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Guided Meditation: Gratitude; Dharmette: Gratitude (1 of 5) Ecology of Gratitude - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 25, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Gratitude

Good morning, everyone, or good day. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to a new day, or for those of you listening later, welcome to a new meditation.

One of the qualities that the Buddha said supports going deep into meditation is gratitude—a thankfulness. This is not just gratitude as an idea, but thankfulness as a feeling, a thought, an inner sense of inspiration. One aspect of this is really a deep appreciation for what is going right.

There is a lot that has to be going right right now for us to be able to breathe, for us to be able to listen, to attend, to sit, to meditate, and to not be so involved in our stories, our concerns, our ideas of past and future—what happened and what might happen. It is easy to overlook the marvel, the wonder of all that we receive at this moment: to be alive, and well enough to engage in meditation.

So, meditate with that appreciation so that the calm, the inspiration, the relaxing into the present moment has this flavor, this welcome, this inspiration of how good it is. All that is, we can appreciate here and now.

One way to practice this appreciation—a wonderful word that might really wake something up inside of you, maybe even inspire more appreciation, more gratitude—is the word "Wow."

Wow. This body is breathing. Even if breathing is difficult, it's still breathing. Wow. I have the ability to be aware. Where did that come from? From this whole universe, the evolution from the Big Bang, this arose—this phenomenal capacity, in a sense, for the universe to know itself in all these rich and varied ways that we know: recognition, sensations, hearing, seeing, and thinking.

Wow.

A variation of "Wow" that is a kind of thanksgiving is to say "Yes." To meet whatever is here with "Yes." Yes to this wonder of being aware. Yes to this wonder of choosing to be present here and now in our lived life. So, to sit with appreciation, to sit with gratitude for every breath we take, for every moment of awareness we have. To sit present here and now.

Assuming a posture for appreciative mindfulness, and with this body of yours, let your attention go inwards, perhaps supported by closing your eyes. Going inward like you're dipping into a refreshing, warm, or maybe cool, pool of water.

Gently inhaling more fully than usual so you can better feel this body of yours—your torso, your rib cage, your belly. And a longer exhale, almost a leisurely long exhale to settle in here.

Letting your breathing return to normal and continue on the exhale to settle in, relaxing the body. Softening the mind, the thinking mind.

Feeling the weight of your body on your chair, cushion, or bed. Where the contact of your body, the weight, and the surface that holds you up reminds you that you are really here now.

Sitting here with the understanding that for us to be meditating, much more is going right than going wrong right now, here.

Breathing in, breathing out in gratitude, in appreciation. With the quietest possible words, saying: "Wow."

Wow to being alive. Being present. Wow to being aware, even if what you're aware of is challenging. Wow. For every challenge, there's lots that's going right to even know you're challenged.

Wow. What a wondrous thing to have the ability to appreciate.

With every breath: Appreciation. Wonder. Gratitude.

Wow. That is stronger than the distracted mind. Just here, now. Wow. Yes.

And then, coming to the end of this meditation, instead of a kind of dedication of merit, I offer a kind of dedication of gratitude.

May we offer gratitude for the safety and well-being we have received.

May we offer gratitude for the blessing of this Earth that we have received.

May we offer gratitude for the measure of health we have received.

May we offer gratitude for family and friends.

May we offer gratitude for community.

May we offer gratitude for the teachings that I have received.

May we offer gratitude for the life we have received.

May we walk through the world today in gratitude for those we meet, the things that we do, and the experiences we have. Look for opportunities to be grateful, to be "Wow." Not to be Pollyannaish, not to overlook the things which are difficult, but as a way of not doing the opposite—not overlooking the good, not overlooking what we can be grateful for because we're preoccupied with what isn't right.

May we live in gratitude. Thank you.

Dharmette: Gratitude (1 of 5) Ecology of Gratitude

Good morning and a good day. Welcome to this first of a five-part series on gratitude.

Gratitude is a Buddhist topic. One of the nice things about gratitude is that, like other foundational practices of Buddhism such as generosity and ethics, it puts us more closely connected to a healthier relationship with others. Gratitude that is sincere is a beautiful way to be in relationship with other people and helps establish healthy relationships. Being ethical—not causing harm but actually working for the benefit of people—also benefits the relatedness in all directions. And the third is gratitude.

To be grateful and to have sincere gratitude is a wonderful leavening for our society, for our communities. It's a wonderful sharing of our hearts with other people. It's a wonderful way to see and acknowledge other people for whom we're grateful.

The Buddha has this wonderful teaching: there are four qualities of a person who is wise, skillful, a good person who maintains oneself without causing any self-harm, who is blameless and beyond reproach from the wise, and who generates much merit. The only way the Buddha defines or describes merit is with the word happiness¹. It's almost synonymous: one generates much happiness.

So, what are the four things, four actions, four ways of living that the wise maintain as a good person? Goodness in bodily conduct, goodness in verbal conduct, goodness in mental conduct, and gratitude and thankfulness. Possessing these four qualities, one generates much happiness.

This goodness in conduct is more than just being ethical; it's being generous, it's doing all kinds of beneficial things for oneself and for others. There's a goodness, a healthiness, a beneficence, a benevolence, a beauty. One of the words for good actions the Buddha uses is "beautiful actions." So there is doing these beautiful things, but then one of them that has its own category is being grateful and thankful.

There are two words here because the word for grateful in Pali is Kataññu². Almost a literal English translation would be "acknowledgement." It's knowing what's been done for us, but knowing it as a special thing—being grateful for it, being appreciative of it, valuing it.

And then the other is thankfulness. At least in Pali, the gratefulness is what goes out towards the person or the thing that we're grateful for, maybe an expression of gratitude, the acknowledgement of what has been done. The thankfulness is the feeling, the emotional impact of being grateful³.

So there are two directions that gratitude goes. It goes outward to what we're grateful for, and inward to the heartwarming effect, the inspiring effect, the goodness, the smile that we're given—the smile of the heart when someone or something happens and we receive goodness, we receive benefit, we receive inspiration, or something really nice happens to us.

To appreciate both directions is important. Sometimes thankfulness is only in the direction of others or to what we're receiving. It can be a calculation, a duty, and a custom to be thankful. It is only "tongue deep," we might say. But if it's only taking it in for ourselves—like, "Ah, that's great, I feel so much pleasure, it's so nice, it's so wonderful"—then it doesn't enter into the world of our relationships. It doesn't enter into the richness of our interpersonal life, which is a huge part of the heart itself. The heart is not distinct from our interpersonal life. But to do both, to have it go in both directions, is a beautiful thing.

This adds points to the "Ecology of Gratitude." I want to discuss a few things about the Ecology of Gratitude.

The first is that part of gratitude has to do with what we receive from the world, from others. It is to appreciate that we've benefited from someone or something. Appreciating that we've benefited from the air—maybe if we can, the clean air that we can breathe, or that we can breathe at all. To feel the benefit of receiving food. To all these people who work hard in their lives to provide us with the benefits that keep us fed, keep us hydrated, and keep us able to navigate this world. Those who provided the internet and the technology so that we can be doing this wonderful 7:00 a.m. sitting together. So, to acknowledge the benefits, the goodness that comes from something. That's the first part, the first level of this external gratitude.

The second is to recognize how it comes to us—the intention or the attitude, the goodness that it comes from. If someone offers us something out of duty—if someone in a store is paid to be a door opener and they open the door—it's nice, we can appreciate it and be benefited by it. But if we're struggling with something, maybe we're on crutches, and someone goes out of their way to show up and open the door for us—they don't have to, but they really care about us, they want to support us, they have some compassion or care or friendliness or kindness—you can feel there's so much more than what they're being paid for. In doing this nice thing for you, they're actually giving goodness that comes from them: friendliness. So to feel that there's much more being given than the door being opened; we're being given someone's inner goodness. We're given someone's love, friendliness, or goodwill. The gratitude we feel has a different quality based on how much people are giving of themselves—giving something of their own heart.

The third is: is it done specifically for us? Sometimes someone might want to help a lot of people; they do a lot of things. Someone maybe cooks a big meal because they want you and other people to be well-fed, but they don't know who you are. They finish doing their cooking and their labor, and they leave. They have other things to do. So you hear this wonderful person has benefited you, has done it with a lot of goodness in their heart, but they actually don't know you. You don't know them, maybe. So the act hasn't been done specifically for you.

But maybe that person cooks the food and then comes out and actually hands it to you and says, "Thank you for being here. I'm so glad to be able to cook for you." Now there's a personal connection. So there can be these different levels, and the third one is maybe the one that can touch us the most—provided it doesn't get complicated for us with senses of obligation.

We should distinguish gratitude—an offering that someone does to us—from a favor. At least in my English, a favor sometimes needs to be returned; it's more of an exchange. But an offering is a gift that someone gives us. A gift of opening the door, the gift of some food, the gift of their time. It is not meant to be a favor; it's just a gift for you to have. How deeply that goes into us can change.

That's the second half of the Ecology of Gratitude: how it moves into us. We can know that we've been benefited; there can be a recognition, a light goes off in the mind saying, "Wow, that's great." But it can be more than a thought, an idea, or an understanding. It can also travel into our heart, go into our emotional life. We can feel softer, inspired. We can feel a smile throughout our chest. We can feel love. We can feel delight. We can feel a wish—kind of Metta⁴—of goodwill, of kindness for the person who does something for us. Something melts sometimes. Something is inspiring. We can be brought to tears when someone does something exceptional to us that they don't have to. So it can go deeper.

And then, if at some point in this inner ecology of it, we speak out of it. We speak thanks. We don't just keep it to ourselves. There's something that brings gratitude to a kind of fullness when we speak it: "Thank you."

The culture that I grew up in is a gratitude culture, as I understand it. In Norway, there are a lot of expressions of thanks that are given. It seems like all day long people are saying thank you for something. If you see a friend, when you first meet, you'll say, "Thanks for last time." When you finish seeing them and you're going to say goodbye, one of the expressions is, "Thanks for now." Thanks for the food, thanks for all kinds of things. So to allow the circle of gratitude—which is the relatedness of gratitude—to be complete or full, speak it or act it in some way.

That's a third thing: we can offer an act in return. Not out of obligation, not out of duty, but because of the inspiration we have. Now we just feel a sense of abundance, we feel a sense of goodness. We feel a sense that this relationship now has a beautiful channel in it—the channel of communication, the channel of connectedness. That can be the vehicle now for wonderful generosity on our part that satisfies or meets these three parts of generosity that others can do towards us. We can do something beneficial for someone. We can do it because it really comes from our goodness—some good part within us, our generosity, our love. And we can do it specifically for someone else.

When I went to practice in Japan, I learned, especially in the monasteries, that when you give something to someone, you give it to them with both hands. When I studied with some of the Zen Masters in Japan and the United States who were influenced by Japanese culture—like Robert Aitken Roshi⁵ in Hawaii—in order to become a student, you had to do a formal little ceremony and ask to be his student. But you had to give him money, a gift of money. There were very particular instructions about the money you had to give him. It had to be three dollars—three one-dollar bills. And they had to be brand new one-dollar bills. And they had to be in a nice envelope. And you had to hand the envelope to him with both hands.

The amount of money was incidental, but the whole approach to how it's offered to him—the care. Not dollar bills all crumpled up into a ball and thrown at him, but offered with care and respect and a kind of honoring of him by giving him something beautiful. The nice new dollar bills, the nice new envelope, the care in offering it.

So, the three beautiful qualities of gratitude: we offer benefit to someone; the motivation comes from our heart; and we do it personally.

When we receive that on the receiving end, we can take it in with acknowledgement of what's happened. We can feel the goodness of it. We can offer thanks. And we can return the act through our gratitude.

So, maybe that gives you something to think about: the richness and the relatedness of gratitude for this day. I'll continue with this theme on this gratitude week in the United States.

Thank you.