Radical Gratitude Practice

This podcast focuses on the powerful practice of gratitude through both silent and guided meditation, a Dharma talk and a sharing circle.  I have found gratitude can be transformative.  As my practice has deepened there are more moments of gratitude which go beyond being thankful for receiving the bounties of life. It includes being grateful for challenges and difficulties, the moments dukkha (dissatisfaction, anguish, suffering).  With mindful, kind, and wise reflection dukkha can be experienced as an opportunity for spiritual freedom and compassion to expand.  It is important to understand that this is an experiential insight, not an external expectation or judgement imposed by the mind. It is the experience of freedom from the minds resisting and grasping.  In the deep experience of gratitude, there is no me, or you.  There is just our field of interconnectedness.  

 

"Cultivating, practicing, and sustaining gratefulness as an approach to life is radical – because it flies in the face of internal and external forces which want us to believe the big lie that we need to have more and be more in order to be happy" Kristi Nelson

 

"When we feel true gratitude, whether toward particular people or toward life, Metta (lovingkindness) will flow from us naturally. When we connect with another person through gratitude, the barriers that separate begin to melt."  Joseph Goldstein from his book One Dharma

“In certain temples that I've been to, there's actually a prayer that you make asking for difficulties - May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion*. Jack Kornfield

 
Being grateful for not only life's blessing but also its suffering is a key component of living a spiritual life -- and more broadly, to a fulfilling and meaningful life.