The Practice of Gratitude
Photo by Eduardo Goody
In the face of conflict, what are the various tools that Buddhism offers?
In this talk, Zuisei speaks of the practices of gratitude and mindfulness of breathing to work with internal conflict, pointing out that what happens in each of us extends out into the world.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Thanks by W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
W.S. Merwin, who died in 2019 after winning every possible prize a poet could win, studied with Robert Aitken Roshi in the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii. He was a Zen student, and like Jane Hirschfield, didn’t talk about it much, didn’t like to. But it’s in his every word, that particular view of the world, that level of attention. Mary Oliver, who wasn’t a Buddhist, nevertheless said very simply and directly in one of her poems: Pay attention/Be astonished/tell about it.
She called this "Instructions for living a life." When we get caught up in anger or righteousness or judgment, when we feel sure we know what needs to happen to whom and how, we can remember again to pay attention and be astonished, be struck, and humbled, by how much we don’t understand, after all this time.
I don’t need to tell you that what’s happening in the world right now is not new. The names are different, the places are closer or farther away, but it’s not anything that hasn’t happened before which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care. It does mean we should remember what to focus on, what to give our attention and our energy to, so that it matters most.
It’s not in the news that blames and divides. It’s not in the comments that slander and vilify. It’s not in gossip or hearsay or exaggeration or misinformation. It’s not in rage or distraction. It’s not in pretending nothing’s happening nor in obsessing about it.
Our minds can process 11 million bits of information per second. Our conscious mind can only sort through 40 bits; 40! What will we choose to focus on?
Merwin wrote “Thanks” in 1987, and the first version was different:
In a country up to its chin in shame living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you in the banks that use us we are saying thank you with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you.
Much less subtle than the final version he published the following year. One person, writing about this, considered the poem to be ironic; someone else thought Merwin was mocking empty gratitude, the show of being grateful without its substance. I disagree. I’m taking Merwin at face value; I’m taking him at his word.
Remembering wars and after funerals and with nobody listening, we are saying thank you. We are saying thank you, dark though it is, because dark is not all there is and that should be said, loud and clear. It should be said simply and often: dark is not all there is, not by a long shot, and despite everything.
So we say thank you for what we have and for what we are because what we have is always, always, so much more than what we’ve lost. Remember the question I asked during the threaded talk we did at the zazenkai? I said, “How do you find happiness within pain?” And a couple of you said to me recently, “I’m still thinking about it.” Good. How do you find happiness within pain? How do you find peace in the middle of war, inner and outer? How do you find unity in division, love where there is so much hate and violence and greed?
I wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t possible. I’m not interested in hypotheticals and I wouldn’t waste your time with them. I’m interested in being free from pain, from the pull of darkness—that’s what I want, for you and for everyone. So how? How do we do it? How do we find happiness in pain, gratitude in darkness? How do we, in the midst of wars and court trials and dying forests and dying children—how do we say thank you, not for the horror, but for the opportunity to change it? For the opportunity to see who we are and figure out how to best live?
E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s web, said, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it difficult to plan the day.”
I’d argue that the two are not different. Enjoying the world doesn’t have to be selfish, and it’s not so much about improving it but helping it be everything that it can be, everything that it is.
“No being ever falls short of its own completeness. It never fails to cover the ground upon which it stands." Master Dogen. "Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness." Galway Kinnell, American poet. Both are true, right now. Sometimes you know your own and the world’s completeness because you’ve been sitting long or you’ve been quiet enough and still enough that you just feel it and know it. Sometimes you have to remember or be reminded. Sometimes you have to work to feel it because it’s not the obvious thing.
This is why we practice. It’s not easy to say thank you when your partner has left or when you have lost your job or when people you know, and don’t know, die. When someone hurts you.
But every day something changes, someone leaves, something dies, something happens we didn’t want and still, we say thank you. Among all the many things that happen that we can’t choose, we can choose this: thank you.
The Buddha said: “Reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude, and the timely hearing of the Dhamma, the teaching of the Buddha—this is the highest blessing.” There’s a reason I’ve been talking about this for some time now. Not harming when harmed, not blaming, not using our much-needed energy on what will not change in the long run. We need reverence, humility, contentment, and gratitude to meet our lives. Also humor.
I was reading about a man in Serbia who’s dedicated his life to training peaceful revolutionaries. One of the main tools they use is humor to dispel fear. If your country is run by a dictator, if opposing that dictator gets you killed or disappeared, you’re not going to want to speak up. In Chile in the 80s, miners were protesting the dictatorship, and they convinced regular citizens to do something that was not illegal but could be highly disruptive: to drive slowly. Taxis, buses, and regular drivers started crawling down the streets in their vehicles. People started walking in slow motion along the sidewalks. In Poland people put their televisions on wheelbarrows and wheeled them through the city in protest of the fake news the government was dishing out. It was something they could do.
My friend stands in her town square and recites a poem to the Earth. That one isn’t humorous but it’s effective, so effective that people are shaken by it.
We need gratitude and creativity and humor to address our lives both globally and individually. We need to be able to laugh when we don’t quite make it. I said this in one of my first talks… 15 years ago? I started giving talks and I quickly saw how useful humor is to convey a message. I thought, “Oh God, but I’m not funny at all!” So I bought a book, several books actually. I taught myself how to find the funny in the serious. I studied and I practiced and I made a fool of myself lots and lots of times, trying to tell a funny story. One thing that came out of that is that now I can laugh at my mistakes, most of the time, laugh at the one who thinks she knows how things are.
By laughing at our mistakes I don’t mean “Ha, Ha, how funny I was, unkind or impatient or rageful…” no. I mean, “Ha, I’m practicing and I’m not quite able yet to do things differently.” I mean, “Ha, I thought I’d be enlightened by now; what happened?! Okay, let me try again, let me start over, let me forget what I think I know so I can see what’s there, hear what’s there,” which is so important, now and always.
The Rule of Saint Benedict starts with the word Listen, just like this poem: "Listen carefully, my child… and incline the ear of your heart." All of the sutras begin with the line, Thus have I heard. And the implication is there, Listen.
In one of Ursula Le Guin’s books, The Telling, the main character, who’s a kind of seer, begins conversations by saying, “I listen.” This is how we can ready ourselves when someone we love is about to speak—really, when someone, anyone, is about to say something: “I listen.” Not “I’m listening” as a statement of fact but as an active verb: I listen in this moment, and the next, and the next. It’s a reminder, an instruction, a command. This is important.
The Gatha on Opening the Sutra, which, at the Monastery, we’d chant before a dharma talk, says:
The Dharma, incomparably profound and infinitely subtle,
is rarely encountered, even in millions of ages.
Now we see it, hear it, receive and maintain it.
May we completely realize the Tathagata’s true meaning.
Now we see, now we hear, now we receive and maintain the truth of our lives in our smallest acts. Did you know that? That you are receiving and maintaining the dharma every time you brush your teeth, pull on your clothes, make your bed? That you’re hearing the 84,000 gathas in the voice of the river and the jackhammer and the siren and in silence? Did you know that you’re swimming in dharma? Do you let it change you?
“'They insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me'—for those who brood on this, animosity (which in Pali is called vera) isn’t stilled.” 'They insulted me, hit me, beat me, robbed me'—for those who don’t brood on it, animosity is stilled. Animosity isn’t stilled through animosity, regardless. Animosity is stilled through non-animosity: this is an unending truth." This is from the Dhammapada, the Buddha’s words. But what happens with your anger, then, your distress? What do you do with it so you don’t let it out or bottle it up?
The Buddha says we can use the breath to dissolve our anger, like water dissolving salt. We ask ourselves, How do I breathe so that my body is more comfortable? How do I breathe so I alleviate the discomfort of my mind? Breathing in, I calm the bodily formation. Breathing out, I calm the mental formation. Careful here—this sounds so simple, how can it possibly affect real conflict?
We’re using the body to tame an unruly mind, the only place where conflict happens. We breathe slowly, mindfully, in order to move through the discomfort in the body which is no different from the discomfort in our mind.
In the Satipattana Sutta there are ten sections devoted to awareness of the body, beginning with the breath. Ten practices we can do to be aware of the body in the body and to use that awareness to calm our minds, to put to rest the stories that keep us agitated. Someone could say, “But that’s not world peace.” It’s the peace of this world (points to herself), and where else are we going to start?
After calming the body, then we can reason with ourselves. We can ask, is my anger helping? Sometimes we find a situation horrible or totally unbearable. We think that it’s so extraordinary that we have an extraordinary right to react, but when we realize this is the nature of samsara, we back off. We calm down and maybe even take a small step toward goodness.
There’s a sutra in which the Buddha says that when we see someone who has done something wrong, we can think of ourselves as a person in the desert. We’re hot, tired, shaking with thirst, when we come across a cow print in sand. There's a little bit of water in it, but if we try to scoop it up, we’ll muddy the water and make it undrinkable. So what do we do? We get down on all fours and we slurp it up. It may seem undignified. We wouldn’t want someone to take a picture of us in that moment and post it on social media. But if our life depends on it, we’ll certainly do it. Well, our life depends on finding the goodness in another when that goodness is hard to find. That means we have to get low and really close and protect this little bit of goodness, like the water.
It’s like that story I’ve told of the young woman acting out, getting into fights and into drugs, skipping school, not caring what others said, everyone always on her back, “Why are you like this? Why are you like this?” Then one elder taking a look at her one day and saying very simply, not “what are you doing,” but “where does it hurt?” She killed her with kindness.
So, as wars rage on and the news feeds on our discontent, we can decide we will not collude in samsara. We can decide we won’t stoke our anger, but find ways to face it and change it, use it, and use it well. We can decide we’ll choose humility and reverence and gratitude and contentment.
Someone I work with shared with me the wonderful phrase, “Enough is a feast.” Can we live that? Can we live "Enough is a feast"? Because if we can, we’ll contribute to a vastly different world, and we need it.
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