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Happy Hour: Expanding the Heart with Simple, Gentle Gratitude - Nikki Mirghafori

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 28, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Happy Hour: Expanding the Heart with Simple, Gentle Gratitude

Hello, everyone, and welcome. It is lovely to be with you. It brings up happiness, joy, and gratitude for me that this space of "Happy Hour" exists for us practitioners to come together from different places in this world—from our homes, without having to drive anywhere—so we can practice together. I am feeling gratitude.

Given that tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, it seems like an appropriate theme to be practicing with gratitude. There are a couple of words I want to say about this. You might have heard them before, but I want to invite you to listen to them with a beginner's mind. Actually, you may not have heard them before.

First of all, gratitude is not a "should" or a "must." Don't practice gratitude with a stick, thinking, "I should be grateful for what I have because there are people who are suffering." Ouch. That doesn't really help; that doesn't expand our heart. Instead, ask a question: "Can I be grateful for this?" This could be anything. Can I be grateful for this good or pleasant thing, or a blessing in my life?

As we continue to practice in this way with a sense of curiosity, interest, and open-heartedness, then this practice becomes: "Can I be grateful for this challenge? Can I be grateful for this difficulty? Can I be grateful for this pain or something that I usually am not grateful for, or perhaps have an aversive relationship with?"

This practice of gratitude, in this particular way that I am inviting us to consider, can be so opening and expansive to our heart and mind in ways that we may not have considered. We often limit ourselves in the box of, "Yeah, I should be grateful for..." Perhaps a tagline that you might have heard as kids is, "Be grateful and eat your peas because there are kids starving," and so on. That is not very helpful as a perspective for an adult.

I want to bring this opening, this sense of curiosity: "Can I be grateful for this? Can I be grateful for this?"

Let's start with things that are actually immediate. I mentioned two dimensions. One dimension is blessings versus challenges. We always start the mettā¹ and brahmavihārā² and gratitude practice where it is easiest, and then we build to where it is maybe a little more challenging. That is one quadrant: easy versus more difficult.

The other axis is what is immediate—what is right here, right now, present in our bodies and in our present environment—versus what is general in our lives, or has been, or will be. It is best to start in the quadrant which is right here, right now, and easy. We sense it, feel it, and it is really easy and lightweight. It is not heavy-handed.

I know many of you have had a gratitude practice for a long time. Let's practice together. It expands the heart to possibilities, to seeing goodness, and countering our negativity bias. All of us human beings have a negativity bias as a part of what has been passed down to us genetically. Gratitude helps expand the heart to see what is good for the benefit of ourselves and others.

Guided Meditation

All right, enough of a setup. Let's practice.

Let's arrive in our bodies. If you need to shift and move to find your seat, please do. Allow yourself to sit tall. Allow yourself to have a torso that is reaching up to the sky on its own. Also, allow your base, your sit bones, to be well-rooted in the Earth.

Relaxing the mind, relaxing the body. Inviting the abdomen to soften and relax. Receiving the breath. Each in-breath, each out-breath, softening and relaxing some more. Especially the out-breath—letting go with the out-breath.

Releasing whatever is not helpful right now, whatever thought or story. Continue to come in from what was happening before. "Thank you, I see you, I'll come back to you after this." Give your heart to it wholeheartedly. Landing with your whole body in this sacred space of practice together. Honoring your own presence with each breath.

Inviting each in-breath and out-breath to be calming, soothing. Like a lullaby for your heart. Like a massage for your body internally.

Can I fully, wholeheartedly open to this breath? Just this one. Not the last one, not reaching for the next one. Right here, this one. Can I embrace it? Open to it. Right here, this one.

Softening and relaxing with every out-breath. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. Simply let your heart be in this moment. Let your body be just as it is.

Now, inviting the reflection. Dropping this reflection into the body, not into your head. Drop it in the body as if you are dropping a pebble in a pond and see what comes up. With gentleness, curiosity, interest, and patience.

As I am sitting here or lying here, feeling the chair or the cushion with my bottom, my feet on the earth, clothes on my skin, air on my hands and on my face... can I be grateful for this chair that is supporting me? This cushion supporting my weight?

Very light-hearted, almost humorous. Can I be appreciative of this chair, this cushion, sofa, whatever it might be—zafu, zabuton³? As if you were bowing to it in your heart: "Thank you for serving my body, for supporting my body."

Try not to go off on stories—how long I've had this, or whatever it might be. Let all those go. Just stay right now with the sensation, with the feeling of feeling supported right now. Grateful for this, right here. Not past or future. Right here.

Maybe after lingering with it for a while, feeling the sensations of your body being covered, kept warm or cool, with the clothes you're wearing. Feeling the sensations of them on your skin. Can my heart open to simple, low-key appreciation for these clothes that are providing protection right now? Appreciation, and not thinking about stories. Simply appreciative. A light touch.

Can I be appreciative for this breath? For this air I am breathing right now? Just this breath, just this one. So intimate. The air I am breathing is so intimate.

You can expand further. Perhaps the space you are sitting in, the shelter. That in this moment, I am protected from the elements. Allowing the heart to have simple uplift, uplifted gratitude, appreciation. Bowing to the universe. Thank you to all the causes and conditions that have brought this sense of protection, safety from the elements.

Now we can expand further, if you like. A sense of appreciation for some of the people in your life. Just bringing to mind or heart maybe one or two people or pets. It's okay. We are interconnected. One person is enough; it doesn't have to be an expansive list. But if more people show up, that's okay too. Hanging here with gratitude for this web of mutual support and interconnection. Not to be taken for granted.

In your own time, you can expand further, staying with each item that arises. Maybe gratitude for health—as much health as there is right now available. Stay with each blessing for a while so we are not jumping from one thing to the next, which can get the mind unsettled. Wherever your heart feels most expansive. There are no "shoulds" here. Let expansiveness be your guide.

And now, if the heart and mind feel stable and expansive enough, maybe bring to heart something that has been a little challenging lately. Not the most challenging thing—please don't choose that. Something a little challenging. And drop in the question in your body, not your head: "Can I be grateful for this? For how it has stretched me or is stretching me?"

Stay with it. If it becomes really difficult and aversive, let it go. Come back to where it is easy. If it is available to feel into it, then stay feeling into this reflection in the body. Let the answers arise. Remember, don't push. Gently stretching, but not breaking.

As we bring this period of sitting to a close together, can we be grateful and appreciative of having showed up for the sake of ourselves and others? No judgment reading how the sitting was or wasn't. We have planted seeds. Can we appreciate the seeds we have planted, and ourselves, and the community, and everything that it takes and has taken to be here to practice together?

Trusting these seeds of wholeheartedness and goodness planted, sharing this goodness with uplift with all beings everywhere. With generosity, as if we are throwing confetti—bursting confetti all over the world. May all beings everywhere be well, happy, and free, including ourselves.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much. Appreciation for you and your practice, and our co-created space of goodness.

Practice Review and Invitation

I just wanted to quickly review what the invitations were.

1. We started with getting embodied a bit.
2. We opened up to the breath as a way to soften and relax the body while sitting upright.
3. We opened to appreciation for supports: the chair, the air, the various supports that are available.
4. We expanded further to appreciate the support of the interconnections that we have with people. We lingered on each of them for a while so that the mind doesn't get too jumpy. It can become a thinking practice if we don't really have patience and linger.
5. At the end, I invited you to stretch a little bit. If it felt okay, to bring a question of, "What can I be grateful for in this challenging thing that has been difficult for me recently?" and see what that might bring up.

Now we have the opportunity to practice in small groups. The topic today is this:

First Round: One thing you are grateful for. It could be very simple. You could just say, "Actually, I felt really grateful for this chair; wow, it's supporting me, it's comfortable." Or it could be, "Oh yeah, this person in my life, I'm grateful for them." Just one thing that was coming up in the practice.

Second Round: If you experimented with the invitation, can you be grateful for something that is challenging? Is there some reflection from that that you want to share? Maybe something like, "Oh, at the beginning I was having some health challenges and I wanted it to go away. Then I kept sitting with it and realized, actually, because the pain is waking me up at 4:00 a.m., I'm getting to read more. I'm grateful for reading more." There is always something to be grateful for. If you tried it, share something. If it didn't work—if there was just reactivity like, "No, no, no, I don't like this, I'm not grateful for it"—that is totally fine too.

Be kind to yourself, be kind to each other.

[Breakout rooms]

Reflections and Sharing

Nikki: Hello everyone, welcome back. We have time for any reflections you'd like to share, or any questions. What did you notice? How did it go?

Bill: So, when you talk about being grateful for challenges, I picked just some minor conflicts at work. Nothing really big, but I was truly grateful for it because I handled it well. It is because of the practice. Again, I guess that is the comparing mind—I shouldn't do that—but no, I can look back years ago and I know I would not have handled it as well. So I am very grateful.

Nikki: Ah, it's lovely. Thank you, Bill. Thanks for sharing. This is so lovely, especially looking back at the arc of your practice. "Wow, I'm not the person I used to be. I've come a long way. I'm handling this better." Yay! Celebrating and letting it be a source of gratitude for you and happiness for all of us. We are celebrating with you.

Neil (in chat): We should do gratitude every night. It makes me all happy.

Nikki: Claire, I see you have your hand up.

Claire: I thought of the fact that I have something that falls into both categories. On Friday, I am bringing into my home three Pomeranian puppies.

Nikki: Wow, okay.

Claire: Exactly. So on the positive, I am really grateful to have them. They are just absolutely adorable and full of love, and they are going to really light up our little home. On the other hand, there is an awful lot of work coming down the pike to train them and get them ready to be adult dogs. It's a very mixed mess.

Nikki: Oh, I get it. So it is both categories. You are both grateful for all the gifts they are going to bring, and...

Claire: Yes. And I will grow. I will be stronger after having done it. So that's great.

Nikki: I love it. Thanks, Claire. And Tom, I see your hand.

Tom: All right. So, you may have noticed there is someone with me here. This is Timothy. Timothy here has been listening to you, Nikki, for many, many months. I sent you a note once about him, with the Mr. Rogers talk that you did probably about a year ago, and how much he loved that one. He likes going to sleep listening to you every night—the Happy Hour—and listening to all of your questions that everybody who is participating in this Sangha⁴ has. If you think about the bombardment of different things going on in a seven, almost eight-year-old's life, that is pretty amazing that he is actually remotely interested in this. So I am grateful that you and the Sangha are here to do this.

Nikki: Oh, thank you, Tom. Just... oh my goodness, you made my day. You made all of our days. This is so sweet. And Timothy, yes, I've read about you. Your dad wrote to me about you listening to Happy Hour. We would love to hear your voice too. Would you be willing to bring in your voice into the space and tell us, how are you doing? How do you like listening to all these reflections and meditations?

Timothy: I'm doing well. Doing well. Yes.

Nikki: Yeah? Aw, you know, it is quite an amazing and beautiful thing that you are doing—that you have interest in cultivating and listening to these. Wow. Thank you for what you are doing, both for yourself and everybody else in the world. Thank you, Timothy. Thank you, thank you.

[Laughter and appreciation from the group]

Nikki: It's so sweet. Oh my goodness, so sweet. I see so many hearts in the space. Thank you, Timothy. Thank you, Tom. Thank you both. I don't know what to say after that. It feels complete to me after what Tom and Timothy just shared. This might be a good time to end Happy Hour. I don't think we can top that. It is a mic drop, so we are just going to end it now.

Tom says in chat this is like he is getting to meet his superstars. Oh my God, he is our superstar. He is totally our superstar.

Let's celebrate Tom and Timothy as we close this session of Happy Hour. We are going to do a mettā for Timothy right now, and Tom, both of them.

We are going to hold Timothy in our hearts with appreciation, with gratitude for his 7/8-year-old heart that is listening to Happy Hour meditation, who likes Mr. Rogers.

Dear Timothy, may you be happy in every way. May you be healthy. May you be safe. And may you have lots of ease in your life, lots of joy, and bring so much happiness to yourself and everyone around you. Thank you for being one of us. Thank you for practicing with us. We love and appreciate you.

Thank you, Timothy. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Sangha.