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Guided Meditation: Feeling Grateful; Dharmette: Gratitude (2 of 5) Pausing for Gratefulness - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Feeling Grateful

Hello everyone, and welcome. I am happy to be here with you.

The topic this week is gratitude. Gratitude can be considered a feeling first and foremost. Ideally, there is a feeling, a sense, an inner emotional quality of inspiration that is the awakening of gratitude within us. It is possible to calculate or understand intellectually that someone is doing something for us and to thank them. We might offer the words sincerely, but for some reason, what the person has done has not really entered deeply into our body or our hearts to evoke an emotion of gratitude, appreciation, or inspiration. We want to acknowledge what has happened with the words "thank you" or a bow—which can often be an expression of gratitude—but we want to feel it.

I don't think feeling grateful is something we want to make ourselves do, but rather we create the conditions for it. We create the conditions for gratitude to arise when something beneficial for us appears. In meditation, benefits can arise from the practice itself. We can feel calmer, more peaceful, more settled, or more connected to ourselves—more at home. There are many benefits that can come; they emerge and slowly settle in, and it can feel like a gift.

I think of meditation as a practice that gives rise to many gifts: the gift of a quieter mind, concentration, clarity, understanding, loving-kindness, or compassion. When these things arise and we feel that benefit, what are the conditions that allow us to feel grateful?

One of those conditions is feeling safe—feeling that we are not contending with some threat. We need to feel safe enough to allow something to relax: the sense of caution, the sense of being on the defensive, or the sense of imminent danger. Perhaps anxiety relaxes, or fear settles.

To sit in a field of safety is one of the functions of meditation. Today, perhaps you can call on that. There might be dangers beyond the walls of your home or the place where you are. There might be dangers lurking in the future and where you are going to go today. But to live with your body caught in that danger is to limit the intelligence, the warmth, the freedom, and the peacefulness available to you. It limits our capacity to tap into deeper support for moving through our day.

So, sit appreciating whatever degree of safety is here and now, at this very moment, in this very place, on the real estate that you are sitting on. That’s all. If there is fear in you, there might also be easily overlooked, small places within where it feels safe. Maybe your little finger feels safe; there are no threats to your little finger. Maybe your earlobes, the back of your elbow, or some part of breathing feels safe.

Begin gathering together how you are safe in this moment, so that when the gifts come, something inside responds with gratitude—with an acknowledgement that is deep enough that something emotional is touched within.

Assume a meditation posture and close your eyes. Even if you are feeling anxious, even if you are feeling tense, search through your body, your mind, and your heart for the little places—the little moments of safety, the absence of fear, the absence of feeling a threat.

If there are small pockets here and there throughout your body and your mind, take a few deeper breaths that connect all those places. It is almost as if breathing in deeply allows something inside to touch all the places of safety.

As you exhale, settle and relax. If it helps, you can even gently say the word "safe."

Breathing normally, see if any part of the cycle of breathing has a feeling of safety in it or touches some place of safety within. It is as if breathing is a needle sewing safety together. Sew peace and safety as you breathe.

Perhaps saying "safe" as you exhale. In the wake of "safe," in the wake of the exhale, open up to feel more deeply the depths of yourself. Open up to allow the deeper feelings and sensations to have time.

The thinking mind will quickly go on to the next issue, the next preoccupation, and not allow you time to pause to feel and sense deeply into your body. Maybe following the sensations of breathing deep in your torso allows you to feel and sense—maybe even an emotional source within.

Feeling and sensing inside, notice how you have benefited from this meditation. Notice the goodness, the pleasure of the meditation, however small. Are you a little more settled? A little more relaxed? Calm? Has something eased up in you? Do you feel more connected to yourself?

Allow yourself to feel these as gifts—gifts for the depths of your being. Appreciating and acknowledging those gifts. If that appreciation comes out of the source of your emotions, might there be gratitude as well?

As we come to the end of the sitting, make room for gratitude. Make room in your heart, in your torso, your chest, in your mind, and in the very attitude of awareness. Be aware in a grateful way—grateful to be aware. A gratitude that has a quality of tenderness in it. Gratitude that maybe has a desire to say thanks. Gratitude that might contain seeds of love and kindness.

To end this meditation with an expression of gratitude:

I thank all that supports my life, the animate and inanimate support for how I live.

I thank the generations of ancestors and elders whose labor and care made my life possible.

I give thanks for the safety and resources I have in a world where many people don't have this.

I am grateful for the goodness which has fed my heart.

I am grateful for whatever health I have.

I am grateful for the people in my life.

May I find gratitude in the ordinary events of the day. May it be that simple gratitude, sprinkled through the day—gratitude at the ordinary events of life—leads us to a greater appreciation and care for the people we will encounter.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Gratitude (2 of 5) Pausing for Gratefulness

Hello and welcome to this second talk on gratitude and thankfulness. Today I want to talk about gratefulness as an emotion or a feeling that we have inside.

It is certainly possible to be grateful on principle, or based on an intellectual understanding that someone has done us a favor. It could be a habit: someone does a small favor or something nice, and we say thank you. Someone opens the door, "Thank you." Someone hands us something, "Thank you." Someone helps us in a store, "Thank you." It is an acknowledgement of what they have done. It is like saying hello and acknowledging that someone is there—they are seen.

However, there is a difference between doing it as a habit or as an intellectual acknowledgement versus the feelings that can arise when we are really touched. Some people are moved to tears in gratefulness, so moved by the benefits someone has provided. Sometimes I have been deeply moved, almost to tears, watching or knowing what someone has done for someone else. It is not exactly that I have gratitude, but it touches that space inside where gratitude is born.

For gratefulness to be a feeling, a sense, it must go deeper than just the mind. It is not a calculation, it is not a habit, and it is not merely an acknowledgement. It does appreciate what goes on, but it is allowing the experience we have had—the gift we have been given—to be absorbed.

Some people will very quickly try to respond to something done for them in a way that stops it from really sinking in. Maybe out of embarrassment, maybe out of a feeling of obligation, or even to avoid a sense of obligation. One version of that is to say, "Sorry." Someone opens a door and we say, "Sorry that you had to open the door for me." That "sorry" is taking in a very different feeling inside—a very different sense of who we are and what we deserve—than "Thank you."

A "sorry" is not quite a gift. A "sorry" is somehow a diminishing of ourselves, a lessening of ourselves so as not to bother someone else. But to say, "Thank you for opening the door, thank you for what you've done," is different than, "Sorry for the trouble that I caused you." A "sorry" does not ignite something good in the person. A "thank you" is a little bit like praise; it is an acknowledgement that you have done something good. It is almost like taking the gift that someone has done and building on it, letting the goodness of it have an ongoing life.

When we say "sorry," it stops there. It blocks it. The cycles of giving and receiving—the cycles of how goodness can travel and move back and forth through our society—come to a screeching halt in ourselves with the "sorry." The gift stops there. Gratitude is a way for the gift to keep giving.

But first, we have to be able to take in the goodness. We have to feel it in the chest, in the heart, in the belly—wherever it is we feel. In the same place we feel love, we can feel grateful. But that requires something of us. To live a life of gratitude is to be concerned and caring about the preparation for it, or being in a good state for gratitude.

It turns out that preparing ourselves—being ready, being open to gratitude—requires the same state that is needed for mindfulness, for awareness, and for love. It is a state of pausing, being receptive, and allowing ourselves time to feel what is happening. Wow. Not rushing to "thank you," but almost like, Wow, taking it in, and then "Thank you."

If you do that, the "thank you" has more power. It is more embodied, it is fuller. The person can sense that you have really taken it in, you understand, and you have been changed. "Wow, thank you for that," as opposed to "thank you" being a habit or just a custom. So, take it in, feel, and allow it to be here.

I think it is worth mentioning that one of the qualities that supports allowing ourselves to feel and take in the goodness of gifts—whether from a person, from meditation, or from just the air we breathe—is if we can live in safety and in beauty.

Some people don't have much safety in their lives, so it is very hard. I have known people who have come to a Buddhist retreat and said it was the first time in their life they ever felt safe. They grew up in fear, with danger, and it settled in really deep. Wherever they went, they never felt they belonged or they never felt that they were not under threat. It is possible to shift this, to heal this or settle that fear, and to begin to feel safe in a significant way.

I would like to suggest one way to approach this. I was very moved some years ago when I was part of a workshop. The guest presenter asked everyone to write down on a piece of paper what they needed to feel safe in the group. People immediately got very busy. Some people wrote a lot of things on their sheet of paper—the things they needed to feel safe. It was kind of fun to watch how absorbed people were. Some people seemed very sincere, really taking that homework assignment to heart and writing down what it took, how they might feel safe, and what the conditions were.

Then we stopped, and the facilitator appreciated people's work and what they had done. She said, "Yes, safety is very important." And then she said something that surprised and jolted everyone there. She said, "For all those things you wrote that you need to be safe—you bring it with you."

I think the expectation was that if we became clear about what we needed to be safe, we would tell the group, the group would make agreements, and the whole group would support everyone to be safe by how they behaved and spoke. The facilitator turned it around and said, "You bring it. You show up carrying that with you." So, to feel safe, you bring your safety with you.

Now, this doesn't always work, of course. But in the situation we were in, it was a very safe place with people who were very well-meaning. It turned the tables; it turned some hearts inside out when they heard that. They said, "Oh, I'm responsible for this, rather than expecting it from others. I have to find how to hold safety here for myself."

This is the profound thing about Dharma¹ practice: we learn how to create safety here, in a sense, from ourselves. From how we take in what other people say, how we take in what happens to us, so that it doesn't really get picked up. We don't react to it. It doesn't touch places inside. We keep safe by how open we are, how relaxed we are, and how unthreatening we are to ourselves—non-reactivity.

Safety is needed for gratitude. Safety is needed for love. Safety is needed for deep relaxation. Can you evoke that sense of safety? Can you evoke a safety where you are protected from someone who insults you because it doesn't touch anything? It doesn't reach anything inside. You don't pick it up, you don't push it away. You just let it float and disappear in the air where all words disappear, as opposed to taking it on, thinking about it, or reacting to it. Just letting it go.

Maybe this is one way that you can allow yourself to feel more grateful.

Some people like to write a gratitude list at the end of the day—maybe three things you have been grateful for. You might try that as well. But do not just write it; feel it. Take it in. What is the emotional feeling of gratitude for you? You might begin to add to that little exercise: write down, the best you can, what gratitude feels like for you. Do that over a few days because it might take a while to pick up all the nuances of how it actually feels in the body, the heart, and the mind. How it feels physically, emotionally, mentally, and motivationally. What other emotions it comes along with.

So, take time to pause. Take time to be safe for a few moments so that the gifts of life can touch something deep inside and you can feel the gratitude. Wait to say thank you. Wait before you bow until you have received the gift. Thanks works much better if you first receive and then give back.

May today's reflections and explorations you do on gratitude support you and the people around you. May we continue the cycles of giving and generosity in this world through the generosity of saying thank you.

Thank you.