April 24, 2020 Friday Morning, Emerald Isle Retreat
Gratitude: Thank You
(Over Zoom. John spoke of Gratitude first; not included here.)
Barbara: A different aspect of gratitude has been a very powerful support for me, getting me through not just these past 2 months but these whole 2 years since Hal’s stroke. When I would become despondent and angry, just stopping and remembering the power of loving relationship was vital. His stroke was just before our 50th anniversary. We had been together a few years before we married, so, it’s a lot of years. Obviously, it wasn’t always pleasant; we had our share of arguments and misunderstandings, pleasure and pain. But gratitude for that opportunity to grow and learn together. Gratitude for the opportunity to love him, and for him to love me. I realized no matter what happened in the future, I could not lose that gift. It was a very powerful and ongoing gift.
These two months with coronavirus, I’ve been sometimes going outside, sitting in my backyard and just asking myself, sometimes with tears rolling down my face because I was feeling so frustrated and helpless, and stopping and asking myself: in this moment, what do I have to be thankful for? And just sitting. Not trying to think about it, just sitting. And sometimes seeing new buds on the maple tree, or something flying by—a bird or moth or whatever. New grass just starting to turn green. Blue sky, raindrops. Thank you, thank you. Coming back to a place where my heart truly could say thank you.
What I found was when I reached that uncontracted place of “Thank you,” it opened the chakras, it opened my whole energy system. It opened my heart to a sense of joy, of peace, of equanimity with things as they are. I think it was an energetic change, that the pain and fear had me closed up. And as soon as I really, genuinely opened to something, to anything to which I was grateful there was an opening so I could feel everything for which I was grateful, including, how can I be grateful to this virus that’s sweeping our world? And yet, being able to say to the virus, “Thank you, teacher. I’m not sure yet what you’re teaching me, but I know you’re teaching us something. Thank you, teacher.”
Gratitude and joy are not the same thing but they’re related. I can’t say which is a base for the other. When I’m feeling joy, it’s easier to feel gratitude. But when I’m feeling gratitude, I find that there’s a lot of joy there. Spaciousness, also; energy. With gratitude, all of these come. So I find this the greatest gift and firmest ground that I have when I start to feel despair and anger and helplessness.
I noted the other day that I’d gotten a letter saying that all that we were trying to get together for Hal for further care was falling through because he was going to be taken off Medicaid on May 1, and unless we appealed it—and there didn’t seem ground to appeal—AAAHHH!
Stopping. I was up until 2 or 3am, angry and tense and crying, and asking, how am I going to do this? I can’t send him back and without Medicaid I can’t afford to keep him home—how am I going to do this?
It was pretty cold that night, but the moon was out, some stars were out. I went out and sat on my deck (wrapped in a warm coat, yes!). And I did just what I’ve been saying, I asked myself, what can I be thankful for? The beauty of the night. I just sat there. I was too tense to meditate. There was too much… anxiety. But just stopping, looking at the stars. I started to get cold, so I jumped in the hot tub (not with my coat on!). Just resting there for maybe 45 minutes, looking at the stars. All the lights were turned off. Stars, moon—this is eternal, this is on-going. Whatever I am experiencing is impermanent. Well, the stars and moon are probably impermanent too, but they’re a lot more permanent than I am, and certainly more permanent than my troubling thoughts are. Thank you, thank you, thank you…
And after about 45 minutes my whole energy field started to open; my heart started to open. Right there with fear, right there with anger, there’s joy, there’s gratitude, there’s love.
So I came in, got wrapped up in a warm robe, sat down at my computer. Fired off about 45 more minutes’ worth of emails to my sons asking for what help I needed, to the lawyer asking what help I needed from him. Felt, “Okay, I’ve done everything I can. I’ve set the wheels in motion. That’s it. Thank you for the abundance you are going to give us, for the ways this is going to work. Thank you.” And there was a deep sense, not of, I can’t say, “Oh, it’s all done now. Everything will go right.”; everything will go as it will go. I’ve done all I can in two ways. First, by opening my heart with gratitude so I’m able to receive. Not being that hungry ghost with the tiny mouth that can’t receive; able to receive. And then, setting the wheels in motion to invite others to help work on this to make it happen, which they’re doing. “Thank you.” But it’s joy, it’s gratitude, it’s stillness, it’s faith, verified faith. “My needs will be met.”
A beautiful line that John shared with me way back, when I had put aside my sculpture and teaching art, my previous means of livelihood. I was asking, okay, Hal has a job, but it takes two of us and our incomes in order to support this family of five. How am I going to do it? I was contemplating the shift to living on a dana basis—how am I going to do it? John shared with me a quote: “The dharma takes care of those who take care of the dharma.” For me then it was about livelihood. But it’s also even much more about receiving the dharma as a precious gift and giving it back to the world. Watching, especially in these small groups where I’ve gotten to see what’s happening for each of you—watching what each of you is doing with your practice, and the love and courage you’re bringing to your practice. This is so beautiful. The dharma is coming to you, and you’re giving it back to the world. It’s so beautiful.
I think that’s it.
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron. John and Barbara have really said it all. If you walk around holding onto anger, fear, living in contraction and with anger, feeling, “Nothing good will ever come to me or to the world,” it probably won’t. Or at least, it will come to those elsewhere, not to the one who’s like this.
There’s an old story. A man leaves his village and is walking, traveling far from home. He sees a village in the valley below and wonders, “Maybe I could live there.” There’s a man sitting atop the hill, eating a piece of fruit, so he says to the man, “Those people down there in the valley, what are they like?”
The man asks him, “You have come a long way, Stranger. What were the people in your village like?”
“Well, they were greedy and angry. They never appreciated me. They never appreciated each other. They were mean.”
The man put his fruit down and said, “Well, I think you’ll find the people in this village pretty much the same.”
Half an hour later another man, a wanderer from a different village, or maybe the same village, came to the top of the hill and found the man still nibbling on his fruit. He sat down beside him and said, “I’m curious about the village down there. What are the people like?”
The man set his fruit aside and said, “Where you come from, what were the people like?”
“They were generous and kind. They were so loving. They would go out of their way for you, always wanting to help. I loved them very much.”
The man said, “I think you’ll find the people in the village down there just the same.”
I know you get this. If you are open to receiving love and giving love, there will always be a flow of joy and of love. If you are closed up and say, “Everything is terrible,” you’ll keep it terrible, locked into that mindset.
These experiences of joy, peacefulness, and spaciousness, gratitude, generosity, cherishing, these truly can lead you into a place where you shift the whole energy of the world around you, starting with your family and your neighbors and friends and moving outward, and outward, and outward.
Here I am, munching on my fruit, and here you come, and ask me, “What is this world like, this Earth?” What has it been like for you, so far? What are the qualities that you most deeply embrace and are putting out and receiving, putting out and receiving?
Gratitude for all that we have been given. I include myself, who lived many human lifetimes. Without those human lifetimes I never would have found liberation, would perhaps be some consciousness adrift, saying, “What is it about? How do I grow and develop into a radiant being capable of truly sharing love and wisdom in the world and in the universe?”
Thank you for the gifts of all of those sometimes very challenging lifetimes that brought me, Aaron, to awakening, and to the ability to serve others and to serve the dhamma in these ways. Thank you.
And thank you for there being those of you who are ready and eager to hear the dhamma, and to take it into your own lives and share it further out.
Thank you.