I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning everybody. Good morning. Now, lately I've been having an e-mail conversation with my old friend and teacher, and I'm sure someone many of you know,

[01:04]

Brother David Steindl-Rast, who is a Benedictine monk and old friend of Zen Center, done a lot of Buddhist practice. Anyway, the subject of our conversation is his favorite subject, gratitude. It's his favorite thing to think about. He's been thinking about it for about 50 years now, I think. And the title of one of his books is called Gratitude, the Heart of Prayer. So, now he's, I don't know how old he is exactly, but he's in his 70s, and he's getting very enthusiastic about the Internet. He's a hermit now. He pretty much lives quietly in Ithaca, New York, in a hermitage near a monastery,

[02:05]

but he's very enthusiastic about the Internet. I guess it's the perfect thing for a hermit. Talk to millions of people without ever leaving your hermitage. Anyway, so he's enthusiastic about the Internet and he's got all these helpers making a website for him, which I think is called Gratitude. So, it's going to be, I'm sure, one of the greatest websites ever. They've been working on it for a year, it seems. So, and Brother David is a person who not only thinks about gratitude, but he seems to embody it. Some of you know this is true, but if you don't know him and you meet him for the first time, you feel as if he is so grateful

[03:09]

to have met you. And you think, you know, why is he grateful to meet me? But that's the feeling you get, that he's so grateful to be able to meet you. He just seems like a grateful guy, you know. He's grateful for the whole world and for each and everything that's in it. Now, he's also someone who is very involved, has very strong views and political opinions, likes and dislikes, but still he manifests this tremendous gratefulness for everything and he really doesn't seem to complain about things. Gratitude seems to be never far from his thoughts and feelings. So he sent me this article that he wrote about gratitude. He wanted to know what I thought of it. And in the article he says,

[04:09]

Do you remember a time when you went outside at night and looked up at the stars, seeing them as if for the first time? And then he quotes Eugene O'Neill, who went out and looked at the stars and saw them as if for the first time. Eugene O'Neill, the playwright, writes, For a moment I lost myself. I actually lost my life. I was set free. I dissolved in the high, dim, starred sky. I belonged, I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity, and with a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, to life itself, to God, if you want to put it that way.

[05:14]

For a second you see the secret. And seeing the secret, you are the secret. For a second there is meaning. So that's me quoting Brother David, quoting Eugene O'Neill, who said that, and experienced that some time ago. So in the article Brother David says that this powerful and immediate sense that one sometimes gets of belonging, belonging to the whole world, is, he thinks, the essence, the basis of gratitude. And it is a feeling, I believe, that is fostered in our practice and in all spiritual practice, this feeling of belonging and the gratitude that comes from it. When we see ourselves as we are all,

[06:18]

each and every one of us without exception, taught to see ourselves as separate atomized individuals in a big world full of other separate atomized individuals, it's not that easy to feel grateful. Quite the contrary. In the midst of that inherently contentious situation, actually we have plenty to complain about. There are so many things that we want, so many things that we need, and it seems as if whatever we get, it's not quite enough. No amount of love or possessions, no amount of gratification could ever really fill the gap between ourselves and the world. So we're always looking

[07:19]

and needing something to fill that gap, always thirsting, always dissatisfied. In Buddhism they call this, literally, Krishna means thirst, we're thirsting. This is our existential condition, one of thirst, like a hungry ghost, thirsting, thirsting, thirsting for something we can never quite get enough of. Restless, dissatisfied. But when we feel that sudden rush of belonging, just as O'Neill describes, something that comes into our lives really suddenly and for no reason, something we haven't earned or created for ourselves, but it just arrives all of a sudden as a gift out of nowhere, maybe when we're least expecting it,

[08:21]

maybe even at a time when we're feeling the lowest of the low. When that happens to us though, as Brother David says, we naturally feel a profound sense of existential gratitude. Brother David writes, Why do I call that wild joy of belonging gratitude? Because it is our full appreciation of something altogether undeserved, utterly gratuitous, life, existence, ultimate belonging. And this is the literal meaning of gratefulness. In a moment of gratefulness you do not discriminate you fully accept the whole of this given universe as you are fully one with the whole. This is not how we usually feel, I know. Usually there's something we're looking for.

[09:24]

We go through our days and weeks and months and years more or less happy or unhappy in a fluctuating way, but most of the time not really attentive to our condition. When we do take the time, when we do have the spaciousness in our lives to attend to our actual condition, to attend to what deep, deep, deep down we're actually feeling in our hearts, I think that rarely do we feel a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment. This is one of the great disadvantages of spiritual practice. It can be distressing to recognize how you actually feel. You sit down in the cushion and you think, you know, for a while there and you think, gee, I thought I was doing all right, you know, but look at the condition.

[10:27]

Oh my gosh. So when we do give ourselves the possibility of really looking deeply at how we are, I think we do feel mostly something is missing. Something is a little off kilter. And if we look closely, we may not know what it is that's off kilter. Sometimes we think we know what it is that's off kilter. But I wonder whether we ever really, really know. We think we want something in our lives that we don't have, or we think we want something out of our lives that we don't like that's in our lives that we want to get rid of. And we think that that, if only we could correct that situation, our restlessness, our dis-ease would pass.

[11:32]

But I don't really think that's the source of it, because I know everyone has had the experience of wanting something like that and getting it, and finding that very quickly, the dis-ease, the restlessness deep down reasserts itself and it's something else we think we need. The other day I spoke to an old friend on the phone who has had a recurrence after many years of being cancer-free. She's had a recurrence of cancer, and it seems that she's in a rather dire situation, although it was very nice to talk to her because she seemed surprisingly upbeat and cheerful and positive, not in a forced way, but in a solid way that was very encouraging to me,

[12:35]

even though she was in the process of recovering from major, major surgery, and even though just a few months before she had lost her sister to exactly the same kind of cancer that she now has. She said to me, I don't spend too much time on why me, or on thinking about all the terrible things that might and probably will happen later. I just try to stay with every day as I find it and to do what I can. And in the conversation she reminded me of a talk that Issan Dorsey gave at Zen Center some years ago in which he told people that he had AIDS. And for those of you who don't know Issan Dorsey, he was one of the most illustrious and wonderful priests

[13:40]

ever to come through the Zen Center. He used to be a heroin addict and also apparently quite a fantastic female impersonator in the 50s and 60s. I never saw his act, but they say that it was quite marvelous. I've seen photos of him. He was really beautiful. And he became a wonderful priest of Zen Center, very encouraging to me personally. Anyway, he started the Hartford Street Hospice and Zen Center. He used to just pick people up off the street who were suffering from AIDS and were homeless, and he would take them home and take care of them. And that started the Hartford Street Zen Center and Hospice. Anyway, he got AIDS himself, and he died of it. It's now 10 years ago, 1990, he died from AIDS. Anyway, she was quoting this talk that Issan gave,

[14:43]

probably in the late 80s, a year or two before his death, and he said in that talk, I don't say, why me? I say, why not me? And as far as I can remember, Issan, like this friend of mine that I'm speaking of, accepted his condition with a grace and a cheer that was truly remarkable. Rather than complaining about what he had that he didn't want, he took real pleasure in his condition. He enjoyed his state of health. He enjoyed his state of illness up until the day he died. There's a famous story of him with Mike Jambold. Mike, who took care of him and was devoted to him in the last days, wanted to do the right thing and finish up business and express himself, so he thought, I should tell Issan how much I love him.

[15:45]

So Issan was sort of half-conscious, and in the midst of this half-conscious state, Mike says to him, and Mike is like the most unsentimental person imaginable, so this is a big thing for Mike, he says to Issan, Issan, I'm really going to miss you. And Issan sort of looked up and said, Are you going somewhere? So saying, you know, why me? When we focus on why me, this means that we're seeing ourselves as separate beings in a world of many separate beings. And among all those separate beings, you know, why me? Why not them? Why me? But saying, why not me? Why not me?

[16:47]

Means that we really understand that we belong and we're mixed up with everyone and everything. And what can happen to any one of us can happen to me and should happen to me, and I can accept it. It's not a surprise, it's not a tragedy, it's not a mistake. And my point here is that gratitude can really be wide enough even to cover our own suffering. We can have gratitude even in these circumstances. One of the questions that people often raise when we talk about compassion in Buddhism is how can we be compassionate? It's so painful to be compassionate.

[17:49]

How could we open ourselves up to the suffering of the world? Doesn't opening ourselves up to the suffering of the world make us sad and depressed and overburdened? Isn't compassion something we should be very careful about and not get too much of? Won't we get burned out and discouraged if we really embrace the world's suffering, the world's problems, the world's difficulties? I can't bear to read the newspaper. I can't bear to hear the news. People often bring this up. Well, from the point of view of our separateness, I think it's really true what they say. If the world is a collection of separate atomized individuals, each of whom have needs to be fulfilled that probably aren't being quite fulfilled, then it is really true that we will be overwhelmed

[18:52]

by all the unfulfilled needs of the world. And we will really feel like it's not a good idea to be concerned about the needs of others. Much, much too difficult. Too difficult even to worry about our own needs, let alone the needs of the wide world. But if, on the other hand, we see the world as a world of belonging, a world of connection, a world in which all things are swimming together as one without any real edges and boundaries, just like the stars in the nighttime sky which appear to us as a unity, as a pattern, one continuous being with ourselves, even though we're so far away, included in the pattern. If the world is like that for us, one continuous, connected being,

[19:55]

then I don't think the suffering of the world weighs us down at all. To be sure, our hearts will be tenderized, and when we see suffering, tears will come to our eyes. A few weeks ago, I was in Northern Ireland on a kind of a peacemaking retreat with His Holiness Dalai Lama, and we were listening to a panel of people speaking about their own experiences as victims of the trouble One woman who, at the age of 17 or 18, was just going with friends to the movies and was shot down in a drive-by shooting and has not been able to walk since. One man who also, as a young boy, was shot and was blind. A man whose father had been shot down

[21:00]

in their own home by masked gunmen. And probably most poignant of all, a man who had been a militia soldier as a teenager. And although he didn't say exactly what his activities had been, it was pretty clear that he had committed murders, assassinations, had been imprisoned most of his life, now had had a deep change of heart and was out of prison working to prevent violence. But saying that, because of what I have done, even though I now see the error of it, but I did do it, and because of what I've done, I will never, ever in this lifetime be whole again. The brokenness that I feel is still with me and will be with me.

[22:02]

Anyway, it was really something to hear these stories. And on the stage, with all these people listening to these stories, His Holiness started to cry as he listened. And yet, an hour or two later, when he zipped into a limousine and went out to meet with other religious leaders, he was standing between a Catholic priest and a minister, a Protestant minister, who both just by chance had beards. And he started grabbing their beards, he was standing in between, shaking their beards, and he was just laughing as if it was like a kid, the most hilarious thing that ever happened. And there was this very funny photograph of him that appeared in all the European newspapers of him with this huge, almost like he lost it, he was laughing so hard,

[23:05]

grabbing the beards of these two guys who looked bewildered. And the headline, at least in Ireland, was something like, you know, Dalai Lama Beards Clerics. That was just about an hour after he had been totally broken up in another way by hearing these truly moving stories of suffering. So, when we train, when we feel this sense of belonging, and then we train in it, over a lifetime of practice, as His Holiness Dalai Lama has, we do feel deeply sympathetic with suffering, maybe more than ever. But this sadness is not something hard,

[24:07]

hard to bear, something that weighs us down and depresses us. Because along with the sadness, we also feel a powerful gratitude for what is. We cry when something is sad. We appreciate it as our own sorrow. But at the same time, we can feel the beauty of that suffering as it was something beautiful to hear those people speak, because they had all transformed through their suffering, in the midst of their suffering. Where there is a true vision of what the world really is, a vision of connection and belonging that isn't just an idea or a concept, but is a real vision, the way we see and experience the world,

[25:07]

then there's always, mixed in with any feeling of sadness we have, a wide and calm feeling. And there can even be joy, perhaps the purest sort of joy, when we recognize the preciousness of life and life's utter gratuity. Life is present in us and all around us. Why should it be? What did we do to bring it about? What did we do to earn it or deserve it? Is there anyone who has earned or deserved or caused to be this life? So we know that even when life is difficult, it's still life. And life is always connection and always belonging, even when it's difficult. Where there is life, even though it hangs by a thread,

[26:12]

there is consciousness. And where there is consciousness, there is a profound gratefulness. All my life, since I was a boy, I've been contemplating this question of Heidegger's that always struck me as THE question. Maybe to you it will seem ridiculous, but to me it always seemed like the most important question. Heidegger, someplace or other, and by now, for all I know, I'm making it up myself, but I think Heidegger said this. Heidegger somewhere asks, Why is there something? Why not rather nothing? Why is there something? Why not rather nothing? Have you ever thought about that? We all take our life, and life in general, existence,

[27:15]

we take that for granted as a given. And then we start complaining. Things aren't working out the way I wanted them. But we don't think, you know, How did we get here to begin with? Why is there life? Why should we exist at all? Why should anything exist? I don't think there's any reason for it. Why not rather, instead of all of this, nothing? Nothing would be simpler, you know, cleaner, less messy, don't you think? It's a kind of like a purity to it, nothing. What we call the universe, about 15 billion years ago, it began, according to current knowledge of cosmology.

[28:17]

15 years ago there was the so-called Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, you know, a split second before that, there was no time, there was no space, there was no matter, there was no life, there was nothing. But you can't even say that much, that there was nothing. Nobody knows. To say there was nothing, you know, is going too far, I think. Nobody really knows, and nobody can say anything about what it was like a split second before the Big Bang. It's beyond the scope of consciousness to even take up that question. The story of cosmology begins right after that, at the time of the so-called Big Bang. A tenth of a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second later,

[29:23]

after the Big Bang, and that's exactly right. No, it's 10 to the minus 43rd power, which is a tenth, I have to read this, get it right, which is a tenth of a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second later. 10 to the minus 43rd power seconds, minus 43rd power seconds later, after the Big Bang. Whatever Big Bang means. In that little fraction of a second, the universe, which did not yet exist, but whatever it was that was there, cooled down in that short amount of time to the temperature of 100 million trillion degrees. I like to give little science facts when I give Dharma talks, because I figure, so it shouldn't be a total loss,

[30:25]

you should learn a little something out of the talks. So every now and then I like to give a little science facts that I get out of a book. I'm not making this up, this is really reputable science, scientists say these things. Anyway. In that short amount of time, the planet, not the planet, the whatever it was, the soup, cosmic soup, cooled down to be 100 million trillion degrees, which was cool enough, so that something that had never been before suddenly came to be, which we call the force of gravity. Before that there was no gravity until things cooled down to that extent. So after that there was a little lull for a teensy weensy weensy fraction of a second, 10 to the minus 34th power of a second. There was not much happening. That 10 to the minus 34th second

[31:26]

is a million times longer than the original 10 to the minus 43rd power. So in that time they can't see that much went on. But the universe, or whatever it was, the pre-universe, did cool down a little bit more during that uneventful period of time. So when it cooled down a little bit more it allowed the conditions so that the first forms of matter appeared, which are known as electrons and quarks. These particles which didn't exist before now came to exist. And it appeared that at the same time as those particles of matter came to exist, there was an exactly equal amount of antimatter that existed along with it. So there were electrons and quarks and anti-electrons and antimatter quarks. And because of this perfect balance of stuff

[32:29]

which was in a kind of stasis, there gave rise to other forces in the universe which they called the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetic force. So now the world is very crowded. It's got protons, I mean electrons, and quarks, and gravity, and all these different forces. So then in the ensuing teeny, teeny, tiny, we're still in the first second now after the Big Bang, in the ensuing period of time many more things took place. The next second after the initial event was probably this one second that I've been talking about. It was probably the most eventful time in the history of the universe, that one second. More things happened. Talk about getting things done, you know. More things happened in that one second after the Big Bang than have happened probably all totals, you know, in all of the world. You think about all that you're getting done, well it's nothing compared to what happened

[33:30]

in that one second. And as time went on, matter and antimatter evolved. Several more different kinds of particles began to differentiate themselves. But then something really unexpected took place and nobody seems to know what caused this or how this came about. But what happened was where there had been a perfect equilibrium between matter and antimatter so that there was in a sense nothing existing at all because it was all in a perfect stasis, all of a sudden there was a very slight imbalance. There was a little bit more, maybe one particle more, you know, of matter than antimatter. And because of that imbalance, although it was very, very slight, the imbalance somehow caused the matter and antimatter to fall out of their perfect stasis

[34:31]

and collide with each other. And in the collision of the matter and the antimatter, light was produced. It was the first light ever. And not a light from a star or a planet because there were no stars. Some sort of a weird, who knows what, kind of cosmic glow. Like it says in Genesis, you know, let there be light. And if you ever read Genesis, you see that it says, let there be light. And then much later, the sun is created. So the light that there is in the beginning is not the light of the sun. Anyway, there's light. But the light is because these particles are colliding and when they collide, almost all the antimatter is destroyed, leaving mostly matter now dominant, although there's still a little antimatter in the mix, but mostly matter. So now there's matter. And in the matter, after a while, time goes by, maybe one minute later, neutrons and protons

[35:34]

begin coalescing together to form heavier nuclei such as helium, lithium and hydrogen. And the temperature is cooling down at a rapid rate. Now the temperature of all this is only about a billion degrees, very cool. Then things go on in that way for 300,000 years. And now the temperature of this soup is only about 3,000 degrees, cool enough so that atoms begin to be formed from these miscellaneous particles. One billion years goes by and the atoms begin to form large clouds, cluster in large clouds, and the clouds start swirling around together under the influence of these different forces that were formed in the first second. They begin to swirl around together

[36:36]

and form galaxies. After about another two billion years, matter coalesces further into what we call stars, and the stars throw off planets and create various, numerous solar systems. This process goes on for about three billion more years, and then is the creation of a star that we call the sun, and eventually this sun, which is an average star in the universe, throws off an ordinary, modestly-sized planet that we call Earth, and then some many, many, many years later comes life and eventually human beings. Now, it seems as if none of that had to happen. There's no reason, really, that any of that had to happen.

[37:37]

Certainly, I had nothing to do with it, and neither did any of you. And our recent appearance in this universe, although absolutely connected to all of it in a direct causal line, is literally gratuitous. So why I'm saying all this is because it seems to me that gratitude isn't as much an emotion or a feeling as a rock-bottom fact, maybe the primary fact of our being at all. If we are, if we exist, we must belong, radically belong. We must be possessed by,

[38:39]

embraced by all that is for no reason, and gratitude is literally what we are when we are most attuned to what we are. When we plunge deeply into the nature of what we are as body and mind creatures, existing, we find that what we are is gratitude, and then we stop complaining and just be happy to be alive. Now, I don't want to give complaining a bad name here. I myself have a long habit of complaining. I inherited it from my forebears for many generations. And I'm sure that as long as there have been human beings, there has always been complaining.

[39:40]

It's an old tradition for all of us. And I think that the reason for that complaining is that tiny imbalance between matter and antimatter that I mentioned a moment ago. I'm sure that that is the source of our complaining. Because what that says is that, think about it, existence itself is the result of imbalance, imperfection. This is the source of existence. Something being a little off produces existence. That there's anything at all means that everything is a little bit off. So, when existence evolves to the point of self-reflective consciousness, which is you and I, then the job of that self-reflective consciousness

[40:41]

must be to recognize that things are a little bit off and to start complaining about it. But the point of that complaining is not just to keep complaining, but to complain for the purpose of recognizing the need to return to and restore that balance, even though it's never actually restored, as long as we're alive. Still, we have to complain and work to restore the balance. So existence always strives for balance and never achieves it. But that's what it has to do. It has to strive for balance. So that's what we do, too.

[41:42]

We recognize we're unhappy, we start complaining, and that is natural and absolutely necessary. But as I say, we can't just stop with complaining. Our complaining has to lead us down the road to gratitude. Otherwise, complaining becomes something very destructive and we see the fruits of that all around us. But when complaining leads us down the road to gratitude, it becomes a source of wholeness. The Kabbalist Isaac Luria had a wonderful metaphor for all this. It's very famous. I'm sure most of you know it. His idea was that in the beginning of the creation of the world, there was a slight mistake in the arrangements. Something went a little wrong. God had this gigantic ladle in which he was pouring the divine spirit into different vessels. But there was a crack in one of the vessels

[42:43]

and some of the light of the divine spirit fell out of the vessel into this world that we call our world. And according to Luria, it was the purpose of spiritual practice to find that light, to gather that light as it appeared dimly in various places in the world and raise it up to restore the balance of the world. So in our practice, truly we are working to cultivate and come in touch with this sense of gratitude, this sense of belonging to and with the world. Although, as I said earlier, a feeling of gratitude just comes. We don't make it. Still, we need to cultivate ourselves, to open up ourselves so that we're ready to receive the gift

[43:44]

when it comes. And really you can look at a religious practice, all forms of religious spiritual practice as forms of cultivation of gratitude. If you think about Dogen Zenji's idea of Zazen, how he teaches us to do Zazen, he says we're not doing Zazen, Zen meditation, in order to examine ourselves and analyze ourselves or in order to make personal improvements in our lives. We're sitting in Zazen because we are Buddha's heart. Our existence itself is Buddha's heart. And when we sit in Zazen, we're releasing ourselves to that aspect of ourselves that most deeply belongs to the universe and is grateful for it. In our daily services, when we make prostrations, when we make offerings of light and incense and flowers,

[44:44]

when we chant sutras and dedicate those sutras, we are expressing our gratitude that there is something and not nothing and that we have a way of entering that something which is also nothing in the fact of our very existence. And there are many, many other practices in various traditions. Prayer and recitation, visualization practices, Tonglen practice, the practice of compassion where we breathe in another person's suffering, taking it into our own body and mind and we breathe out relief. All these practices really are the practices of cultivating gratitude and healing, gratitude even for suffering, acceptance and gratitude even for suffering. And we can invent other practices that we can do all day long to remind us of gratitude and to counteract

[45:46]

our natural strong habit of complaining. Now, to practice all this is not to make ourselves into idiots, forgetting all the horrors of the world as if they didn't exist, pretending that everything is just fine when it usually isn't. No, to be grateful for and with what is doesn't deny difficulties. It embraces them and accepts them as a necessary step in healing them. I, myself, work on the cultivation of the open space of gratitude every day. It's a very active practice with me. And when I feel gratitude, gratitude for my own body, gratitude for the sky and the clouds, and this seems to be

[46:47]

karmically a big one for me. I'm very much clouds. My journals and diaries have probably a high percentage of them as descriptions of the sky and clouds. This, for some reason, is very moving to me, that there should be a sky and that it should be so very, very beautiful and that my mind and body should be structured in such a way to co-create with the sky this beauty that I experience. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful for my teachers. I'm grateful for the teaching of Buddha. When I feel that gratitude, as I sometimes do, I know that it's a sign of my spiritual health. And when I don't feel it, when my life feels cramped with complaining and lack, then I understand

[47:48]

that my spiritual health is not good and I try my best to correct it. So, I'm saying that gratitude is something more than meets the eye. It's something very, very basic and very profound. Gratitude is something that takes us to the very edge of time and space and beyond time and space. Because to be grateful for life as it truly is, is also to be grateful for death as it truly is, not to underestimate life, not to underestimate death. Our mind of complaining and separation divides the mystery of life into two parts. We call one part life

[48:49]

and we call the other part death. One part we like and we want more of, the other part we don't like and we want to get rid of. But in the light of gratitude, we understand that these two things are not really two things. In Buddhist funeral services, I'm always touched by the saying that the priest will often say in various ways, something like, in the Dharma world or in true reality, there is no coming, no going, no increase, no decrease, no birth and no death. This saying is a deep expression of our gratitude for existence as it really is. Our knowing that life, in order to be life, is always full of death and that death,

[49:50]

in order to be death, is always full of life. And the only time we find that balance that our whole life is seeking, the only time that we enter the perfect balance return to the place before the Big Bang is when we enter death. Because of this understanding, we don't see impermanence as a threat or a tragedy. We don't see aging and dying as necessary evils. We brace ourselves to endure but rather as fruitions that we welcome with the spirit to enter them with calmness and appreciation. I find it really interesting that although,

[50:51]

whether we think of it consciously or not, most of us consider death to be the ultimate personal defeat. And we all do everything that we can do to stave it off and even deny that there is such a thing. Even though that's the general human view of death, it's really interesting that all the great founders of religions have always seen death as the sublime, complete victory. The death of Jesus is his most perfect act, the act for which he was born, the act that contains within it his eternal life and the redemption for all beings. Buddha's death is not even called death. It's called parinirvana, not a sad loss

[51:53]

but a joyful culmination of lifetime after lifetime of spiritual cultivation. Through our practice of gratitude, working on it every day for a lifetime, we can imitate our great teachers and go forward with our lives no matter what happens, whether they bring suffering, whether they bring joy, and certainly any life will bring both. Whether they bring arriving, whether they bring leaving, we can face our lives in the spirit of gratitude for everything that happens. And we do this not only for ourselves alone, which in the light of gratitude makes no sense at all, but for and with everyone, for and with everyone. So, soon it's going to be Thanksgiving.

[53:02]

So I hope that all of you can make this special time of being with family a time of really practicing gratitude, not just some retail store holiday, but something that can be deeply moving for all of us. I'm always grateful for your presence when I come to give the talk, to see all of you, and more today than usual. Thank you very much. May our intentions...

[53:49]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ