![\"Image](\"https:\/\/infamous.net\/tzp_images\/livethanks.jpg\" "\\"Image")
Consider the words of America\u2019s favorite pop-guru, Oprah Winfrey<\/a>: \u201cThe single greatest thing you can do to change your life today is to start being grateful for what you have right now. No gesture is too small when done with gratitude.\u201d Or to take a more serious and weighty example, I recently stumbled across a quote from the Zen teacher Norman Fischer:<\/a> \u201cHonestly, I can\u2019t understand why we don\u2019t burst into tears in gratitude and relief every time we meet another person.\u201d (Apparently originally from this dharma<\/a> talk<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Now maybe talk like this makes you feel warm and fuzzy. If that\u2019s the case, then the rest of this probably won\u2019t apply to you, and you might want to move on. But personally, when I hear someone say \u201cGive thanks!\u201d I want to respond \u201cDon\u2019t tell me what to do!\u201d<\/p>\n Or, perhaps more accurately, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me how to feel!\u201d<\/p>\n To truly see and acknowledge one\u2019s real feelings, to see the dependent arising of emotion, to be honest with one\u2019s self about the contents of one\u2019s own heart, is a difficult task. (Perhaps even a more difficult one for men than for women in a culture that dissuades men from expressing emotion, but that\u2019s opening a can of gender politics that I don\u2019t want to get sidetracked on right now.) If I am not \u2014 right here and now in this present moment \u2014 feeling grateful, then to pretend to gratitude is a lie. And that is not a path conducive to spiritual growth.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re feeling angry, grumpy, irritable, frustrated, or grief-stricken, then go ahead and honestly feel that way! I might suggest that you look at how these feelings arise, examine to what degree they are real and to what degree phantoms, but don\u2019t paper over your emotions with false gratitude just because some \u201cspiritual teacher\u201d tells you that feeling one way is better than feeling another.<\/p>\n (That\u2019s not to say that one should treat other people badly based on those emotions, of course. It\u2019s fine to be grumpy \u2014 as Ikkyu wrote, \u201cI like my anger\u00a0 my grouchy furious love.\u201d But it\u2019s not fine to let that grumpiness lead you to be a dick. Follow the minimal social niceties, say \u201cplease\u201d and \u201cthank you\u201d and tip your bartenders.)<\/p>\n You have to start from where you are. So if you\u2019re not willing to right now truly be where you are, you can\u2019t start, you can only be lost.<\/p>\n But \u2014 you knew there was a \u201cbut\u201d coming here, right? \u2014 it certainly is a worthwhile thing to cultivate within oneself the capacity for positive emotion, for the recognition of beauty.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m not going to tell you to be thankful, even as you\u2019re about to be bombarded with that message over the next week. (And then with messages about BUY! BUY! BUY!) But I will suggest that you consider what you can do to improve your ability to recognize and enjoy beauty. And that includes not just the beauty of music or painting or poetry, but the beauty that can be found in contemplation of the deep interconnectedness of all things, of our interdependence and interbeing with the entire universe.<\/p>\n The sweet potato on my plate that becomes part of my flesh connects me in the most intimate way with the checkout clerk at the grocery store, with the produce stocker, with the truck driver who brought it there, with the geochemistry that produced the oil that burned to move the truck, with the lumberjack who cut down the tree that was turned into the cardboard for the box it was shipped in, with the farmer in their field, with the soil and the air and the rain that nurtured the vine and the tuber, with the sun\u2019s nuclear fire 93,000,000 miles away. If any of these factors is removed the sweet potato is not there, and I starve. The basic day-to-day dependencies of this so-called \u201cindividual\u201d stretch over millions of miles, not to even consider the long-term history of these carbon atoms, the origins of these quarks, and the like.<\/p>\n That is all just fact, regardless of how I feel about it at any given moment.<\/p>\n But when I stop to think about that fact, when I really try to wrap my head around it, I often perceive something beautiful about it. Sometimes, on a good day, it is the most profound possible feeling of beauty. And that perception is its own justification, it is simply a pleasant experience. I can recommend that others try it just as I might say \u201cMmm, taste this sweet potato, it\u2019s good.\u201d Not to say \u201cyou should feel this way\u201d, but rather \u201cif you take this specific action, I believe you will likely find the result agreeable.\u201d<\/p>\n If we can put down preconceptions about how things \u201cshould\u201d be and look deeply at how they are, at our true relationship with existence, we might find all sorts of positive feelings arising. We might \u2014 or might not \u2014 call one of them gratitude or thankfulness. But we have to start at the right end of the process.<\/p>\n A little news: \u201cThe Zen Pagan\u201d will now appear twice as often! Look for it every other Friday. You can keep up by subscribing via RSS<\/a> or e-mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m also pleased to be able to announce that I\u2019ll be presenting at PantheaCon<\/a> in February. This will be my first West Coast Pagan event \u2014 and my first hotel-type, rather than camp-type, Pagan event. I\u2019ll try to remember to keep my clothes on.<\/a><\/p>\n And if you\u2019re looking for an alternative to Black Friday holiday shopping, may I suggest ordering books on-line? If someone on your Yule list is the sort to have Starhawk next to Alan Watts, or Drawing Down the Moon<\/i> next to An Introduction to Zen Buddhism<\/i>\u00a0on their shelf, how about getting them a copy of Why Buddha Touched the Earth<\/a><\/i>?<\/p>\n Finally, if you do the Facebook thing, you might choose to join a Facebook group on \u201cZen Paganism\u201d<\/a> I\u2019ve set up. And don\u2019t forget to \u201clike\u201d Patheos Pagan<\/a> over there, too.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not going to tell you to be thankful, even as you\u2019re about to be bombarded with that message over the next week. (And then with messages about BUY! BUY! BUY!) But I will suggest that you consider what you can do to improve your ability to recognize and enjoy beauty. And that includes not just the beauty of music or painting or poetry, but the beauty that can be found in contemplation of the deep interconnectedness of all things, of our interdependence and interbeing with the entire universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1860,"featured_media":7259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330,379,618,1077],"tags":[579,329,25,829],"class_list":["post-7228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-health-wellness","category-pagan-holidays","category-the-zen-pagan","tag-gratitude","tag-holidays","tag-pagan","tag-thanksgiving"],"yoast_head":"\n
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