My friend Donna had an interesting experience awhile ago—she compared it to winning the lottery. She was so touched by this experience that she mentioned how grateful she was for things she normally takes for granted every day: water, trees, electricity, and more. So what kind of extraordinary good fortune came Donna’s way? Why was she feeling so grateful, so lucky? Here’s what happened: nothing happened.

You see, Donna lives near Vero Beach, Florida, and a hurricane was heading in her direction. She and her husband did everything they could to prepare for the storm—for 90 mph winds and drenching rains. But nothing happened. A few gusts of wind—some intermittent rain. That was it. That’s why Donna felt like she won the lottery. Nothing happened.

When was the last time you felt grateful because nothing happened? Nobody crashed into your car on the way home from work. The electricity didn’t go out. You didn’t wake up with a toothache. You didn’t have a heart attack. Nobody shot at you or robbed your home while you were gone.

There are people who are living in war zones at this very moment. Just look at the news and you can find those areas on a map. Many of those people are very aware at the end of the day that nobody in their family was killed and their home wasn’t destroyed by a bomb or hand grenade. Because they live with that awareness every day, they also are aware when nothing happens to hurt them.

Related: As If There Is Nothing to Lose

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance your life is relatively safe—so safe that safety isn’t on your mind. So when nothing happens, you don’t feel particularly grateful. You expect to be safe, just as you expect the light to go on when you hit the switch on the wall. But when you expect to die or you expect your home to be destroyed, “nothing happened” is a miracle.

My friend Donna, described it like this:

The extraordinary thing about this hurricane is that everyone knew it was coming. For days, the weather channels tracked the hurricane moving up the eastern seaboard and predicting where it would turn west and hit land. Generally we don’t get much advance warning with natural disasters like earthquakes or tornados. So tens of millions of people watched and waited. And the force of the hurricane destroyed homes, turned cars into boats, and, in some cases, took lives. But for millions of people, “nothing happened.” We sat safely in our homes and watched the gusts of wind and listened to the rain on our roofs while we read a book and checked our email. And many of us experienced a sincere and authentic moment of gratefulness. We were worried, anxious, even fearful. And nothing happened.

So here’s our challenge: to allow our hearts and minds to be touched by gratitude without the presence of a hurricane. To appreciate life and the grace by which we wake up each day and go to sleep in safety. To recognize that our personal safety is a gift and something we have little control over. We may survive a hurricane and have a heart attack the next day. Our lives are all hanging by a thread. It makes us nervous to think about it, so we try not to. But that thread has held us up since we were born. And once in a while it’s good to notice it so we can be thankful for it.

“Nothing happened” isn’t particularly exciting. It’s not as entertaining as a good movie. It’s not intellectually challenging, nor is it adorable like a baby kitten.  But when you expect the worst and nothing happens, it’s worthy of celebration. A celebration of the fact that despite all of our problems and aches and pains and financial challenges and relationship conflicts we’re alive and we’re breathing and at the moment, we’re safe. So take a moment and sit back. And breathe in “nothing happened.” And breathe out a breath of thanks. Gratitude for just being able to breathe. Now that’s really something!

♦

Excerpted from Question Your Life: Naikan Self-Reflection and the Transformation of our Stories, by Gregg Krech. ToDo Books, November 2017. Reprinted with permission.

The post Grateful for Nothing appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In a 1988 interview with Rolling Stone, the late actor and comedian Robin Williams opened up about finding gratitude for life’s hardships, including his recent divorce and the death of his father. After one of the most difficult years of his life, Williams said, he took to heart a friend’s advice about cultivating a sense of thankfulness. 

“Someone said I should send out Buddhist thank-you cards,” he said, “since Buddhists believe that anything that challenges you makes you pull yourself together.”

With characteristic wit and insight, Williams tapped into the heart of one of the most foundational and empowering teachings of Buddhism: suffering can be our greatest source of transformation. The dharma teachings show us how to use all the stuff of life—particularly those unavoidable experiences of pain, loss, and suffering—as fodder for awakening. 

It’s easy to be grateful for life’s “10,000 joys”—but what about it’s “10,000 sorrows”? Cultivating an awareness of the gifts of adversity can help us to not only weather the difficult storms of our lives but also come out wiser and more compassionate than ever before. 

True gratitude isn’t limited to experiences of joy, love, and pleasure, as Vipassana teacher Jack Kornfield emphasizes. “In certain temples that I’ve been to, there’s actually a prayer that you make asking for difficulties,” he told me last year. “May I be given the appropriate difficulties so that my heart can truly open with compassion. Imagine asking for that.”

Kornfield went on to say that his meditation master in the jungles of Thailand would ask him, “Where have you learned more compassion?”

This idea is reflected in the saying, “No mud, no lotus.” The symbolic lotus flower blooms out of the mud; its growth is rooted in the dirt and grime. As the metaphor goes, it is from suffering that we learn compassion, from loss that we learn understanding, and from overcoming struggles that we come to discover our own strength and beauty. These struggles may just be the “appropriate difficulties” that we need in order to grow. As novelist and former heroin addict Gregory David Roberts wrote in Shantaram, “Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.” 

Related: The Good Fit: A student’s candid recollection of the intricacies of practice with one of the pioneer teachers of Zen in the West

When life presents us with challenges, we can get stuck in the mud—in our habitual reactions and patterns—or we can be present to the suffering and find compassion and strength within the discomfort, blossoming like the lotus. 

This notion of the transformative power of suffering is now being reinforced by psychological research. In the past 20 years, scientists have begun studying the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth, a term coined in the 1990s by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun to describe instances of individuals who experienced profound transformation as they coped with various types of trauma and adversity. This phenomenon has now been observed in more than 300 scientific studies, and research has found that up to 70 percent of trauma survivors report some positive psychological growth. 

Often, these survivors report a greater sense of meaning and a new way of seeing the world. Survivors also describe experiencing greater empathy and compassion, and many say that they develop renewed creative interests and inspiration. 

As I discuss in my new book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (co-authored with psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman), through our suffering we can become not only more compassionate but also more authentically creative.  

One way that adversity can lead to creativity is by way of compassion. Encountering the depths of our own pain and vulnerability allows us to be with the suffering of others. As Pema Chödrön once wrote, we can only be fully present to the darkness of others when we know our own darkness—“Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” So much of art is an attempt to find meaning in human suffering—and when we have compassion for ourselves and others, a deeper understanding and appreciation for our shared humanity shines through our creative pursuits. 

Related: Your Brain on Neuroscience

Artistic pursuits can also themselves be a powerful way of finding meaning in the face of suffering. Art seeks to make sense of everything from life’s smallest moments of sadness to its most earthshattering tragedies. Frida Kahlo made self-portraits to express the pain of her multiple miscarriages, childhood polio, and chronic pain. Van Gogh projected his turbulent inner life onto his sweeping canvases. Anyone who listens to the Moonlight Sonata can hear Beethoven’s struggle with his inner darkness. As Ray Charles once said, “Man, you could just feel the pain this man was going through. He was very, very lonesome when he wrote that.” 

And last, art can be a vehicle for the development of compassion. In our individual and collective quest to understand the darker sides of human life, works of art that show us the truth of another’s pain and loneliness carry the power to move us deeply. 

Out of loss, there can be creative gain. Adversity can provide powerful inspiration for work that strives to make sense of the artist’s inner life and emotional state. And when a piece of art succeeds in elevating suffering in some way, the results can be breathtaking. 

The post Buddhist Thank-You Cards appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Tricycle staff!

We hope that your Thanksgiving is a day of warmth and gratitude and of sharing your time with those you treasure most. If it turns out to be something more along the lines of what comedian Johhny Carson once said, though…

“Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.”

…we offer our heartfelt empathy.

To get us into the Thanksgiving spirit this year, we decided to go around the office and ask the traditional Thanksgiving ’round-the-table question: “What are you thankful for this year?” Here’s what we had to say:

Fabio Cutro, Art Director: “I am grateful for the mountains.”

Emma Varvaloucas, Associate Editor: “I am grateful that my sister, father, mother, and I, usually spread out over the four corners of the globe, will all be in the same place for Thanksgiving this year.”

Andrew Gladstone, Digital Media Coordinator: “I have seen and heard of strangers performing extraordinary acts of generosity and kindness in the aftermath of the hurricane, and so I am grateful for that hopeful reminder and that blow to my own cynicism.”

Alex Caring-Lobel, Editorial Assistant: “A wonderful job and two whole days off from it.”

Rachel Hiles, Managing Editor: “Friends, family, flannel, and fuzzy slippers.”

Andrew Cooper, Features Editor: “I receive a lot of support of many kinds from others. And since my strengths are few and my weaknesses abundant, I need it. So I try to be grateful for that support.”

Jules Gordon, Development Assistant: “I am thankful for the arrival of my beautiful new baby cousin. And also Internet television.”

Of course, it’s your turn now. What are you thankful for this year?

The post A Very Buddhist Thanksgiving appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

With the release of our Fall 2011 issue and our e-book 20 Years, 20 Teachings—free to Supporting and Sustaining Members—Tricycle is celebrating 20 great years. Looking back, and looking forward, our feeling is one of overwhelming gratitude to our readers and supporters who have kept us pedaling all these years.

Not long ago we wrote to several friends of the magazine—teachers, writers, and practitioners—and asked them to speak about gratitude in their lives. We’ll post these on the blog over the next few weeks.

Today we begin with our contributing editor, bestselling author Mark Matousek. He writes:

Once, I had a conversation with David Steindl-Rast, an 80-year-old Benedictine monk, about what it means to live a happy life.  “We must create a network of grateful living if we want to survive on this planet,” Brother David told me. “”Gratitude is a profound spiritual practice.”  This means gratitude for the day, I’ve learned—deep gratitude for all that we’re given—starting with the chance to be human at all, and on this miraculous earth. The brevity of our lives should only intensify this gratitude.  “If the cardinal’s flight from bank to bank were less brief,” wrote another monk (this one a thousand years ago), “it would also be less glorious.” Gratitude is the awakener.

The post Gratitude: Mark Matousek appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.