This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. reflecting on and thinking about and talking about the practice of gratitude. And during this, these weeks of thinking about it and studying it, I realized that I had kind of a resistance to what I thought was gratitude. And A couple weeks ago, I gave a talk at Green Gulch, and as the bell was going, and I was waiting to come into the Buddha Hall, into the Zendo, Zendo Buddha Hall at Green Gulch, I had a kind of insight into what it was that I had been thinking gratitude was and why it was a stumbling block.

[01:25]

And I had... equated or conflated gratitude with obligation should you're supposed to be, why aren't you more grateful? Say thank you to Aunt Cecilia or whatever, you know, for this strange gift that you get her. And I realized... Gratitude and gratefulness was very connected with, you should be a good girl and say thank you. And I wanted to say that I have been relieved of that misconception, and you may have the same kind of thought about gratitude. I've known of people whose practice has been gratitude, is gratitude, and I've always been a little wary of going... over to that obligatory side.

[02:33]

But now I'm not feeling that way anymore, and I want to talk with you, reflect on that together, what gratitude is or can be. I just want to say I have moved my office and office practice, interview, doksan room, and living quarters from next door into the building. And there's a calligraphy over the door of the rooms that I'm now occupying that Blanche, Abbas Blanche, former Abbas Blanche Hartman, also occupied. And before that, Suzuki Roshi and his wife, for decades, lived in those rooms. And there's a calligraphy over the door, which... I'm not exactly sure what it is, but recently in a lecture by Suzuki Roshi, someone asked him, what is that calligraphy over your door?

[03:37]

And he said it was jo-un, in Japanese meaning, ride cloud, or cloud rider, you might say, which jo-un, ride cloud, comes from the Mountains and Waters Sutra, where it says... the virtue of the Buddhas, you ride the clouds and follow the wind. It's connected with virtue, the true virtue of a Bodhisattva, which to me sparks a kind of, one can go anywhere and be with anyone and talk with anyone as Bodhisattva. So I'll have to find out. Maybe one of you knows what that calligraphy is. If it is indeed Zhou Un, we'll find out.

[04:38]

So gratitude, the definition of gratitude is, it comes from the root, kind of the root of the word that in Latin, gratis, gratis, means to praise aloud. And this root is the root of a number of words, including gratitude, gratefulness, grace, congratulations, and also agree, and also ingrate, you know. So the meaning of gratitude is an appreciation and thankfulness for kindnesses that have been shown, given to you, but also to others, too.

[05:46]

We can feel grateful when we see someone else receiving kindness. We can feel gratitude rise up in us. Recently, we've been... having the Buddha's enlightenment ceremony, the commemoration of the Buddha's realization of his true self under the Bodhi tree. And the story, many of you know the legend, the teaching story, after the Buddha woke up, he sat under the Bodhi tree for about a week, just enjoying his life, just enjoying it. And then another lesser-known story is the second week after the Buddha was enlightened, he got up from under the Bodhi tree, stood up and turned around and faced the tree and gazed at the tree in gratitude for having sheltered him and shaded him and protected him during this really heroic time of...

[06:57]

waking up and what he experienced. So he gazed at this tree for a week, just feeling gratitude. So this is from the earliest story of the Buddha's enlightenment. There is this expression of thankfulness and appreciation for gifts given. Now you might say, well, the tree, you know, the tree was just growing there. The tree didn't. knowingly and willingly give the Buddha shade. But that's kind of the key, I think, to gratitude, is that the gifts that are given are freely given. Many, many, many things of our life have been freely given and granted to us. And instead of appreciating and feeling an upwelling of thanks and joy, and appreciation, we often take them for granted.

[08:00]

That phrase, you know, someone takes you for granted, or you take your situation, or your health, or all sorts of things, we take it for granted. And if we look carefully at that phrase, take it for granted, it is granted. All these things are granted freely. We can take it for granted, that it's been granted to us as a gift, but then are we practicing gratitude, appreciation, and thanks, and joy in the receiving of this? There's a word in Paliant Sanskrit which is anumodana, anumodana, and this is it translates as rejoicing in, being thankful for, appreciating acts of generosity, anumodhana.

[09:09]

And the Buddha recommended this to the monks and nuns of the time to practice anumodhana when gifts are given, this thankfulness, appreciation, and joy, actually. Often, this is used for expressing thanks after a meal was given, because the food, almsgiving, and providing for the monks and nuns to eat, that was a regular occurrence at the time. So this rejoicing in the kindness of others, feeling joy, and appreciating and feeling thanks arise, and expressing that is a very, very basic practice that the Buddha recommended, and that is free for all of us to practice this way. Letting go of obligatory, but actually feeling what we feel when kindnesses are offered to us.

[10:19]

And not only... showing thankfulness and appreciation, but rejoicing. There's a kind of joy when we receive something. It's very connected with sympathetic joy, which is one of the four immeasurables that we rejoice or are joyful when good things happen to others is sympathetic joy. But that's a joy that we feel. It's not... displaced on someone else, it's we feel that joy in our own selves. So this is, we can access this joy all the time for whether it's happening to someone else or we're receiving it, the gratitude practice and sympathetic joy is available to us. So picturing the Buddha turning and expressing and feeling, just gazing at this tree,

[11:22]

I know, and I know for, I would say all of us, there are times when we feel gratitude arising with ease, often in nature, often when we are seeing beautiful places, places that we love, sunrise, the sunset, the ocean, a tree that we love, and that it arises very easily. this kind of gratitude for nature, places, people, animals, music. Do we notice this, though? This is, I think, part of what I'm finding is it is not so rare, actually, that we have this feeling of joy upon seeing... I know at Gringold people walk down to the ocean and hopefully to get there in time before the sun goes down. I know this happened... During Sashin, this is a shared experience of joy and gratitude.

[12:30]

However, sometimes we can't feel that. We feel benumbed. We feel we have no access to it. And I was remembering my first year, really, at Tassajara, going to Tassajara as a new student. my first practice period, 1972, September, and I was not in a very good place emotionally, and I felt I will try Tazahara, and some people say Tazahara is the last resort. This will be the last resort. I'm going to give it my all, but if this isn't... something doesn't change, well then I don't know what's going to happen. So being at Tassajara, that practice period, it was very, I don't know even how to describe it, but I had a difficult time.

[13:32]

I had a lot of struggle. I was, I don't know what, depressed. I don't know what to even call it. It was lonely, very wrapped in my own a cloud, not riding the cloud, but kind of enveloped. And after a full year at Tassajara, the next fall, I was there, I went through that year and stayed for the next fall, and I remember looking around as autumn came, and the leaves, there are many, many maples at Tassajara, and it was... so beautiful. The leaves were turning golden and red and falling on the pathways, and the mountains were lit up with these trees, and the sky was like blue, blue, blue, and a blue you can't believe. And I said to someone, was this like this last year?

[14:33]

And they said, what do you mean? Of course, this is Tassajara in the fall. I had not seen one thing. I had not seen a golden leaf, a blue sky. beautiful tree, the creek that swells in the fall and the winter as there's more rain. I hadn't seen a thing because I was so self-concerned and so wrapped up in my own struggle and depression and so forth. So this question, what blocks gratitude? What gets in the way of almost... what is granted to us, all around us, the myriad gifts, the uncountable gifts that we have received, that where we have done nothing to receive them, like the English language, you know, that I'm spouting along here. I did... It just functioning, you know, I picked that up, you know, the way babies do.

[15:40]

You know, this is... And not... to feel gratitude for all the English speakers, foremothers and forefathers, you know. So there's all these things that are granted. What gets in the way? And often the things that get in the way are, well, one thing is greed and the attitude of what's in it for me. I didn't get that, well, I should have gotten that, and a kind of mind about that's wrapped up in what we want. and what we don't have rather than what's already given, what we already have. So that's one thing that blocks our feeling of gratitude is greed. The other is anxiety and fear and preoccupation. This can happen when we are struggling and depressed and facing a lot of challenges.

[16:43]

So our sitting practice, our zazen practice, and all of our practices help us with what I'm bringing up, the three poisons, greed, hate, or anger, and confusion, and anxiety, and stress. When we sit, and I think that year, that first year at Tassar, there was a lot of sitting, and something was allowed to settle. And when that settled, there was room for an upsurge of, I don't know what to call them, gratitude, that came from nothing that I did in particular. No work on my part in a certain way, but just the joy of being alive, joy in the Dharma, thankfulness for the Dharma, for the practitioners, for the place, for nature.

[17:51]

There was room for it. As I settled and as I got more and more clear about allowing things to arise and vanish, I could feel something positive, something that hadn't had room. before to arise that was there. And I think this word grace, you know, that we don't really use that much or ever, but it's interesting how gratitude and grace, I didn't know those two were connected at the same root. But I remember feeling that... There was a kind of state of grace, or amazing grace. That song was a kind of theme song for me, even though not being a Christian, it wasn't from that. It was feeling that I had received so much from the practice, and a wretch like me could feel this great joy arising.

[19:02]

So when we sit, we can allow the fear and greed and anxiety come and go and see what else is there in our life, in our body-mind. This gratitude that we have for nature and for place and beloved places, I just wanted to acknowledge the gratitude I feel for what's going on in Paris right now. I checked right before. driving over here from Green Gulch, about whether they'd come to an agreement yet. It's like right on the brink of making an agreement. And I just, I think it's 195 countries plus the EU coming together to actually say we want, you know, to curb emissions. and not have the temperature rise over 1.5 Celsius, I think, or two at the top.

[20:13]

But anyway, that people have worked so hard, you know, these overnight sleepless nights as they're trying to hammer this out, this nationwide, worldwide, to what? To protect and save and protect the most vulnerable people and this beautiful world that has been granted us. And the enormous gratitude for these people who have been working on this, and enormous gratitude for the earth itself. So this culture that we live in, and this is the season of giving, and... All of you may be feeling that there's a pressure on you to give gifts and material things and this emphasis on having.

[21:14]

There's almost no room to feel the gratitude for what we already have. This pressure that's in the culture and wherever we look and to concentrate on I, me, and mine and getting what I need for myself. So to switch this to a practicing gratitude for what we already have, not what we want, is a wonderful switch. And just to say, and this is, I don't want to emphasize this exactly, but there's enormous amount of literature about the science, the neuroscience, about the practice of gratitude. Maybe somebody know about these words. studies that have been done and research that's been done about the effects of practicing gratitude on human beings. And just to say just a few words about that, what they found when this switch from I want to what I already have, what happens is people become less depressed, sleep better, have a sense of well-being,

[22:27]

feel more connected with others, have joy, more joy in their life. And this list is a wonderful list. And also it's connected with having gratitude, has a connection with emotional intelligence and empathy. Actually being able to see this person intended to help me and be kind to me and did this, gave this to me, said a kind word, to have a feel for that and feel the other person what they're intending develops our empathy and compassion, which... this connection with others. So there's great benefits to practicing gratitude. And you can look this up if you want, but some of the practices are just something very simple, like before going to bed, list five things that you are grateful for that day.

[23:35]

Which doesn't sound like that would be such a big change, would be transformative. However, the human... as we know, when we think in a certain way over time and have a pattern of thinking, it shapes the mind and inclines the mind or the chetana, the landscape of the mind, in certain directions. So if our habit mind is complaining and I'm not getting... anything and they all have it and I don't and et cetera, et cetera. That is a kind of shaping of the mind with our thoughts which is extremely powerful to be feeling a certain way and have certain attitude and pattern of thinking which leads to not feeling of well-being or appreciative or joy.

[24:44]

So Just, you know, the... It's not magic, you know. It's how our minds, the plasticity of our... I think mind and brain are different in this case, but our habits, the way we think and the pattern of thinking affects who we are. It's body-mind, right? So just knowing that we can... Maybe do something as simple as that. Think about what we're grateful for. And what one might find is we can be surprised with joy at what brings this feeling of gratitude. Just walking down the street, you know, hearing a bird or seeing someone. I saw someone driving here today on a... and they were very, very skilled.

[25:46]

I was going slow enough that I was kind of, they were keeping up with me, driving down Oak, and they were, and it was beautiful. It was just beautiful to watch, and to recognize that as feeling gratitude for this physical prowess of this young person, and the joy of youth, and physical confidence, and to touch into that as what I'm calling gratitude now, but as you see, it becomes wider and wider and wider until you can't even narrow it. It's more like life itself. It's just appreciating and the joy in our life together, practicing in this world. Anumodana, expressing this appreciation. So in our practice, there's many, many ways within the forms of our practice that gratitude is expressed.

[26:48]

The gasho bow, palms pressed together. We do it all the time. We bow to our cushion. We bow away. We bow to our neighbors. We can think of this, and I do think of this, as being grateful for the practice itself, that we have a place to come that is a beautiful place. that has been set aside for over 50 years for people to practice together. So bowing to our cushion is bowing to everyone who's come before us, and the cushion itself, that's going to support me. And bowing to our neighbors, bowing to the Buddha, the teachers, and these are blessings in our life. There's four, we talk about four, in Japanese it's the word own, the four own, or the four blessings, which are, there's different lists of these, but there are teachers, our benefactors, our parents, and the three treasures that we have gratitude for.

[28:02]

And we... We remember them in our chanting, in our dedications of chanting, in our daily practice there. These are remembered and, you know, thanking the teachers for passing on the teaching. And in one of these lists of the four blessings, and in one list it says the nation, another list says the government, this is... I think that's one of the lists. But in thinking about, well, is this one of the blessings of my life, really? I think there's a lot of people that say that wasn't a blessing. But what I realized was the fact that we're here in not 100%, because nothing can be 100% guaranteed, but safety, the fact that we can come together, sit together, and feel pretty confident that... we're not gonna be rounded up and taken away or something, or, you know, that we, this is, you know, that's what I think of when I think of the government or the nation, that we have this freedom to gather in this way and have a practice place, and many practice places, including Green Gulch, which was, you know, when the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was formed,

[29:30]

Green Gulch is a private inholding in the GGNRA, which stretches from all the way up the coast. And that's written into the congressional record that was read into the record that we, San Francisco Zen Center, Green Gulch Farm, would be an inholding, private inholding, in this national park. And that was allowed through the great help of many people. lobbying, I suppose you could say, of various friends of Zen Center. But the fact that that was allowed, I have great gratitude for that. That would not have been the case in many places, you know, or many countries. So this kind of feeling that as blessing, acknowledging rather than the taking for granted in the way of not even thinking about it, not being thankful, not even remembering.

[30:32]

So to realize this was granted, and the fact that we're here is granted, is a gift. There's a phrase that was, when I first began to practice that, I heard actually from one of my teachers, which was, the giver should be grateful. The giver should be grateful. And I remember thinking, no, no, that's not right. The receiver should be grateful. The giver is giving the gift and the receiver should be grateful. However, as we all know, giving, when we give, we receive, right? So this is the circle of giver, receiver, and gift that wherever you come in on the circle, the receiver... also is grateful, and what do they do? They give thanks. They give back thanks and gratitude. So the receiver is giving.

[31:34]

The giver is grateful because they, when we give, we feel very happy. In fact, in the neuroscience, giving activates, you probably know this, but activates the pleasure center of the brain in the same way as delicious food, and sensual activity of various kinds. Giving is right up there with the most pleasurable activities that human beings engage in. So the giver should be grateful because giving brings joy and great happiness and pleasure in the receiver. So it's this marvelous circle. And what is the gift even anymore? traditional gifts are material things, also the gift of fearlessness, and the gift of Dharma, which is thought to be the most beneficial gift, which relieves beings of suffering, really.

[32:41]

But we give all sorts of things, material things. The gift of fearlessness is that no one need be afraid of you. So you're giving the person, because this is the mudra of fearlessness. This is compassion, giving of the compassionate one. So the giver should be grateful, and turning that as a koan, actually, when the person first told me, like, no, you've got it upside down, you've got it topsy-turvy. You've got it upside down. And then living into the giver should be grateful, the should meaning let us realize the gratitude we feel to be able to give. And we give of our time, we give of our words, we give of our presence.

[33:43]

Sometimes that's all we can give is just being there and not leaving. not being afraid to stay may be a huge gift, especially in hospice or hospital. So how do we requite, how do we pay back the gift, all these gifts that we've received? Is it possible? We've received so much. especially the teaching and the Dharma, and it said that there is really no way you can pay back your teachers and benefactors with anything material. You can give a gift, but the real gift and the only gift that our teachers really care about is that we make of our life a seamless practice, that our life reveals that

[34:49]

the gratitude that we feel through all of our acts of body, speech, and mind. And the way we live our life, that's the only way that we can really requite the debt or pay back those who have given us, is to live upright, aware, and and thankful for each, for the gift of each moment, really. There's a story, I actually have two stories that I wanted to end with. One is about our teacher in this lineage, in Chinese his name was Deng Shan. Deng Shan. became Tozan in Japanese, and that To is from Soto, Zanhe.

[35:54]

That lineage was passed on and became Dogen in Japan. And now we have this particular way of practice. And Dungshan studied with different people, but there's a story where he's doing a memorial service for his teacher, Yun Yan. After his teacher died, we just did a big... the annual memorial service for Suzuki Roshi. This was the 44th year, December 4th, 3rd and 4th. So Dung Shan was doing a memorial service for his teacher, offering sweet water and tea and offering food and chanting and so forth. And a monk came up to him and said, what teaching did you receive from Yun Yan that you're doing this... big memorial service for him. And Dung Shan said, although I was there with him, I didn't receive anything. I didn't receive any teaching.

[36:58]

And the monk said, well, if you didn't receive any teaching, why are you doing this memorial service for him if you didn't receive anything from him? And Dungshan said, it is not for my former master's virtue or for his Buddha Dharma that I esteem him and do this memorial service. It's because he did not make exhaustive explanations. And another translation is he did not tell me anything or give me anything. And the monk said, I think was perplexed and said, you're doing a memorial service for him and he didn't give you anything? Do you agree with him or not? Do you agree with your teacher's teaching? And Dung Shan said, half agree and half do not agree. And the monk said, why don't you fully agree with your teacher?

[38:05]

And Dung Shan said, if I completely agreed with my teacher, I would not be expressing my gratitude. I would not be grateful to him. I would not be grateful to my master if I 100% agreed with him. This has been a wonderful teaching story for me because what it shows is that each student has the... must bring forth the teaching anew. You cannot rely on your teacher and just spout 100%, this is, I totally agree, this is what my teacher said, and now I'm passing it on. That will, what will happen is the teaching will get weaker and weaker and weaker and eventually disappear. So to requite... the blessings of the teaching that he received.

[39:11]

He half agrees and he half does not agree. He has to find his own way and his own words and his own expression of the teaching. This is how you pay back. This is how you express gratitude. It's not just spouting what you've heard before. It has to come from your unique, unrepeatable, out of your practice life, your own karmic unfolding and what you've learned, it has to come from there or it will just, it will disappear. So this is what Dungshan said. If I agreed 100%, I would not be grateful. So I just wanted to end with kind of the unspoken, which is, well, how can you be grateful?

[40:12]

It's hard to be grateful when all these terrible things happen, you know, to ourselves, to others, sickness, old age sickness and death, loss, many, many things. What about that? You're not saying that We should be grateful then, are you? And I guess what I'm saying is there is room and a place for the joy and gratitude of our life to come up in all situations. And we're coming on the second year anniversary of the death of Abbott Central Abbot Steve Stuckey, Myogen Steve Stuckey, which will be December 31st. And just remembering Steve's practice at the end, for those of you who don't know, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September, end of September of 2013, and by December 31st, he died.

[41:28]

It was very fast, as that type of cancer is. So during those last few months that we had with him, he practiced. One might think, here is this person at the height of his spiritual power, you might say, or his fully expressing his teaching in Dharma Life, Central Abbot of Zen Center and another group, and teaching students, leading practice periods. For those of you who don't know Steve, he's tall, over six feet, and I think of him as being like cut down like a redwood, you know, in his prime. And one might think, well, you know, there might have been anger, or why me, or how could this be happening, or resentment, or bitterness.

[42:28]

But actually his practice was, he took up, which I think was a practice that he had been practicing, but didn't stop him. This illness was the practice of gratitude. And it was very, very clear. Visiting him in the hospital, he was in a lot of pain, and he was someone who could, he had a very... high pain threshold, but for him even, he was experiencing a lot of pain, and he was expressing gratitude to everyone on the nursing staff and the hospital staff, the janitor staff would come in and empty waste paper baskets. He would thank them. Thank you so much. He knew their names. I was in there when people came in. Thank you, whoever, I can't remember their names, but just expressing this enormous and thankfulness for the smallest things that were offered to him while he's dying and letting go of everything that was dear, you know, family, grandchildren, wife, the Zen Center, his own small group.

[43:52]

And that hospital visit, I remember he was served hospital food, right, lunch. It was... corn chowder. And he took a spoonful and said, this is really delicious soup. And I remember hospital corn chowder, it was like, really? I mean, I was so impressed. It was like, wow, this is good. Just the ability to meet the smallest things with, and thanking people for coming to visit, thanking me for taking on responsibilities that had been left to me. Just, this was his practice, gratitude. And it shone from him. Yeah, so there is nothing really that need get in the way of practicing gratitude. This is available. It is free. The practice of gratitude is free to us all.

[44:56]

And it... is a kind of key, I think, that's what I've been finding, to our lives, to appreciate our lives in a new way, no matter what happens. So in the midst of our sadness, our disappointments, our loss, often these are the times when we learn the most. when we understand something deeply, when we really can feel compassion for others who have gone through the same things. These are things to be grateful for. Thank you all for your attention. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:15]

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