Gil Fronsdal is a Buddhist teacher and the founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Center. In this talk, he discusses the importance of gratitude.
Gil Fronsdal on Gratitude
Gil Fronsdal is a teacher in the Zen and Vipassana (insight meditation) traditions. He is the founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, and the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz, California, and has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana since 1975 and holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University. He was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982.
His books include a 2006 translation of The Dhammapada and A Monastery Within: Tales from the Buddhist Path.
The importance of gratitude
In this talk, Gil Fronsdal discusses gratitude. When we aim to practice mindfulness in daily life, it’s easy to focus on the nuts and bolts of the practice. We may meditate for a certain amount of time, or do a specific number of mindfulness exercises, in order to feel we’re making the progress we need to make. However, this is only one part of the picture of what living mindfully means.
To live with presence, clarity, and awareness, more may be needed: gratitude. Practicing gratitude can make us more aware of the present moment. By looking for things to be grateful for, we may find a sense of peace and wholeness. Our minds are always looking to differentiate between things, to dissect our reality, and to split our experience into “good” and “bad.” By practicing gratitude, we can bring our attention away from these discernments and back to the present moment.
