What are you grateful for?

[Luke]

Personally, I'm simply grateful to be a living human being with the opportunity to practice Dharma. I'm grateful for all the past masters who created and passed down countless powerful techniques to help people realize the true nature of their minds. I'm grateful to my lama for his excellent instructions.

OM AH HUNG VAJRA GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG

[Ben]

I know how nouveau smart-arsed it may sound but I am grateful for everything, I am grateful for the good, the bad and the ugly. Even at times I can be grateful for the visceral experiences of intractible mental and physical pain.
And I love it when it rains.
Thanks for the interesting thread.

Ben

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

I don't think I'm grateful often enough. Sure, I'm grateful for a good many things.... but I think I should reflect on them more often. I have a tendency to focus more on problems and deficiencies, than the things that are indeed positive.

Thank you for the prompting.

Metta,
Retro.

[KeithBC]

I have a lot to be grateful for, and it is good to be reminded of it from time to time. So, right now, I am grateful for the reminder.

Some other things I am grateful for at the moment:
- being married to the sweetest woman in the world
- warm spring temperatures (finally)
- nearing the end of a major renovation project (finally)
- having enough water stored to see the garden through the summer
- having enough firewood in the woodshed for the next two winters
- living in a community of progressively-minded people
- having found the Dharma (again)
- this website

Om mani padme hum
Keith

[David N. Snyder]

The Dhamma and no, I don't mean me or my screen name.

Maybe I should have chosen a better screen name, come to think of it.

[David N. Snyder]

- being married to the sweetest woman in the world

You know my wife too?

[David N. Snyder]

- having found the Dharma (again)
- this website

[thornbush]

For being alive and breathing well so far
For the great opportunity of encountering, knowing, studying and practicing the Buddha Dharma
And splendid online Buddhist mates here and elsewhere

[Drolma]

-grateful to the Buddha
- grateful for the dharma
-for wonderful teachers and for wonderful dharma friendships
-for another day of life and opportunities to practice
-for having a really sweet husband

[Dazzle]

I am grateful for having had ChogyamTrungpa Rinpoche as my first teacher.

I am grateful for my other wonderful teachers and my dharma brothers and sisters.

I am grateful for having good conditions in this life for my practice.

.

[davcuts]

I'm grateful that I have food to eat, clothes to wear, and home to live in. All the things I need to survive physically.

I'm grateful I don't have much stress in my life. I'm grateful I have family and friends who are a phone call away if I need them. All the things I need to survive mentally.

I'm grateful I have Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. All the things I need to survive spiritually.

[Eternal Spirit]

Dear forum and friends,

I am grateful we all have eternal life.

[thecap]

I am grateful we all have eternal life.

Someone's in for a little surprise here. :>

On topic: I am grateful for being grateful for every breath.

[Drolma]

I know how nouveau smart-arsed it may sound but I am grateful for everything, I am grateful for the good, the bad and the ugly. Even at times I can be grateful for the visceral experiences of intractible mental and physical pain.
And I love it when it rains.

Ben

Your attitude reminds me of something I read by a teacher called Dzogchen Ponlop - he said:

The Rolling Stones have a song that goes,
"Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
Wild, wild horses, we'll ride them some day."

That is the level that we have to reach, where wild horses cannot drag us away from the present moment of awareness. Once we have reached that level of training, then we will be able to guide our mind steadily past all difficulties toward awakening, toward freedom from samsara.

[Dazzle]

Just as an enthusiastic little sidenote about Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, he's a Kagyu teacher and some information and some of his teachings can be found here:

http://www.nalandabodhi.org/the_dzogche ... poche.html


_/\_

[Ngawang Drolma]

I am so grateful for friends and family. It helps a lot in life to have people to love

[dumb bonbu]

I know how nouveau smart-arsed it may sound

i guess i'm a smart-arse then because i'm going to have to agree lol. even the painful times, though usually i'm grateful for them on reflection. i'm working on being grateful for them as they occur though.

and i love the rain too!

[msmedusa]

I am so grateful for friends and family. It helps a lot in life to have people to love

Ditto Laura! The love of my partner and family is a blessing I never stop being grateful for.

[ronnewmexico]

Well, no offense to the other posters and their equally valid views but I pose the other. Abeit from a differing perspective.

Grateful is defined as.....being warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received: thankful.

As all benefit is not received but caused(to my view) I would hold not gratefulness for a kindness nor animosity for a unkindness. It being to my view caused, not by the giver nor the receiver as seperate from the gift. If I hold gratefulness for such things I would also have to hold animosity for the opposition of those things it seems. Why becomes the question then, why qualify the receipt of either. I do not thank myself for breathing or my heart for beating, these seem all caused, as all seems caused.

So I hold neither. If I find one person seperately able to give such things I would be grateful for them. I find none. They being caused to give such a thing and I being caused to receive such a thing, they cannot exist seperately from anything else, as neither can I. I may as well be grateful for myself as them, or for existance, or for causeitive factors themselves.

That in a perhaps ultimate consideration. Conventionally as I am grateful when I receive a meal I may pay for in a restaurant, and thank them when it arrives, I am grateful to all those mentioned.
Certainly I prostrate to Lamas when they are teaching and thank those that virtuously give me things. But it seems not to hold a large degree of significance.

So that is how I feel.
But that is just my personal view and not to be stated to be in any manner shape nor form superior to any other view. But it certainly differs from those offered.

[catmoon]

Just now I am grateful for the Dalai Lama and his kind way of teaching. If he was strict and hard, I would never have listened to him, and that would have finished my learning almost before it began.