Thank You

It’s November, and for many people in the United States, that means a month of thankfulness with the Thanksgiving holiday approaching. Honestly, it’s better that we shift this day to thankfulness and away from the fake stories spun and re-told about the pilgrims and the Wampanoag, who most people don’t even know by name. Most of us grew up being fed the stories that sugar coated the real pain and trauma that happened. But thankfulness…that’s something worth getting behind, and it doesn’t belong to one group or one religion or one country. Thankfulness is a universal feeling that adds positivity in this often brutal world. In Buddhism, gratitude is a central teaching.

I’ve been learning a lot about gratitude as I dive deeper into Buddhism. In October, I became a certified minister’s assistant at my Shin Buddhist temple. A few weeks later, I gave my first Dharma talk from the naijin at the All Life Forms Memorial, where I expressed gratitude for my cat Teddy, who taught me a special kind of love. I feel like I’ve been constantly go, go, go lately. It has truly been a whirlwind of fulfilling moments and opportunities to stretch my capabilities. My youngest child wrote a note for me and left it on my desk the day that I got certified: I love you. I am so proud of you. It was written in his cute little kid penmanship that is as crooked as his uneven bangs he just cut, and I cherish this tiny time capsule of him being 8-years-old. His recognition of my efforts is everything. If there is one thing I want my children to learn from me, it is to keep reaching, keep trying, keep improving, keep learning, keep being curious, keep wanting better for themselves and all life forms. I think about standing at the podium giving my first talk to the sangha— feeling like a ball of nerves— and spotting my kids’ faces in the crowd, their expressions intently focused on my words. After I finished the service, Peter’s Dharma school teacher brought him to the back and he surprised me with a big hug and a toothy grin. Sometimes our crazy life feels impossibly difficult, and other times it feels magical like in the moment of our embrace.

And we can be filled with magic and still feel restless and empty. The world keeps spinning, suffering continues to spread, people continue to die, and so many continue to do without when they need and deserve so much more. In the last month I’ve felt varying degrees of helplessness scrolling through social media, watching dead bodies pile up in Gaza, hostages still missing with uncertain futures, thinking about no resolution in the Ukraine, recognizing the people in my own life who have recently lost loved ones, and understanding the many ways hopelessness churns inside of all of us at any given moment. It’s heavy.

The small burdens take their toll on us too. The service light that appears on your car dashboard. The paint that is peeling. The weeds that need to be pulled. The minor squabbles. The fissures that appear at work under the weight of too many expectations, too many needs, not enough resources. The neverending to-do list. I try really hard not to let these things overwhelm me, but it’s like death by a thousand paper cuts. Not necessarily significant in and of itself, but collectively weighs on you.

We live in a fast-paced, busy, challenging, messy world. If you want to successfully navigate these choppy waves, I’ve learned that you need to put in the effort to cultivate a perspective that lightens the load. This will be the most powerful tool in your toolbox. Not good luck or money or any kind of material object, but perspective. A grounding. Knowing where your center is. It is a gift that is priceless.

I think about the words of Reverend Akahoshi in a seminar he gave this summer about the benefits of gratitude. He said something to the effect of gratitude balancing what we have against our limitless desires. I walk into my house, and I immediately think of the thousand things that need to be done. This needs to be fixed. That needs to be fixed. I need to do this. I need to buy that. Always more, more, more. I have to pull myself back to the center and force myself to enjoy what is going right. To notice what is going right. My daughter made the soccer All Stars team! I got honorable mention for a writing contest out of 3,056 entries. We’re healthy. My cats and dogs are delightful. I play pickleball with great people and have so much fun. We have a warm home. I have great kids. I enjoy my plants. I have smart and supportive colleagues. I’m making progress in all fronts of my life, even when it feels like I’m crawling toward my goals. I’ve done a daily challenge for the last several months of writing down what I am grateful for each morning. I’m trying to shift my perspective from immediately noticing everything wrong, to seeing the glimmers and bright spots right in front of me. This takes constant mindfulness. It is a perpetual game of tug-of-war between my lizard brain and the better version of who I want to become.

Reverend Akahoshi wrote in Tricycle, “The realm of gratitude transcends the duality of good or bad, right or wrong. The burden of guilt or righteousness is lifted; with this perspective I can accept the harsh realities of the human condition. Even when my intellect and emotions complain about an apparent disaster, my spiritual center cushions the pain.”

I love this way of thinking about it. Cushions the pain. The truth is, there are numerous harsh realities we must swallow on a regular basis. Shifting to a perspective of gratitude doesn’t negate reality, it merely equips us with the mental resilience to tackle whatever comes our way with grace and peacefulness. It gives us the flotation devices to keep our heads above water. Not everything will be easy. In fact we’ll encounter many difficult scenarios that will threaten us until they one day kill us. But we learn to show up the best we can—while we still can—with a tendency to be proud of our efforts instead of falling into the patterns of belittling our own self worth. I imagine one day being able to immediately see my son Peter’s little note in my mind that encourages me along, even when I’m alone: I love you. I am so proud of you. If that would become my default, instead of “you’re so stupid!” and “you should have tried harder!” and all of the other mean things I say to myself. That’s what I imagine a cushion looking like. “I’m so proud of you.”

A few weeks ago I listened to a seminar with Dr. Gabor Mate. He’s a Holocaust survivor, physician, author, and an amazing humanitarian teaching people how to cope with trauma. About 1:08:00 into the video he mentions learning from Buddhism that you “have to take care of the internal space.” In the midst of dealing with getting hate from all sides regarding his views about the Israel-Palestine situation, he suggested people “get in relation with yourself. Look at the state of your body. Are you tense? …notice it, be with it, and attend to it, but don’t act from it…so when there is a sense of peace inside of you…you’ll feel your interconnection with everyone else…even everyone else on the other side.” He said that after a particularly difficult day he came home and did an hour of meditation and yoga, and when you take care of yourself, the “action will then arise from that relationship.” You can do the work until you do the internal work.

Keep doing the work. It’s worth it.

Keep finding your center and working on your inner peace and clarity. It’s hard work to re-program your baseline, but you deserve it.

Keep finding reasons to be grateful. I mean, really. We get this gift of life, so what are we going to do with it? At the very least, it seems we should at least appreciate the rare opportunity to be conscious of all the causes and conditions that gave us today. Not everyone is so lucky.

So many causes and conditions made me who I am in this moment. The good and the bad and everything in between. I’m thankful for it all.

And I have so, so many reasons to be grateful, but here are three of them that I never want to take for granted:

Wishing all of you peace and inner clarity as we enter the holiday season.