Discussion Forum Discussion Forum

Morality and Daily Life

Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice

Hi all,

In the last months, my practice has been focused on Metta exclusively, which I now consider to be a highly transformative and challenging practice.
In the last weeks I listened to Brene Brown's talks on vulnerability, shame, scarcity mentality, gratutude etc. again.
Suddenly they actually made sense, which I ascribe to my realizations from the Metta practice.

Notably, she states that gratitude is correlated with a lack of scarcity mentality and lots of other good things.
This I found remarkably because I noticed that gratitude basically doesn't appear in my mind, quite in contrast to scarcity mentality.

Thus, I decided it may be interesting to add some gratitude cultivation to my practice.
A quick google search leads to lots of results, but mostly focused on 'daily-life', unclear reflection, and without clear instruction.

Question: Does anyone here know/have systematic instructions for gratitude practice?
If possible, in a foolproof kind of way, and for sitting practice?
Something which is as straightforward as noting (or Sujatos Metta-method) would be what I'm looking for.

RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice
Answer
5/28/14 10:39 AM as a reply to bernd the broter.
Have you explored the rest of the brahmaviharas besides just metta? magick-and-the-brahma-viharas
Good luck,
~D

RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice
Answer
5/28/14 5:23 PM as a reply to Dream Walker.
No, I didn't. I was only taught how to do Metta, and I realize that I have much more to learn in this area. I already read that article though.
My impression from it was that Metta was more basic than karuna/mudita, so it would be a good idea to really get a solid foundation in Metta first.
As to upekkha, my experience is that it is a direct side-effect of noting practice (which I'm sure I'll go back to in the future), so there's no need to practice upekkha separately.

On the other hand, my impression is that Forgiveness, Gratitude and probably some other faculties lie on another axis of development - do you disagree about that assessment?

RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice
Answer
8/18/14 2:29 PM as a reply to bernd the broter.
Hi Bernd,

Brother David Steindl-Rast might be a good place to look. Also,if it's still relevant, here's my personal approach:

Every night in bed I try to find an item in each of the following 4 categories, for which gratitude arises naturally. The categories are

P - Person
O - Opportunity
E - Experience
T - Thing

Then I try to feel the sensations which make up the experience as closely as possible, looking for any change in them.

Wishing you well,
D

RE: Systematic Instructions for Gratitude Practice
Answer
8/21/14 2:48 AM as a reply to Dominik J.
Hey, that website looks really helpful, hadn't found that before.
Thanks for pointing it out!