we turn to our cultivation practice. We start by landing, just arriving.

Turning our gaze inward, inviting our body to relax, to soften. To offer its weight to the earth, to the chair or the cushion in lieu of the earth. Ah. Letting the feet, letting our sit bones connect, land, rest. As if sponges soaking up the sensations of contact, connection. So grounding. So groundingly delicious.

And inviting every cell of the body to unwind. Invite every cell to let go of any tightness or tension. Ah. And just be. Nothing expected, no doing expected.

Hmm. Letting the breath be received in the lower abdomen. Perceived by loving awareness. Cradled, appreciated. And when each breath in its entirety is appreciated, notice how the mind and the heart settles, becomes filled with gladness now. Hello, dear breath. Hi. Thank you, here you are. In-breath. Out-breath.

And if thoughts arise, it's okay. Thank them. Thank you, thought. Please come another time. And releasing the thought with generosity, as if you're releasing a balloon or a bird into the sky. Ah. Sense of ease, letting go. Picking up this cradling of the breath. In-breath and out-breath with awareness, with appreciation.

Can there be a sense of appreciation for this moment of just sitting and breathing? This moment of refuge. What if we allow our hearts to light up, to be ignited with the goodness of just this moment here? Just taking refuge, sitting, and being breathed.

Maybe you've had a busy day, a full day. Or you've had a day without Sangha^[2], and now you're sitting with Sangha, where you have a moment to yourself. This moment of connection, of awareness. Expansive, filled with grace. Just as it is.

This moment has never been. This moment of my life has never been and never will be again. Can I meet it with appreciation? Can I greet it with awe, with delight, with curiosity, interest, with gratitude? Knowing that all things are impermanent^[3]. All things are impermanent. This moment, this life, the way things are right now in my life—it will change.

Even if there are challenges in this period, can I meet this moment with gratitude as a stepping stone for opening? And if there are things that are going well in this moment, can I open up wholeheartedly, recognizing their goodness? What is the blessing right now in this moment? Can I open my heart to it, breathe it in fully? Deeply appreciating.

What is one thing in my life that I take for granted? A blessing that I take for granted, that perhaps there are other beings in this world wishing for, that I take for granted. Can I appreciate this blessing? Not with shame or guilt, but let it nourish my heart, my body, my mind. Not to be taken for granted. Let my heart know goodness, appreciate blessings. As fullness of our heart with gratitude can inspire generosity, can I be grateful for this? Really let it in.

Can you imagine this thing that you are grateful for, this blessing—what if it wasn't in your life? Imagine your life in this moment without this blessing. What would your life be like without this? Use your imagination. Yeah, squeezing your body, squeezing your heart.

And now, whenever you're ready, remind yourself: goodness, this blessing is in my life. Letting yourself open up to it even more, to the goodness of it, having had a vision of life without it.

Often we can bring more appreciation and gratitude if we imagine this blessing not being here. Say we could imagine our arm or leg being in a cast. Not being able to walk, not being able to take care of ourselves, to feed ourselves, to walk around. Whatever is alive for you, you can imagine that also. So let's say after this practice period you wouldn't be able to get up without crutches, unassisted from your seat, moving around. How difficult that would be. Imagine going through the day with your arm or your leg in a cast—or both in a cast, why not? Preparing a meal, taking a bath or a shower, grooming yourself, brushing teeth. The impossibility of going out for a walk. How limiting your life would be, perhaps how painful.

And guess what? Your arm, your leg is not in a cast. You can get up unassisted after the sit, you can make yourself tea, brush your teeth, go for a walk. Your arm and leg are not broken, they're not in pain. So much to be grateful for.

In the last minutes of the sit, perhaps considering the gift of your practice. The gift that your practice has been in your life as support. This practice, this opportunity, this Sangha, this medium. What if none of this was in your life? No practice, no degree of freedom, insights that you've had—none of them. This Sangha, any Sangha—none of that was in your life.

If you can imagine that. And now, letting yourself... ah, appreciate. Yes, you have the gift of practice, Sangha, teachings, support. Oh, so much goodness, so much beauty, so much grace, so much richness. My heart feels so tender. So tender and moist. Gratitude. Gratitude for this practice, Sangha, Dharma^[4]. So much to be grateful for. So much to deeply, humbly be grateful for.

May our practice of gratitude open our heart to know its own abundance. Open our heart to generosity, to letting go, to freedom. May all beings everywhere be happy. May they be free.

Reflections and Q&A

Thank you. Thank you for your practice, everyone. Thank you for being here. So much gratitude for sitting together tonight, this moment.

As for me, towards the end of this practice, as I invited you to reflect on, "What if the Sangha wasn't here? What if you had never come across the practice?" and then imagining that it is in your life, for me, so much tenderness arose. Tears of gratitude, appreciation, wanting to kneel and kiss the ground in appreciation. Wow. So grateful. So grateful for this. Ah.

So, dear ones, the floor is open for your reflections, questions, comments, and appreciations. You can type them in chat or raise your hand. Thank you for the appreciations on YouTube that I see. Thank you, Bill, who says, "Wonderful session." Thank you Bill, Jane, Jenny, and Paul also on YouTube.

What came up for you? What did you notice? What worked, what didn't? What's coming up for you now? How is your heart?

Megan: "The visualization resonated with me. I have multiple patients right now with bone cancer, two of whom have full-length casts on their legs. While I have often felt grateful leaving work for the abilities and health I have, I had not yet attempted to visualize myself in this position. With this, compassion arose. Thank you."

Nikki: Thank you. Thank you for that reflection of compassion, Megan. I appreciate that. All good, Ben, no worries. Austin, please.

Austin: Hey everybody, thank you. It reminded me of a Stoic practice of picturing yourself without something—I forget the name of it, some Stoic meditation. But yeah, really reflecting on my health and gratitude for it. I'm really healthy and I don't think about that hardly ever. But I wanted to ask you, I remember being on retreat with you and you had talked about how lots of people, when they go to work, they get kind of drained from work. Then they come home and they say that they need to recuperate and fill their cup so that they can go back to work and then kind of almost empty their cup. I remember you being on retreat and saying how you gain energy from it. You could see like ten yogis^[5] a day and that you actually gained energy. I remember you saying that was mainly through mindfulness of the body, but I was wondering if you could talk about that again?

Nikki: Yeah, thanks Austin. First, I so appreciate you sharing and reflecting on the appreciation for your health, that you're very healthy. Yay! May you continue to be healthy all the time. And how you take it for granted and just really appreciating that, that's beautiful. [Laughter]

Regarding the sense of being drained, and how you remember me sharing with you that the sense of being nourished from my "work"—being with the yogis, seeing many yogis, and it being nourishing—it is true. I have said that. It rings a bell, it's something I would say. And in fact, as you remember well, it does come from a sense of mindfulness of the body. Really being connected with my body, connected here, resonating with the person.

Now, at times, if I get in my head and the energy comes too high up, thinking and engaging too much, falling into emotions, then I can lose my balance with being embodied. Really, with the sense of embodiment, emotions and thoughts can all be held. It can all move through. There can be a sense of opening. There's a sense of "not me, not mine." A sense of open—I guess in some other practices it could be called qi or energy kind of moving. It's as if the mind is grounded in the body, and the body is grounded with the earth. So yeah, the mindfulness of the body as a friend.

Also, being in meetings, I've noticed the difference. If I lose my mindfulness of the body, if I'm on Zoom... versus if I have mindfulness of the body and I'm well-grounded in my body being on Zoom, it's very different for me. One can be very tiring, and the other one can be grounding. Noticing, just letting go of the energy as if it's getting grounded into the earth. So those are a few things I can say about that. There's so much more to say about mindfulness of the body^[6], but is that okay for now, Austin?

Austin: Yeah, thank you.

Small Group Practice

Nikki: So dear ones, here we are. Let's take time and engage in a beautiful, happy-making practice tonight in small groups. When we get into our small Sanghas of roughly size three, the prompt is: What are you grateful for?

Let's go around. One person will say one thing they're grateful for, the next person says another thing, and then the third person, and then the first person again. You go round and round, just sharing and witnessing what you're grateful for. Feeling mudita^[7] (vicarious joy) for one another, and feeling happy for yourself. This is such a beautiful, happy-making practice, and it's perfect for this week of Thanksgiving.

I will create the rooms, and as always, please take care of yourselves. Please take care of each other. What are you grateful for? Maybe start with the person whose name is closest to the beginning of the alphabet. Let's make it simple. Okay, have fun. Here we go, opening the rooms.

[Small groups convene]

Hello everyone, welcome back. The rooms are closed. We have a couple of minutes for any reflections, either from the practice or from being in groups. What did you notice? What was it like to share and hold witness to what you and others are grateful for? Please, Deborah.

Deborah: I just realized I really enjoy practicing gratitude. In my family, I was always the control freak at the Thanksgiving table wanting everyone to go around. Every year my brother hated it—a few people hated it—but my mother just loved saying how much she was grateful about the children, and she'd cry, and it was just beautiful. So I just feel kind of like... maybe vindicated or something. I don't know what the word is, but thank you, thank you for this practice. [Laughter]

Nikki: Thank you, Deborah. Oh, that is sweet. It's sweet to hear, and also to appreciate the particularities of all family members, right? They're just the way they are, so it's pretty sweet. Thank you for that. Ben, please.

Ben: I also am really grateful for a moment that sounds similar to what I understood of Deborah's. A teacher who probably several people here might know, Oren Jay Sofer, sort of gave a talk that was my clicking point to not experience gratitude as a performative thing. It's amazing how much I completely, at the age of 24 maybe, thought that my whole life gratitude had been this, "You should be grateful for that," or "Let's go around and say what we're grateful for" as a chore that you're performing for other people.

Oren gave the metaphor that gratitude is like ringing a bell, and I won't go into the three steps of that except for the last one, which is "let it ring." Which is just to say, feel good about the good stuff in your life. That's so relatable and so much better than I thought before, so I'm super grateful for that moment. Over the years since then, gratitude has been a really fundamental practice in my life.

Nikki: Beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing that, Ben. That gladdens my heart so much. It's a thing, as you brought up, it's really that performative aspect. It's the should aspect, that you should be grateful, or we feel like we should be grateful. It's the should that really takes the joy out of gratitude. But you don't have to be grateful, you really don't. It just feels good to be grateful. You can be if you want to, but there's no should. So I think that really makes all the difference. Thanks so much for sharing your aha moment so beautifully. Yay, that is so lovely.

Closing

So, that is all the time we have tonight, folks. It's 7:00 PM, so let's bring it to a close. Gwen, I see your note, but I'm not going into it right now, so we'll save that for another time.

Thank you all. Thank you for showing up for your practice, for being here. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You make up Happy Hour! So may all beings be happy, may all beings be well. May all beings know their own abundance, including ourselves.

Thank you all. Take good care. Bye-bye.