Who is the best gratitude teacher in your life?

[Ron Alexander]

http://www.gratefulness.org/brotherdavid/index.htm

This wonderful teacher would be a great speaker and workshop leader (meditation teacher) locally. I was blessed to be a participant of one of his lectures at Green Gulch Zen Buddhist Center in California.
Presently I am re-reading his book gratefulness - the heart of prayer for about the tenth time.

Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness by David Steindl-Rast and Henri J. M. Nouwen (Paperback - Aug 1984)
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Excerpt - page 8: "... 8 Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer world I have been invited to speak about it. And ..."Surprise me! See a random page in this book.

DAVID STEINDL-RAST was born July 12, 1926, in Vienna, Austria, where he studied art, anthropology, and psychology, receiving an MA from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and a PhD from the University of Vienna. In 1952 he followed his family who had emigrated to the United States. In 1953 he joined a newly founded Benedictine community in Elmira, NY, Mount Saviour Monastery, of which he is now a senior member. In 1958/59 Brother David was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Cornell University, where he also became the first Roman Catholic to hold the Thorpe Lectureship, following Bishop J.D.R. Robinson and Paul Tillich.
After twelve years of monastic training and studies in philosophy and theology, Brother David was sent by his abbot to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, for which he received Vatican approval in 1967. His Zen teachers were Hakkuun Yasutani Roshi, Soen Nakagawa Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and Eido Shimano Roshi. He co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies in 1968 and received the 1975 Martin Buber Award for his achievements in building bridges between religious traditions.

Together with Thomas Merton, Brother David helped launch a renewal of religious life. From 1970 on, he became a leading figure in the House of Prayer movement, which affected some 200,000 members of religious orders in the United States and Canada.

For decades, Brother David divided his time between periods of hermit's life and extensive lecture tours on five continents. On a two-month lecture tour in Australia, for example, he gave 140 lectures and traveled 12,000 miles within Australia without backtracking. His wide spectrum of audiences has included starving students in Zaire and faculty at Harvard and Columbia Universities, Buddhist monks and Sufi retreatants, Papago Indians and German intellectuals, New Age communes and Naval Cadets at Annapolis, missionaries on Polynesian islands and gatherings at the United Nations, Green Berets and participants at international peace conferences. Brother David has brought spiritual depth into the lives of countless people whom he touches through his lectures, his workshops, and his writings.

Welcome, Ron Alexander!

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[Ron Alexander]

Hi Scott, thanks for that, I have worked with jaded people of all ages to get back that sense of childhood wonder!
If anyone loses that "wide-eyed" sense of "surprise" (as Brother David Steindle-Rast writes - see first post), it is especially sad when they are youth. So let your wonder-filled kids teach you well. thanks, Ron

[Arne Jin An Wong]

My greatest teacher of gratitude is a 20 ft.+ wave barreling down on me like a 2 story freight train, leaving me no choice but to surrender into its grasp and pray that I have the strength to hold my breath and relax my mind from any fear of death.
When I swim for the surface after being tossed like a dishrag in a playpen of crocodiles, and take that first gasp of life giving air, my first thought is of gratitude. This feeling is etched into my consciousness like a branding iron upon my tender rump. It remains with me in my waking life, whether I am sitting in my bathtub or on my surfboard outside on a big day, I am blessed each day to breath again, to see the light of another day, to feel my heart beat within this magic vessel that touches the world around me. And from this, I have no fear to take on the world, move mountains, and to caress the tender flower petal in the garden in my soul.

[Ron Alexander]

Wow, Arne, that is a dramatic story - tell us more about the wave - was it just a freak wave while you were surfing or a tsunami?
And this "bed of crocodiles" - where did this story take place?
Where I live a hurricane "Hazel" in 1954 caused a 44 foot "tidal wave" which we called it until recently. I was ten years old and viewed the wreckage - the first two rows of beach houses were virtually destroyed - the first row completely. I remember small piles of concrete blocks and appliances floating around in tidal pools.
I am very grateful our home was not that close to the beach.
We had alot of alligators back then. They would regularly make a visit to the beach, so we had to have a chainlink fence around the yard to protect the pets. They are mostly gone, because of development and highrises
crowd most of the surrounding beach. I wonder what will happen to the highrises if another "tsunami" hits the beach?
Beautiful words describe your gratitude - "magic vessel" "& to caress the tender flower petal in the garden of my soul."
Are you a poet? thanks, ron

[Elisabetta Errani Emaldi]

I am grateful to the Architect of the Universe to the Christ,
to the Buddha and all the great human binges of the past and present.

[B.J. Boltauzer]

My teacher of gratefulness is Rumi. His mystical poems are permeated with gratefulness for creation and for love which we receive every moment of our life here and beyond.

[Peter DiPhillips]

Bill Wilson

[Kari]

Thank´s for selling.

[Kari]

Kari said:

Thank´s for selling.

[Kari]

Kari said:

Thank´s for selling.

[Kari]

Thank You...you ARE SO KIND...CAN´T WAIT TO RECIEVE YOUR MESSAGES...iT WOULD BE SO COOL!bACK TO rEALITY...bACK.TO.REALITY.Or to yours...

[Kari]

There is nothing I can say to convince you,so please be HAPPY/ with someone not so cool,rather a ...well,it´s up to¨ you ....

[Ron Alexander]

Kari said:

There is nothing I can say to convince you,so please be HAPPY/ with someone not so cool,rather a ...well,it´s up to¨ you ....

Dear Kari, I am not quite sure the answer you are expecting so I will just say I give thanks to you in the spirit that we are all ONE, so lets all love each other, One Love, ron