Grateful Living Practice

          The naturalness and simplicity of this practice 
                           are great advantages.

    

Gratefulness is a practice.  It is so simple and so common – so universal, really – to be grateful that we think, “That can’t be a practice like Zen or Yoga.”  But when you look carefully and when you make it your practice, it can be really on the same level as these great traditional practices.  And in a sense, it is a traditional practice.  If you just think of your mother, of your grandmother – maybe you even knew your great-grandmother, as I was lucky to know two of them – they were grateful people, and they taught you gratefulness.  So it comes to you in a less formal setting, but it really is a traditional practice that comes to you. 

The naturalness and simplicity of this practice are great advantages.  If you think of all the pain that you have to go through when you pretzel yourself in hatha yoga, being grateful is a lot easier!   Every other practice takes so long, and gratefulness doesn’t take very long at all.  If you make up your mind – “Okay, from now on it will be my practice” – and you start right now, this very moment,you will be a lot more joyful.  You can check it and find that it does something for you quite immediately.

You will find that what is essential for gratefulness remains the same in Zen, Yoga, any Christian practice, or any other practice.  The essence of being grateful is accepting what is.  Obviously we are not just talking about saying “Thank you” – we are talking about that inner gesture, that inner attitude from which saying “thank you” springs when it is genuine. 

That, of course, implies being in the now.   “What is, is always now,” as T.S. Eliot says so beautifully in The Four Quartets.  “The all is always now.”  That seems obvious, but it is very important to remind ourselves that All Is Always Now.  If it isn’t now, it isnot.  It was or will be, but it is not.  Whatever is, is now.  So accepting what is means being in the now, and being in the now means dissolving the illusion of our little ego.  And that’s the goal of all practices!  When you’re in the now, this little “me” dissolves, because it feeds on past and future. 

The little “me”, if you look at it, is made up of your past:  of all the things that you have done or that you pride yourself in, or all these groups that you belong to.  If somebody asks “Who are you?”  you will describe yourself as being Austrian or American or Hungarian:   That’s something in the past, where you come from.  Or that you will say that you have such-and-such a name and that means you belong to such-and-such a family.  Or you will mention all the things that you have suffered!  That little “me” has suffered so much and prides itself on always having suffered more than anybody else.  If you can’t be better than anybody else, you can at least be much worse than everybody else!  That’s also something of the past.

Sometimes it is difficult to track this little “me” down.  It’s quite evasive, because we identify with it.  One way of tracking it down is catching it when it complains.  It has a habit of complaining.

So that is how the ego shows itself in reference to the past.  And then there is the future:  the things that you expect and pin your hopes on, things that you will still accomplish.  “I will still accomplish enlightenment!”  That’s something for the future.  Well, that’s not the way it works.  If it isn’t now, don’t expect it coming later.  But this now is just what this little self is so afraid of, because if you are in the now, it vanishes.  The ego has no foothold in the now. 

So those are the three essential aspects of being grateful.  The first one is obvious:  accepting what is now.  Accepting what is.  The second:  Any given thing must be in the now, because if it is, it is in the now.   The third:  If you are grateful in the now – and where else can you be grateful? – your little self dissolves.  And that’s the goal of all practices.  So if you start being grateful, that’s what you’re in for. 

http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_grateful_practice.htm

Gratefulness and the Power of Radical Sufficiency

          

Grateful living, or living in touch with the great fullness of life, has the ability to significantly and positively alter our lives and the larger world in which we live.

Grateful living asks us to purposefully direct our awareness to notice all that is already fully present and abundant in our lives - from the tiniest things of beauty to the grandest of our blessings - and in so doing, to take nothing for granted. Grateful living as a practice powerfully affirms that we can be in charge of our attention, and can point it towards that which serves the fullness of our learning, our lives, our relationships, and the world. And, amazingly, every single moment can offer us this opportunity…not a single moment need escape our gratefulness…even if it is simply to learn from that which is most difficult. We have the choice to be in touch with the “fullness” of everything.

In infinite ways, grateful living offers an unparalleled pathway to the experience of “enough,” and even more than enough, in our lives. Suddenly, the barren corners of our homes are rich with things for which to be thankful. What seemed lacking in our relationship now feels full to overflowing. Our bodies are miraculous. Electricity itself blows our minds. Our days can be one discovery after another of blessing and opportunity. And the earth can seem an endless symphony of beauty.

When we are in touch with enough-ness, when we feel like we are and have enough, we become less susceptible to cultural norms of complaint, envy, scarcity, comparison, and insatiability; all sources of suffering, and separation from ourselves, each other and the planet, and also the ways that we get caught in the “more is better” mentality. When we are so busy unconsciously rushing towards more, as Soul of Money author Lynne Twist says, we rush right over/past “enough” and do not even notice it…like an inconvenient speed-bump.

In this way, grateful living is an antidote to scarcity and insatiability. And it is radical because it establishes the only real, lasting conditions for generosity, kindness, compassion and the impulse to serve. When we are awake to all that is enough in our lives, we can turn our attention beyond ourselves. We need to feel our fullness in order to have anything truly meaningful to offer the world.

And since scarcity and insatiability are the drivers for so much that is unsustainable and unjust in our world right now, grateful living can be seen as not merely a salve of complacency and self-satisfaction, but as a protective impulse that wakes us up to act on behalf of the things for which we feel grateful. In this, gratefulness has the power to awaken us to greater purpose to preserve and tend the things we notice are worth cherishing – all the fragile blessing that surrounds us and is charged to our care.

Grateful living invites a radical experience of sufficiency, and sufficiency invites us toward using our lives and resources in more radically generous, open-hearted, and conscientious ways. This truth offers me hope - for our lives, each other and the world. And hope is a longing and blessing for which we can all be deeply grateful…

http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/gratefulness_sufficiency.htm