The practice of gratitude

The practice of gratitude is a wonderful means of cultivating positive emotion. By beginning to practice feeling gratitude for what you currently have in your life, you free up a tremendous amount of energy that is normally dissipated in worry, anxiety, and fear. A positive feeling state, with an inspired heart and a clear mind, is the perfect starting place for moving toward creating a higher level of well-being in your life.

Only one response can maintain us

To pray is to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the Divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live... It is so embarrassing to live. How strange we are in the world and how presumptuous our doings. Only one response can maintain us: Gratefulness for witnessing the wonder: for the gift of our unearned right to live, to adore, to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.

The very act of giving thanks

The very act of giving thanks
Draws the best out of you,
Helps to keep your heart and mind open;
Helps to keep your awareness expanding.
The more blessings you count,
The more they increase.

Only a few of us in each generation

We are all wanderers in the earth, but only a few of us in each generation have discovered the life of charity, the living from day to day, receiving gifts gratefully through grace, and rendering them, multiplied through grace, to the Giver...the grateful rendering, the gratitude and giving.

All that matters is that we can bow

People often ask me how Buddhists answer the question: ‘Does God exist?’ The other day I was walking along the river...I was suddenly aware of the sun, shining through the bare trees. Its warmth, its brightness, and all this completely free, completely gratuitous. Simply there for us to enjoy. And without my knowing it, completely spontaneously, my two hands came together, and I realized that I was making gassho. And it occurred to me that this is all that matters: that we can bow, take a deep bow. Just that. Just that.

October 2012 (Vol. XXV, No. 9)

Another month has rolled around, dear Friends of Silence, and how grateful I am for another opportunity to "visit” with all of you! It is good to be reminded occasionally to be consciously grateful for all our many blessings. How often do we really stop to think about them intentionally? We receive so many, large and small, obvious and subtle. We all "get” the big ones: when we or a loved one has a close call, for example, and comes through whole and healthy instead of hurt or ill. But what of those everyday, business-as-usual blessings? A shower after a long dry spell . . . having a free morning to relax and read . . . even finding our glasses when we've mislaid them! And what about the things that don't feel so positive when they happen? That's when we must recall that all is gift—sometimes, perhaps, even the more difficult moments. Let us strive be conscious of and grateful for all that is so freely given.

One day builds on another. Our lives accumulate in increments of moments, hours, and days. Everything depends on this present moment and our courage to turn aside in delight, wonder, and gratitude.

~ from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE by Marv & Nancy Hiles
Marv and Nancy Hiles All The Days Of My Life gratitude Buy on Amazon

The gratitude that we encounter helps us believe in the goodness of the world, and strengthens us thereby to do what's good.

~ Albert Schweitzer, thanks to Liz Stewart
Albert Schweitzer gratitude

I'm thankful for a pair of shoes that feel really good on my feet; I like my shoes. I'm thankful for the birds; I feel like they're singing just for me when I get up in the morning… Saying, 'Good morning, John. You made it, John.' I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down. I'm thankful . . .

~Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash gratitude

All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people - speaking out - in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out - in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes - let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind.

~ Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy gratitude

The people who are successful are those who are grateful for everything they have . . . Giving thanks for what we have always opens the door for more to come, and ungratefulness always closes the door . . .
 

~ Alan Cohen
Alan Cohen gratitude

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of allreligions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art….It isa privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part inthe self-healing of our world.

~ Joanna Macy
Joanna Macy gratitude

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

~ from UNCOMMON GRATITUDE by Joan Chittister
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This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whomever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Rumi gratitude

Gratitude helps you to grow and expand. Gratitude brings joy and laughter into your lives and into the lives of all those around you.

~ Eileen Caddy
Eileen Caddy gratitude

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy—because we will always want to have something else or something more.

~ Br David Steindl-Rast
Br. David Stendl-Rast gratitude

If others could tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, they must tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for every that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing . . .

~ William Law
William Law gratitude

As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.

~ Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillsum gratitude

If the only prayer we say to God is "thank you,” that is enough.

~ Meister Eckhart, thanks to John Condon
Meister Eckhart gratitude

Our cup of sorrow and joy, when lifted for others to see and celebrate, becomes a cup to life . . . Mostly, we are willing to look back at our lives and say: "I am grateful for the good things that brought me to this place.” But when we lift our cup to life, we must dare to say: "I am grateful for all that has happened to me and led me to this moment. This gratitude which embraces all or our past is what makes our life a true gift for others, because this gratitude erases bitterness, resentments, regret, and revenge as well as all jealousies and rivalries. It transforms our past into a fruitful gift for the future, and makes our life, all of it, into a life that gives life.

~ from CAN YOU DRINK THE CUP by Henri J.M. Nouwen
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Our courage to turn aside in gratitude

One day builds on another. Our lives accumulate in increments of moments, hours, and days. Everything depends on this present moment and our courage to turn aside in delight, wonder, and gratitude.

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