90 Days of Gratitude

Yesterday was day one of an experiment.

I am going to say the words “Thank you” as a mantra 108,000 times. One hundred and eight thousand times.

At first glance, that’s a lot. And it is. Nevertheless, I broke out my calculator. My long mala beads are 108, and I would say “thank you” four times per bead, so that’s 432 times per time around. Approximating that to 400, three times around the mala is 1200. 108,000 divided by 1200 is: 90 days.

I may not even need 90 days to get this done. It takes me about 30-45 minutes to do 1200 (1296) “thank yous”. But that’s not really the point.

What will undertaking a massive experiment in gratitude be like? How will I change? What will I learn about myself? What will I learn about others?

I got this idea from Ken Honda, who is considered the “zen millionaire of japan.” He teaches classes about “happy money,” which is the title of his book. In it he says, there are two kinds of money: “happy” and “unhappy” money. “Unhappy” money is money that comes with emotions of frustration, resentment, bittnerness, sadness, stress and the like. “Happy” money comes with emotions of joy, gratitude, and all kinds of good feelings. The way to make “happy” money is to do things that give you joy and give other people joy. Another way to do this? Thank your money. Show it appreciation and gratitude when it comes in, and thank it on the way out.

Of course I, like everyone need to make money just to survive. But this idea of infusing one’s flow of money with joyful, appreciative energy really hit my mind. I can find joy through money? I can help others find peace and joy through money? Of course! Money is just energy; it’s just a symbol.

So in order to cleanse the flow of my money, and really to cleanse the flow of my mind, heart, and spirit, I am saying “Thank You” a minimum of 1,296 times per day for 90 days. I will say it more, because of natural interaction with people (and I like to thank people when I receive help, or money, or opportunities, or really anything), but the baseline is 1,296. Three times around the mala, four times per bead. Three months. 12-13 weeks.

Thank you for reading! Please join me again next week for a check in to see how this practice is going.

"Thank you for your suffering"

Meditation is something that I’m passionate about. What I’ve noticed recently is that it’s self-reinforcing. I love sharing it with people, and the more I do that, I’ve noticed that it helps my life too.

When we share our practice with others, we naturally help them, and they naturally help us. It is strange, because ostensibly we’re doing “nothing.” We’re intentionally doing nothing; sitting still and breathing together. But we’re doing it together, which is really important. When we all go deep, and rest our minds, and do it together, we get closer to others. Why?

I don’t know how it works, but over the last 12 years I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I have a hypothesis. I’m an anthropologist in spirit, and all throughout college (when I first started practicing) I learned about all the different ways that human are social beings. We’ll do anything to be with other people: play and watch sports, long and elaborate role-playing games; we’ll even be destructive to get each others’ attention, even if it’s negative attention, we still want it. We crave each other’s presence in our lives.

I think that’s because we reflect each other. We see ourselves in other people. And the funny thing about Buddhist philosophy is that it points directly to the things that are perhaps the most uncomfortable aspects of our lives: everything comes to an end, everything breaks down, order returns to entropy. We don’t want it to be that way, but this is how the world works. This is truth. And when we come together to drop everything, as in meditation practice, we recognize that we all share that reality. Nothing is what we think it is. Life doesn’t quite fit right, like a wheel that doesn’t quite fit its axle, a suit or dress that maybe fits a bit too small in certain parts or maybe altogether. We need a community that recognizes this.

As I’ve formed and joined communities of practice, I’ve noticed this gratitude for others who recognize the need to drop everything. In those communities we share how we came to meditation in the first place, what keeps us doing it, and what insights we’ve gained. There are as many variations of the story as there are humans beings in this world. But the common thread is this: I want something, I can’t get it, so I’m suffering. Even if it’s I want to feel happy, I want to feel normal, it’s still a great relief to hear people speak to the uncomfortable truths of their lives. Our suffering connects us like a great universal loom weaving us togethers like fibers in a tapestry. I found myself saying this recently to a friend of mine I was talking on the phone with who I met through practice: thank you for your suffering. It helped you be there for me.

Suffering is real, it’s normal, it’s an ever-present aspect of the fabric of our human lives. But as human beings, we have the capacity to wake up to what causes that suffering. We also have an opportunity to drop all the wanting, and deluded thinking, and anger that leads to this suffering. And the best way to do that is to enter into community with others who also wish to investigate the roots of discomfort in their lives. We support each other in silence, in conversation, in movement. When we drop everything and just be still, just look, then our suffering gets digested and transforms into wisdom. Wisdom is suffering made useful. And it’s not just my suffering that is useful to me. Your suffering helps transform my suffering, and my suffering helps transform yours.

So thank you. Thank you for having the courage to bury your suffering deep in the compost heap of practice, so that it can transform into wisdom that you can use to help others. We need more people like you.

Thank you for your suffering. Keep up the good work.