Practicing Gratitude: Dwelling In What's Good

A gratitude practice can radically reshape the way we see life. By dwelling in the good, we experience every day, we start to level the playing field with whatever negative experiences can occupy the mind. The beauty of life begins to shine, and we begin to experience gratitude as our natural set point throughout the day.

Transcript

I think one of the best things about meditation for me is how it can help break out of the trance of my normal life,

My normal experience,

And particularly the way my mind tends to chatter on and obsess and kind of return back to the same experiences over and over again.

Bring me back to the simplicity of this present moment.

There's a book by Eckhart Tolle,

It's called The Power of Now,

And I find the title very powerful,

You know,

Itself,

The Power of Now,

This moment right now,

Not in the past,

Not in the future.

What is this one breath,

You know,

The in breath,

The out breath,

The sensations?

I mean,

There's such an immediacy,

There's a freshness,

There's an aliveness to this experience of the present moment that's very different from,

You know,

What happens often in our mind through most of the day.

There also can be a sense of kind of the,

Just the okayness of everything,

That somehow like things become very uncomplicated if you focus on your breath.

One breath is very uncomplicated and it can remind you that,

You know,

There is a sort of baseline okayness to experience which often is very hard to get in touch with.

And I think that the natural response to that can be just gratitude,

You know,

Gratitude for this breath,

You know,

This moment,

This experience of being alive.

There's a story that Sylvia Borstein tells,

She's a meditation teacher out in California,

She's in her 80s now.

And she came to New York City to see some friends and she,

They had arranged to go to a Broadway show.

So she was meeting them at the theater and she decided,

Because she had enough time,

She was going to take the bus across town,

Transit bus.

So she gets on the bus and there's a lot of traffic,

New York City,

A lot of traffic.

So you know the bus is kind of plodding along and she's starting to look at her watch and you know the minutes are ticking by and it's,

You know,

She's starting to get a little nervous.

And then this continues for some time and then the bus actually stops in traffic,

The traffic is not moving.

And then she gets even more nervous and then she starts talking to herself,

It's like,

Why didn't I leave more time?

What was I thinking?

My friends are waiting at the theater,

They're not going to go in without me.

If we don't get there before the curtain,

We'll have to wait until the intermission.

I've waited months for this.

We pay for the tickets,

Like it goes on and on and on.

Like I'm an idiot,

Why does this always happen to me?

Kind of gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

So she decides to get off the bus and she's going to start walking because she's not that far from the theater at this point.

And so she's walking and then she's looking at her watch and she's getting even more nervous so she says she's going to start to run.

So she starts to run and her heel breaks on her shoe.

So then she takes off her shoes and she starts running in her bare feet.

And just as she's doing this,

The bus passes her.

And then her mind is at the point of almost like exploding in rage and upset.

And then suddenly it occurs to her,

I'm an 82 year old woman.

I'm running barefoot across Manhattan to see a Broadway play with some of my best friends.

Isn't life amazing?

And there's that sudden shift from this proliferating mind with all these negative thoughts to wait,

Isn't this incredible?

Isn't life rather incredible?

I lived for a few years in a refugee camp in southern Mexico doing refugee relief work and there was no electricity,

There was no running water.

You had to cart your water from this spigot that was down this dusty road.

And when I finally came back to the United States,

There were these things that it took me a long time to get over.

First of all,

You could walk into a room and you press the light switch and the lights go on.

It's like,

Wow,

That's amazing.

And then even better than that was that you turn on the tap and the water comes out.

And not only does the water come out,

But you can actually drink the water.

And it's the same water that people water their lawns with,

They wash their cars,

They flush their toilets,

And it's like,

This is drinkable water.

The best one,

Though,

For me was the hot showers.

I didn't have a hot shower for a few years.

And so it actually took me about two years before I could finally,

It was just like every time I would get under a hot shower,

I would think,

This is just the most amazing thing in life ever,

A hot shower.

The poet Rumi says,

Walking out of the treasury building,

I feel generous.

Anyone still sober is not paying attention.

So there is this kind of,

There can be in life this shift from this very small sense of self that's often very self-critical,

That focuses on unworthiness,

Inadequacies,

And how unsatisfying life is.

And you can see dissatisfaction everywhere,

Whether it's in you,

Or you look in the mirror and you see things you don't like,

Or whether it's your partner,

Or your job,

Or your,

You know,

Torts professor,

Whatever it is.

The mind has a way of focusing on these things and not letting go.

And you know,

One of the pieces of good news about this is it's not entirely our fault,

In the sense that a lot of this is hardwired inside of us,

That neuroscientists call it our negativity bias.

And it has very deep evolutionary roots.

You know,

You can imagine,

Like,

Why did our species survive so long out on the savanna?

Well,

It's because we were always hyper alert to any sort of danger that might arise,

Even dangers that were not so likely to arise.

This is what got us here.

So in some ways we have to be thankful for it.

But it's also sort of like a disability.

It's kind of like a learning disability.

And the more you recognize it,

The more you realize that it's really just one side of this equation,

That it's very useful,

But it has a way of kind of burning all these negative experiences into our storage in our mind.

And then those are kind of the things that we kind of keep going back.

Like we over learn a little bit from all the negative experiences.

So really the focus of the inquiry for this talk for tonight is can we instead shift the focus to the other side of the equation,

To the positive,

To the wholesome,

To the good in our experience?

Can we kind of try to level the playing field a little bit between these two things?

The negativity bias is never going to go away completely,

And we should be happy for that.

I mean,

The red light,

You see the red light,

You know you shouldn't cross the street,

Right?

But the mind does have this character that if you can slow down,

And I think this is one of the experiences in meditation,

That you realize that underneath that negativity bias is this natural inclination toward gratitude,

Toward satisfaction,

Towards feeling like,

Ah,

Like in a moment you can feel like actually this is enough,

This experience,

This moment,

This breath.

Or that the world is a place that's safe,

You know,

Where I belong.

My meditation practice right now,

My daily meditation practice is on the metro train.

It's about a half hour from where I take the train to Farragut and North Station.

And so a few times I've missed a stop because I've dozed off.

But most of the time I get that 30 minutes in both directions.

One of the things that it does for me,

Sometimes when I come up from the escalator,

You know,

I kind of look around and I have a different impression of things.

And I know that most times,

And I don't know if this happens to you,

But most times when I come up the escalator you see the street is very busy with people.

Everyone seems to be in their own little bubble.

Everyone is in a rush.

There's not,

I don't feel innately a sense of welcome.

It seems like somehow like a big competition.

You know,

It's like you kind of come up into this big competition.

But one of these mornings recently I came up and I had this completely different experience.

The thought occurred to me,

What if when I come up the escalator I feel like this world is actually a safe,

Welcoming place.

What does that feel like?

And I kind of stayed with that a little bit.

And then I looked around and all the people that I saw,

I felt like they are here to support me.

They're not enemies.

You know,

We're all in this together.

And it was a completely different experience of seeing these same people every morning I come up on the escalator,

Every morning it's the same thing.

And two,

I think being thankful of even the hardships in life.

In Tibetan Buddhism there's a practice for beginners in meditation,

They're often instructed in something called making difficulties into the path.

And you know,

All of those unwanted sufferings or sorrows that come to life,

Of looking at them as a way of trying to grow this patience,

This compassion,

There's a prayer in Tibetan Buddhism that says,

Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled.

I'm reminded of a story about a classmate,

Actually a classmate of mine at Georgetown.

She had the misfortune,

We were both on the law journal and I met her there and in some classes and in her second year she was on the law journal,

She was going down and for whatever reason there was a trap door,

I don't know if they're still in the same place over in the library,

There was a trap door that some workmen had opened and had not barricaded off and she unknowingly,

Not paying attention,

Fell down this trap door,

I don't know,

It was 8 or 10 feet and she severely damaged her back.

It was an injury that she never really recovered from.

She suffered great pain in her back,

She had like a little morphine pump that she carried around all throughout the rest of her law school career and I got to know her a little bit and she seemed always kind of in good humor,

You know,

This is the thing that struck me.

I got sort of like the story from her but she always seemed in good humor and I asked like what is it,

Like what's your secret,

Like how are you managing all of this and she said well you know a big part of it is that there are a few other students I know at the law center who are actually much worse off than me.

She talked about one woman in particular who went around in crutches all day long because of a disability and she said you know when I'm feeling down I go to talk to her about how she's doing and she always kind of lifts me up and she said and that woman actually goes to another person who is even worse off and talks to that person and she said actually we kind of all take care of ourselves,

We have a group,

We kind of take care of ourselves here.

And it just has a way,

I mean those experiences I think have a way of kind of melting away some of these experiences which are so sticky for us and so much the source of dissatisfaction.

Or certainly anybody who has traveled outside the United States to a country where there's a lot of poverty and feeling that there can be this kind of joyfulness and happiness to people that can be very rare in this country.

I felt it in the couple times when I came back from Mexico,

It would be almost like when the plane was landing back in the United States you could almost sort of feel the tension or the stress of life here sort of kind of returning you know like oof,

This experience that just kind of built in to what we are.

So how to make this shift,

Right?

I mean how to make this shift and try to level the playing field?

The practice,

The simple practice which we'll actually do a little bit of in a second is to simply dwell in the good,

To dwell in the good.

I think that this negativity bias sometimes it says that we have a Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good experiences.

The good experiences just disappear.

And whether somebody gives us a compliment,

You know somebody helps us out,

I think we're usually very dismissive of those and we want to move on.

Well they don't really mean it or even if they mean it,

You know I have a lot of things to worry about.

So the practice is really simply to try to dwell in the good.

There was an experience a few years ago where I used to work at HUD,

Housing and Urban Development in the council's office and there was a presentation to the general council herself.

I was preparing for a few weeks.

I was getting very nervous about it.

I finally gave the presentation,

It went extremely well and so I was leaving the room.

This was after I started meditating a little bit and I,

So I had two sensations.

One was the first sensation was the sense of relief.

It's like ah one of those things like one of those big things that's finally over and it's like ah okay so now I can just relax a little bit.

And then suddenly right after that there was this feeling like no,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

Let's scan around and see like what is the next thing to be worried about.

What's next?

And it was like,

And I realized this and it was like ah this is the pattern that my mind always follows.

It's like what is going on up there?

It's like can't I just stop and realize this relaxation,

You know this good,

This sense of wellbeing.

So this is the practice.

This is the very simple practice.

And it's sort of mindfulness of what's going on in this way I think reveals this really simple equation that like healthy wholesome mind states to the degree that we can dwell in them,

Rest in them,

Then help to create a healthy wholesome mind.

And exactly in the same way that the unhealthy mind states,

You know,

The returning over and over again to these stories about ourselves and all of our deficiencies,

They will,

The more we dwell on them,

Create this natural bias in the mind towards that.

There's a saying from the Buddha that whatever the mind constantly dwells on,

To that the mind will naturally return.

And so the more that we can build this muscle of being able to dwell and hold on to the good,

Then the more the mind will naturally rest there.

It will just become that resting place which we'll go back to again and again and feel like really more of our home,

Our natural resting place.

There's the little bit of effort involved in this.

There's a little bit of effort involved.

And I think sometimes people think of meditation as just simply kind of this open awareness,

Kind of this spaciousness.

So there's a little bit to do here.

But it really is a question of trying to return to some of these foundational experiences which we come back to as a sense of being already there.

So I'd like to try one of these with you.

And to do so,

Again,

I just invite you to find a way that you can relax and be alert.

If you want to put your feet back on the floor.

If you feel comfortable closing your eyes,

You can do so.

And also maybe just start by taking a breath or two,

Relaxing through any tension you might see in your body.

And this practice is really simply a practice of warming the heart.

Just see if we can ground ourselves in a sense of compassion,

Kindness,

Whatever way works for you.

You can just try to remind yourself of a sense of caring.

You might think of somebody who cares deeply about you.

Could be a pet,

Friend,

A group of friends.

Could be something that has really moved your heart in feeling the suffering of somebody else.

Just be a friend who you just delight in.

So see if you can have this experience of caring of these positive feelings.

And just see if for the next few moments you can just stay with those.

See if you can rest in a sense of compassion or kindness,

Loving heart.

This will be our object of meditation.

This is what we're going to meditate on,

But also who we are.

Just to allow and encourage these feelings,

This warm heartedness to become more intense.

You can feel it sometimes as something very subtle,

But the practice is to see what happens if you allow it to just fill your mind,

Just to see if it can pervade in your thoughts.

See if you can even make it big enough just to fill all of the space that's here.

You can enrich the experience by just sensing what this feels like in your body,

Just recognizing whatever sensations arise with this and just resting in them or in the thoughts that you may have,

The thoughts of well-being for another person,

Of kindness.

You can also try to experience this feeling as something different or novel.

See if you can experience it as if it's the first time that you've ever experienced it with beginner's mind or don't-know mind,

With a kind of enjoyment or curiosity,

A sense of delight.

This is just something very special.

Then last,

Just have a sense of what is enjoyable about this experience.

What are the positive feelings?

Why is it pleasurable?

Why is it so welcome?

When you're ready in your own time,

You can open your eyes.

There's a lot of neuroscience out there that actually kind of gets into what actually happens in the brain when we do this.

Sometimes it says it's the movement from state to trait,

Like with any experience.

You can have it,

But with all experience,

It's very fleeting.

So then it comes and it goes.

Then the question is,

Can you dwell in it?

Can you sort of cement it in your conscience so that the brain,

It's almost like it tags that experience and then goes back to it.

It kind of recognizes it.

There's another expression in neuroscience that neurons that fire together wire together.

So the more that they fire together,

Then the more they actually do wire together,

Such that,

Again,

This becomes then the natural inclination of the mind.

So the lessons from the experience are really just in the same way that it comes to us that the more that you can dwell on this experience,

The positive experience,

The more it becomes sort of embedded in the nervous system.

The bigger you can let the feeling become,

The more intensity,

Then the more it kind of starts to move from this momentary experience into more of a trait.

The more you can feel it in the body,

Then the more it becomes integrated into where you are and who you are.

And the more you can feel the freshness of it,

The sort of novelty of like,

Wow,

This is amazing.

This is cool.

I love this experience,

Even though maybe it's something you've had before.

And then you just let it sink in,

Like water into a sponge or like light expanding,

Just feel how big it can become.

So how to do this?

I want to leave you with just a couple suggestions.

There's one practice which you can do,

Which is almost try to count a few of them during the day,

This one neuroscientist,

Rick Hansen says,

You only need about six a day.

That's all you really need to help turn your mind around.

So six times during the day that you want to pay attention to something positive that you feel,

And then you just hold onto it.

He says,

10 seconds.

Ten seconds will do it.

That's all you need.

Six times a day.

It doesn't sound so hard,

Right?

And he says with that,

You'll start to kind of get the rhythm of this.

It's also something too that I've done with my wife from time to time.

It's an email gratitude practice.

And you can do with anybody,

But you find somebody and then say,

Once a day you're going to email them with four things that you're grateful for.

Don't make it hard.

Whatever the first thing that comes to mind,

Sort of like,

Could be,

I woke up this morning.

I feel the air against my skin.

I got to work on time.

The sun is shining.

It could be anything.

But whatever the first things are that come to your mind,

You send the email and then you wait for the email back.

And if you do this once a day,

It can have this very beneficial effect.

The other thing is a more traditional practice in meditation,

Sometimes called loving kindness practice where you actually try to send these well wishes out.

You start with yourself.

They're kind of concentric circles.

So you start with yourself.

You send these well wishes of,

May I be happy?

May I be at ease?

May I be free from suffering?

And then you expand out to that circle of kindness that's closest to you,

The people that you feel closest to,

And then to others,

Maybe even strangers that you see on the street or on the metro.

And then last to those difficult people in life,

Like the really hard cases.

See if you can extend it out that far as well.

So the basic,

So this is the basic technique to see if you can level the playing field,

If you can start to replace the negativity bias with this feeling of abundance,

You know,

Feeling of enoughness,

A feeling of this radical okayness of everything that's here.

There's an expression in Tibet that if you take care of the minutes,

Then the years will take care of themselves.

And there's another expression that the most important minute of your life is the next minute,

Feeling like that is the moment in which your life is completely open.

There's a complete availability of experience.

There is possibilities,

You know,

That haven't been predetermined.

The Buddha said,

Think not lightly of good,

That it will not come to me.

Drop by drop will the water pot be filled.

Likewise,

The wise one,

Little by little,

Fills themselves with good.

And the Vietnamese sand master,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

Has an expression which he often repeats that happiness is available.

Please come help yourself.

So I'll conclude there.

I would very much like to hear your thoughts,

Questions,

Either about the talk or about anything that happened in the meditation.

Now any thoughts?

Any reflections on the meditation?

Yes?

I guess you did a good job if there's no thoughts.

Yeah,

Right,

Right,

Yeah.

It's like,

We did it as we're done.

You don't have to come back either.

I don't think you can.

You can just call it quits at this point.

Yeah.

The student I work with,

Actually the staff person I work with,

Keeps a gratitude journal.

And every night she writes down things that she's grateful for from that day.

Which I think sounds like a great practice to me.

Yeah.

All right.

Well,

Why don't we conclude?

So I'll just conclude with another very brief practice.

So if again,

One more time,

You just want to relax,

Go back inside.

And just again,

Come home again to yourself right now here.

Just open to whatever makes you feel safe,

At peace.

Just let go of any unnecessary anxiety.

Feel for a moment the tranquility of your mind and body as you just relax.

Just gently sense that this moment is enough.

There is nothing else needed.

Don't have to chase anything.

That you can be with whatever is.

Let go of any feeling of inadequacy,

Struggling.

Just take this last minute to feel that you're already at ease.

That you're already naturally at home.

So thank you for your kind attention.

I left some sheets out about resources for meditation.

Also if you're not on the email list,

You can put down your email list.

Put down your email,

We'll include you for future announcements.

And thank you.

Thank you