CHAPTER NINE

Disappointment and Nonattachment

We first learn about disappointment when we wish for something that does not come true. When we were small, we may have wished for a new toy or a best friend, a longer summer vacation, or a wonderful adventure. Some of us may have hoped for a different kind of family—for parents who were younger or more playful, or a family that was warmer and more loving. But when our wishes didn’t all happen the way we wanted—when our toys, adventures, or parents didn’t turn out quite the way we dreamed they would—we felt sad, let down, and disappointed.

As children, we tended to have definite ideas about how things should be: Parents shouldn’t fight, mothers should be reliable, fathers shouldn’t yell or hit us, families should be caring and happy. We had a powerful sense of what was fair, and we insistently believed that everyone should be kind, that our parents shouldn’t be mean, and no one should be angry. The more we experienced our family’s hurt, anger, or impatience, the more tightly we held onto our expectation that we should all be more loving. Even as the fabric of our family unraveled in fighting, drinking, or divorce, we secretly continued to expect that somehow everyone would snap out of it and become the warm, loving family we never had.

But we were inevitably given less than we expected: Beth wished for a mother who didn’t go off and leave her alone for hours at a time; Don wanted a father who didn’t hit him; John expected his father to be more understanding; Mary dreamed of the day her father would tell her he loved her; Rick wished for a mother who would not need to ask his advice about everything; Laurie wanted a mother who wouldn’t drink and then make Laurie stay up with her and talk all night; Carole wished she had a brother that wouldn’t fondle her; Diana ached for a mother who hadn’t committed suicide. Every time we expected more than we were given, with every heart’s desire that never came true, we became more and more disappointed.

We carried a picture of our perfect family in our mind’s eye, but the world around us never matched that picture. Every time Mom drank or Dad yelled, after every fight or violation, a small piece of our heart would break, and we would begin to feel a sense of hopelessness that perhaps the needs of our hearts would remain forever unfulfilled. As our tender dreams and wishes were shattered again and again, some of us eventually began to suspect that we might spend our entire lives wishing for things that would never come true.

Of course, there would always be an occasion, a special moment on a particular day, when things did turn out the way we hoped they would. There would be a day when things were light and happy in our family, a time when Dad did take us fishing, or Mom helped us with our homework, or we all laughed together and played a game, or took a walk and everyone had a good time. But even when a moment of happiness spontaneously arose, we still found ourselves feeling cautious and watchful, waiting for the moment when the happiness would end. Even as we tried our best to enjoy whatever happiness came along, we had eventually become so accustomed to being let down by the broken promises of our family story that we soon learned always to look behind the happiness, probing for the inevitable suffering, the hidden catch, the certain disappointment that was to come.

We were so accustomed to unmasking the illusion of happiness that even when everyone seemed to be having a good time, we suspected they were only pretending, obscuring their true sufferings. We saw the playful moments as a facade, a fragile veneer beneath which the deeper, more uncomfortable truths were hidden. Gladness seemed like a denial mechanism, destined to crumble under the weight of painful feelings yet to be uncovered. A smiling face was likely to mask darker things—and so, over time, we learned to equate the dark side with the truth. Pain and sorrow had come in so many ways and in so many forms, eventually suffering began to seem more real, more honest than happiness.

We concluded that the people who seemed happy were those who just couldn’t see what we saw, who were too dull or ignorant to see the “real” painful truth about things. We even took pride in our ability to find suffering where there appeared to be gladness; it was a mark of our intelligence and sensitivity that we could discern the flaws in the pretty story. We saw everything through the lens of our broken hearts.

As we grow older, we continue to hope for things we do not have. While the things we wish for may change—instead of a new toy we may wish for a new car, a better career, a larger home, or a more compatible spouse—still, when these things do not come exactly as we anticipated, we experience disappointment. And as each new frustration resonates with our childhood memories, then our disappointment—worn deep and wide through the repeated regrets of childhood—becomes like a hammock to which we quickly retreat in comfort and familiarity.

This dance of expectation and disappointment follows us wherever we go. If we pay attention, we find we always want something other than what we have. When we are in the city, we dream of the country—and in the country we miss the stimulation of the city. When we are alone, we ache for company, and when we are busy with our family, we wish we had more time for ourselves. We are suffocated by our ever-changing desires and preferences. Relentlessly pursuing our mercurial wants and desires, we try to minimize our suffering by trying to make the world just the way we want it to be. Yet each time, in spite of our best efforts to arrange it all just right, it somehow turns out to be unsatisfying: It doesn’t last long enough, it lasts too long, the right people aren’t there, something is not quite right—and again we are disappointed.

Disappointment and Despair

Each family had its own reservoir of regrets, of opportunities lost, unfortunate relatives, unsatisfying jobs, or bad marriages. As children of these families, we became used to uncovering whatever darkness and disappointment lay hidden beneath the surface. Later, as adults, we may have felt the additional disappointment of unsatisfying jobs, lack of success, or failed relationships. After a while, we learned to protect our hearts by altering our expectations to fit the shape of our childhood scars: Rather than expect the best, we begin to expect the worst. Over time, these chronic disappointments generate a sense of despair.

By cultivating the expectation that we will inevitably encounter failure, pain, and sorrow, by seeking out disappointment and regret before they take us by surprise, we feel somehow more safe, more in control. We feel less vulnerable to being caught with our hearts exposed, less open to being hurt by our shattered dreams. If we expect the worst, we will never again be disappointed.

How many times during a day do we find ourselves considering what might go wrong? How much time do we spend trying to predict how this job, relationship, or project might blow up in our faces? Even when things are going smoothly, how many hours do we waste wondering when the other shoe will drop, waiting for the moment when it will somehow turn from good to bad? Because our hearts have been broken so often, because so many dreams have wasted away, failure and disillusionment begin to seem more trustworthy and more durable than happiness and delight. We actually anticipate the inevitability of disappointment, feeling some relief when the other shoe falls, when the muck hits the fan, when all that appears to be well is finally revealed to be ruined.

Erik Erikson, in his early work as a child analyst, observed young children who were exhibiting clear symptoms of despair. These girls and boys seemed to actually court failure—destroying toys or ruining friendships with playmates the instant it appeared that something might go wrong. Then they would retreat into despair when everything did turn out badly. Erikson noted traces of triumph and satisfaction on the faces of these children as the inevitable failure of their situation played itself out. But he also realized that their retreat into despair was a defense, a protection. Their fear of failure was so strong, they would actually invite disaster just so they could get it over with. But, said Erikson, in their hearts “these children loved and wanted to be loved, and they very much preferred the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure.”

Henry, a lawyer and a recovering alcoholic, came to me feeling depressed. He was raised by his mother and grandmother, both of whom had lost their husbands. Both women were sad and tired, and felt their lives were over. Henry remembered sitting at the kitchen table and feeling the weight of his family’s disappointment. He heard his grandmother tell his mother how tough her life was going to be, that she had had her chance for happiness and had lost it, and that she better get used to it. “There will never be another chance for you,” she said.

Little Henry sat quietly and absorbed their regret, taking their despair as his own. Small wonder, then, that as an adult Henry had found himself mired in depression and despair. He had long ago decided that things were never going to work out, so why bother trying?

Some of us may have recognized a similar despair in our own parents, watching as they surrendered to the discouraging inevitability of what fate had dealt them. We watched their hurt, their disillusionment, and the sense of defeat that drenched their lives. Many of us took on our parents’ suffering as a map of our own destiny, using the level of their regret to calibrate the limits of our own happiness. Moved by love and pity for our parents, some of us made a secret, unconscious vow to never allow our happiness to exceed that which Mom and Dad managed to gather for themselves. If we were to be too lighthearted and too free, it would feel like we were stealing their happiness; there was so little joy, to want more would be terribly selfish. Accepting their sorrowful inheritance, we felt somehow more loyal and loving as their sons and daughters.

This is not a choice we ever make consciously but rather a decision we make from a place deep within us, a place bound by a powerful kinship with those who gave us life. By choosing unhappiness so that our parents might be happy, perhaps we felt we were giving them a precious gift, sacrificing our joy on the altar of their sorrow. But it was, of course, a gift that would benefit no one.

We never receive any real satisfaction from choosing despair. Like Erikson’s children, we have become so terrified of what will happen when things go wrong—so frightened of the pain, the exposure, and the grief— that we desperately armor our hearts by readying ourselves for the worst. But as we devote all our attention to preparing ourselves for sorrow, we slowly strangle the possibility that we will ever know real joy.

The Practice of Nonattachment

How do we free ourselves from this cycle of expectation, disappointment, and despair? We may begin by acknowledging that we will never be totally free from hurt and sadness. When we lose the job or the promotion we worked so hard for, when we find ourselves in financial difficulty, when our spouse asks for a divorce, when we lose a good friend to cancer, we will inevitably feel the sadness and grief that accompany any loss.

If we can never escape the pain of being human, how, then, can we heal ourselves of disappointment and lingering despair? We are trapped between two old patterns of thinking. On the one hand, we still carry our passionate childhood belief that the world should change and that everyone should stop dying or leaving or being mean. People should simply come together and rebuild the world the way it was supposed to be in the first place. While this is a beautiful dream, and something to which we may dedicate our lives, simply holding a wish in our heart does not necessarily make it come true.

The alternative, however, is to expect the worst. Many of us who repeatedly experience disappointment become cynical, smugly quoting Murphy’s Law when something goes wrong. But while learning to expect disaster may make us feel less vulnerable to disappointment and hurt, our fatalism casts a long shadow deep in our soul, and murders any possibility of joy that may arise in our spirit. As we perfect our ability to predict what is dark and painful, we gradually lose our ability to recognize what is vital, beautiful, and alive.

If anticipating the best brings us disappointment, and expecting the worst leads to despair, then we feel damned whichever way we turn. How do we imagine we can ever find peace? How can we ever be happy?

One method is to experiment with the idea that we may allow all our expectations—the bad ones and the good ones, the big and small ones—to gradually hold less importance, to recede into the background of our lives. This is a very difficult practice. Our lives are drenched with expectations for every situation. We cling to a set of old, tarnished blueprints, maps for safety and protection we drew up when we were small and afraid. Then we stumble from place to place, urging the world to perfectly match these blueprints, terrified the world will not turn out the way we want, and disappointed when it turns out the way we feared. Only when we free ourselves from the prison of our expectations are we able to meet the world afresh and to see with new eyes. If we allow our attachments to recede, even for an instant, we are more free to appreciate what we have been given and to see more clearly the fullness of who we have become.

We may begin this practice by becoming more aware of the quality of our expectations. What are we expecting in this moment? What do we assume will happen an hour from now, or tonight, or tomorrow morning? Whenever we are driving around town, or taking the bus to work, or sitting in a meeting, or preparing to go on a date with a friend, we may pause for a moment and take inventory of all the hopes and plans we are carrying in that instant. No doubt we are already planning for how the bus ride will go, what we will say at the meeting, or how wonderful our time with our friend will be. As we use up the fullness of every moment by worrying and anticipating how the next encounter will go, we suffocate our spirit in a sea of plans, presumptions, and calculations.

Of course, it is impossible to live completely without expectations and preferences. Some of our expectations come from deep in the heart and seem quite reasonable. It seems perfectly normal, for example, for a child to wish for a happy family, or to expect to be treated with affection. But regardless of how simple and reasonable it may seem to wish for love, there will be a moment when that wish becomes an expectation, a feeling that we should be loved, or that somehow we have earned love, and feel we have a right to get it. As soon as our wish becomes an expectation, the instant we assume that love will come, we are preparing ourselves for a moment in the future when we will be disappointed by someone who will love us too little, too hard, too soft, or too late. And then, unable to receive whatever care is offered, we will measure what little we are given against how much we expected. This is the basic recipe for disappointment.

The mind ceaselessly generates thousands of tiny expectations every day, expectations that subtly color the lens through which we perceive our world. A few weeks ago, I was awakened at six in the morning by my four-week-old son Maxwell. He wanted the usual attention required by an infant—some food, a change of diaper, a moment of rocking on my chest. Since my wife Christine had gotten up with him during the night, I was glad to spend this time with our new son.

This particular morning, however, his need for rocking seemed greater than before. We ended up sitting in the rocker for almost an hour as he fidgeted and fussed. I found myself getting hungry, so I decided it must be time for my breakfast. As soon as I made that decision, I began to rock a little more deliberately, trying to get Maxwell to fall asleep so I could eat. Of course, as I got hungrier, Max became fussier.

After about ten minutes I had worked myself into a dilemma: When was I going to get breakfast? I became impatient, frustrated by Max’s inability to just let go and go to sleep. After all, I had to eat too! This lovely moment—sitting peacefully with my son in the early morning, gently rocking ourselves together—had become a moment of disappointment, frustration, and impatience.

What had changed? Max was still my newborn son, the rocker still quietly rocking. The only difference was that I had begun to expect that I would soon get breakfast. That tiny expectation had turned a moment of grace into a moment of distress. In that instant I had a choice: Either I could keep rocking—all the while thinking, “breakfast, breakfast”—or I could let my attachment to breakfast temporarily fall away, and think instead, “rocking, rocking.” As soon as I let go of the concept of an immediate breakfast, the moment again became gentle and easy. I could sit, I could watch Maxwell’s eyes, and feel his body warm and soft against mine. There would be breakfast for everyone sooner or later.

How many gentle moments do we poison each day when we cling to our expectations? When we are imagining breakfast while we rock the baby, we miss the joy of rocking, we lose a precious moment with the baby—and we still miss breakfast. When we simply rock when we are rocking, and then eat while we are eating, we become more open to the blessings available in this moment.

Some expectations are extremely difficult to relinquish. Some of us still expect our parents, friends, or spouses to finally become the loving people we always wanted them to be. We think of how it might have been if only the right person or career had come along. Some of us are still so attached to these hopes that we have not yet really begun our lives in earnest. We are still patiently waiting for the world to match our perfect picture before we start. How much longer can we wait?

Our challenge is to learn to meet whatever is in this moment without condition, without comparing it to what should have been. Practicing nonattachment, letting go of our expectations and meeting the moment face to face, we are free to appreciate whatever is set before us, to drink deeply from what is alive and beautiful in that instant. Unencumbered by our holding onto what should or shouldn’t have been, we are free to be surprised by life, to experience the wonder of our life just as it is, with our sorrows and joys simply providing the color and texture. When we don’t know what to expect, we may approach even sadness with curiosity and an open heart. When we loosen our grip on our expectations, everything becomes a surprise.

However, as children of family pain, we learned to dislike surprises. Surprises often disrupted our intricate schemes for coping with the family drama. Surprises usually brought with them some unfortunate, painful event; whatever came unexpectedly usually came with some pain or problem. A surprise usually meant something had gone from bad to worse; pleasant surprises were rare. So our overall strategy for safety depended on our ability to avoid surprises.

Nevertheless, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, “the wisdom of the joyful heart begins with surprise.” If we cultivate nonattachment to our expectations, if we can savor this particular moment just as it is, then we are free to be surprised by our lives. The world provides us with many unanticipated moments of wonder, beauty, and grace, moments we may appreciate only when we are willing to be surprised. We may find ourselves delighted by an unanticipated gesture of care, startled by a pleasant feeling in our body, or captured by a particular view of the city we had never really noticed before. As when a rainbow suddenly appears in the sky after a summer’s rain—even though we understand how a rainbow is made and we could have expected it—since we did not expect that particular rainbow at that particular moment, we are absolutely surprised and delighted at its coming.

The Problem of Happiness

One of the rewards of these spiritual practices is that after a while, without warning, we may stumble upon a moment when we realize we are beginning to feel lighter and more playful, more present and easy in our life. Slowly, gently, as our healing takes shape in our lives, it begins to dawn on us that we might actually feel happy.

Now, for many of us, disappointment and regret have become so much a part of our lives that the idea of happiness can be confusing, even a little disturbing. Our disappointments have kept us safe; happiness is just too unpredictable, too fleeting, too untrustworthy. The possibility of impending happiness, the invitation to crawl out of our cocoon of disappointment and embrace more fully the richness of our lives, can at first seem frightening: We feel so exposed, so vulnerable. Interestingly, we now find ourselves confronting a disquieting ambivalence about our own happiness.

We are unprepared for happiness; perhaps we feel unworthy to fully accept it, or guilty for receiving more than we should, or perhaps we can’t even decide if we are really happy or if we are just inventing a more sophisticated form of denial. Should we trust it? How long will it last? Our chronic fascination with failure and disappointment makes it extremely difficult for us to enjoy the simple blessings of the moment.

Sometimes it is easier to trust a period of happiness when we bring our attention to the body and the physical experience of letting go. How does our breath feel? Do we notice any relaxation? Where do we feel it? Where do we feel the release, in our neck, back, face, or hands? Where does it begin, how does it move through us? When we anchor our awareness in the body, we are less able to talk ourselves out of a moment of lightness or joy.

Just as we learn to practice nonattachment, letting go of our endless expectations, so must we also learn to feel comfortable with joy. We are far more at ease with sorrow and disappointment; when we bump into the possibility of happiness, we feel clumsy and stiff, awkward and afraid. Part of our healing is made possible when we make as much room in our hearts for joy as we have made for sadness and fear. For what purpose do we undertake healing, to what end do we embark on spiritual practice, if not, in part, for joy? Joy, Teilhard de Chardin has said, “is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”

The Experience of Joy

From joy springs all creation,
By joy it is sustained,
Towards joy it proceeds,
And to joy it returns.

—Mundaka Upanishad

Many traditions speak of joy as one of the fruits of spiritual practice. A joyful heart deepens our ability to love ourselves, to love the earth, to love one another, and to love God. The ninety-eighth Psalm urges us to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song.”

“Know the nature of joy,” say the Hindu Upanishads. “Where there is joy there is creation.” The Christian scriptures say that the angels announced the birth of the infant Jesus by saying, “Behold, I bring you tidings of a great joy, which shall be for everyone.”

We invite the possibility of joy through a gradual letting go, sinking gently into the love of the divine. But how can we welcome joy when we have so much fear, so little faith that we will be cared for? How will I know I will not be hurt? Can I allow myself to believe that I can be happy? This is our dilemma, and also that of the frightened child. Jesus would often say “be not afraid,” because he knew that as soon as we surrender into the life of the spirit, all our fears quickly arise to block our path.

Because we are so attached to our fears and disappointments, we must use a variety of techniques and devices to loosen our fearful grip on despair. For some of us, letting go of expectations helps us remain soft and open to the joys of the moment. Some may find it easier to find joy in the company of others. Often when we are isolated and alone, we begin to feel tight and afraid; when we gather together with others to sing, dance, or share our stories, we unlock those places where we get hard and stuck, trapped by the inertia of our hopelessness.

At one of our retreats there was a woman named Jean who was raised in a particularly painful alcoholic family. She was an exceptionally responsible person and had a great deal of trouble allowing herself to relax. She was so frightened of letting go of her need to care for everyone else that she rarely felt any happiness herself. At the end of the retreat we usually spend a period of time praying, sharing a sacred meal, and singing Hindu chants or old gospels. At this retreat Jean was particularly moved by the spirit of the group as she allowed herself to become a part of the celebration. Slowly the music, the singing, and holding hands began to melt away some of her fear, and her face appeared soft and open. It was as if she realized for the first time that she could feel safe and welcome enough to allow herself to feel happy. Not because she was useful, not because she had done good deeds, but simply because there was joy in that place in that moment, and she was welcome to share in it.

When the singing ended and we were preparing to leave, Jean came up with tears in her eyes. “I get it,” she said to me, “I finally get it. I can just be happy. It’s all right just to feel good. This is what you were trying to tell me about all along. I can hardly believe it—I actually feel happy.”

For the past few years in Santa Fe we have gathered to worship at a service called “Celebrate the Heart of Healing.” The service is for people living with AIDS, their families, friends, and loved ones. For a few hours we join together to sing, pray, share stories, and light candles. Although we have the opportunity to share our sorrow, the point of this particular gathering is rather to celebrate the tremendous gifts that have been born in the lives of all those who have been affected by the HIV virus. We speak of hearts opening, lives being changed, relationships being healed, and families gathering in love as they struggle with the immediacy of life and death.

When the idea of a celebration service was first discussed, some felt that a ceremony of gratefulness would be insensitive to the profound grief of so many who had felt deep loss in their lives. After all, AIDS is a terrible, incurable disease, they said, and we should not be light and playful about it. Their expectation was that if we gathered around AIDS, it should be a sad and maudlin affair.

But the people living with AIDS were grateful—dozens of people instantly volunteered to help. Many of them said, “We are so tired of going to memorial services, it is so refreshing to be able to laugh and honor everything we have been given.” One of the local physicians who specializes in AIDS concurred. “We laugh more with our AIDS patients than with anyone else,” he said. “We are all so clearly aware of what is important and what is not, we can much more easily attend to what is precious.”

When it came time for the service, much to our surprise, more than a thousand people had filled the church. When the singing and chanting, the meditations and prayers and candles were done, all the people with AIDS and their lovers, friends, mothers, and fathers held one another in a large circle. We all cried, laughed, and celebrated with full hearts the joyful gift of being alive.

Our expectation is that a life-threatening illness would bring only grief; we are surprised when we find there is also joy, laughter, healing, and love. One of the reasons we gather together in song, around tables in twelve-step programs, in churches, and in healing circles is to remind one another in the company of other beings that sadness is not all we are given. Isolated in our disappointment, we may spend our time remembering only our sadness and pain. Yet when we gather together, we may become less attached to our despair and become mindful of the tenacity and trustworthiness of a joyful heart.

The Attachment to Happiness

Often, when we stumble upon a moment of happiness or joy, we become so afraid of losing it that we try to capture it and hold it forever. Perhaps we try to replicate the same circumstances, doing exactly the same thing just the way we did it before, using the same words and gestures, hoping to invoke the identical feeling of well-being again and again. This is the mind of the addict, desperately repeating the same act, hoping it will produce the same result. Yet the more we try to hold onto joy, the more quickly it withers away. Because joy arises not out of holding but out of letting go. As William Blake observed,

He who binds to himself a joy,
Does the winged life destroy,
But he who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

One can’t become attached to joy; joy is a quality that arises out of nonattachment. Joy is a surprise, a gift, an experience born when we are looking somewhere else. The less we plan, the less we expect, the easier it becomes for happiness and joy to find a place in our hearts.

Still, it is difficult not to grab for happiness. We clutch at our models, tightly gripping our strategies for happiness: “If I had a happy childhood I could be happy now,” or “If only I can find a really good therapist,” or “As soon as I get my career together, life will be really sweet.” Every condition we set on the intervention of spirit and grace in our lives reduces our capacity to be surprised by happiness and growth wherever we are. If we can reduce our demands on ourselves, on the world, even on God, we make some space for happiness. Seng-ts’an, the third Zen patriarch, opens his “Discourse on the Faithful Mind” by saying, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who don’t cling to their preferences.”

Nonattachment and Gratefulness

The Buddha said that in our lifetime we would experience ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows. Those of us who were given many sorrows at an early age find ourselves reluctant to surrender into the joys that are also possible. While we must allow our hearts to grieve fully the sufferings we were given, can we also celebrate joy when it comes? Are we open and attentive to the sweet moments when sorrow abates and joy arises?

Part of the practice of letting go, of nonattachment, is cultivating a sense of gratefulness for whatever has been placed on our table. Gratefulness is a practice that makes joy possible. Many of us mistakenly believe that we can only feel grateful when things work out exactly the way we planned, when everything turns out right. Happiness, then, is reserved only for people who have no worries, for whom everything goes their way. Joy is the privilege of rich people, people who live on the beach, people who have no worries, nothing to be afraid of, people who never had a painful childhood. But Brother David says we make a big mistake when we equate happiness and gratefulness with a problem-free life:

We tend to misunderstand the link between joy and gratefulness. We notice that joyful people are grateful and suppose they are grateful for their joy. But the reverse is true: Their joy springs from gratefulness.

If one has all the good luck in the world, but takes it for granted, it will not give one joy... it is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

As children, when we insulated ourselves from the pain of family sorrow, we also diminished our capacity to receive almost anything at all, regardless of how pleasant or unpleasant. Since we have allowed so very little to come in, since we rarely allow ourselves to receive anything, we are inexperienced in being thankful.

Some people think that being grateful consists primarily of learning to grudgingly accept whatever we get. But gratefulness is a practice that touches our deepest reluctance to be awake and alive, teaching us to embrace even what we cannot change or control, and even to be able to give thanks for what has been given. This is the true heart of letting go. For who knows what teaching, what gift is concealed in this moment, in this unexpected event, in this unanticipated change of plans?

“Rejoice always... and in all things give thanks,” wrote Saint Paul. How can we learn to give thanks in all things? Gary Snyder, the Zen poet, suggests we begin simply by offering thanks on a daily basis for our lives, our food, our friends, and our breath. “Grace is the first and last poem,” said Snyder. By learning to give thanks, we clear our eyes and prepare our mind to accept that whatever we have been given may, indeed, be a gift. As Meister Eckhart, the devoted mystic, said, “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

The prescription of gratitude is not given lightly, for many of us have experienced terrible tragedies, and it would seem heartless indeed to suggest that we must give thanks for our abuse, our cancer, our divorce, or our AIDS diagnosis. Yet at the same time, even in the jaws of a life-threatening illness, there are people who feel they have much for which to be grateful. When we can give thanks for our breath, even as it moves through a body racked with pain, we open ourselves to great healing.

Accepting Joy

The gloom of the world Is but a shadow;
Behind it,
Yet within reach,
Is joy.
Take Joy.

—Fra Giovanni, 1513

Many of us, accustomed to disappointment and afraid of joy, may sometimes feel that our joy steals from the joy of others. The practice of gratefulness allows us to feel part of a deeper economy of care, a profound exchange of love as we give thanks to God, to spirit, to the earth, and to all living beings, gratefully acknowledging all we have been given. Mother Teresa said: “She gives most who gives with joy... The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the normal result of heart burning with love.”

True happiness is not selfish; in fact, when we are joyful we are more likely to feel we are spilling over, filled with a compassionate love for all life. Joy marvels at the beauty of all things, celebrates life, and rejoices in the well-being of all. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that “if you are happy, all of us will profit from it. All living beings will profit from it. Happiness is available... please help yourself.”

The Buddha taught his disciples to “live in joy.” The King of Kosala once said that he found the Buddha’s disciples to be exceptionally jubilant, that his followers actually seemed to be enjoying the spiritual life. The Buddha said that was the spiritual life. Play is a natural by-product of nonattachment; we are less afraid about how things will turn out. Play is the joyful attitude of the children of God. When we are spontaneous and happy, we are dancing with the divine light in all things. Sasaki Roshi wrote a short poem about his life with God:

As a butterfly lost in a flower,
As a bird settled on the tree,
As a child fondling mother’s breast,
For sixty-seven years of this world,
I have played with God.

If we are to continue our spiritual healing, we cannot remain forever afraid of joy. Our sorrows and disappointments, however trustworthy and familiar they may feel, are not the only things that are true about our lives, our hearts, or our destiny. Spirit itself invites us to be joyful, to be awake, to passionately and courageously allow this moment to live within our hearts, deep and full and strong, to allow joy, to become alive, and to celebrate fervently the gifts of the children of God.

To know joy we must wake up, we must not sleep in our expectations and disappointments. Paying attention to every molecule that graces our body with warmth and nourishment, we give thanks for life itself. When we forget to give thanks, we sink into a joyless life.

When we hold tightly to our demands and expectations, we invite lives of disappointment and despair. When we allow our expectations to dissolve, we become more open to the fullness of the moment, open to appreciate the richness of our lives. And as we learn to give thanks for all life, we become more fully alive.

Reverend Eido Tai Shimano, a Japanese Zen master, speaks of an unexpected moment, a moment of surprise and gratefulness:

People often ask me how Buddhists answer the question: “Does God exist?” The other day I was walking along the river... I was suddenly aware of the sun, shining through the bare trees. Its warmth, its brightness, and all this completely free, completely gratuitous. Simply there for us to enjoy. And without my knowing it, completely spontaneously, my two hands came together, and I realized I was making gassho. And it occurred to me that this is all that matters: that we can bow, take a deep bow. Just that. Just that.

EXERCISE
Watching the Move to Disappointment

Disappointment can be like a hammock to which we instantly retreat whenever we are confronted with people and situations that fail to meet our expectations. This exercise helps us observe how quickly we move to a state of disappointment, and allows us to see how that state affects our feelings and behavior.

For one week, notice how often you feel disappointed or let down by the people or circumstances around you. Watch carefully what happens when something in your life goes in a way you didn’t expect or doesn’t turn out the way you hoped. Notice how the mind responds to this change. Also, observe how quickly the mind begins to anticipate the worst, noticing how you protect and armor yourself against impending disappointment.

How does the mind explain the presence of defeat or disappointment? What words, phrases, or images arise to describe the nature of things and why they have happened to you? Notice any feelings of hopelessness or defeat. As you begin to feel disappointed, what are your impulses? To go away? To isolate? To ask for care? To try something else? Take note of all your responses whenever you feel in any way let down or disappointed by those around you.

The purpose of this exercise is simply to observe our attachment to disappointment, not to change it. Try to name the circumstances in which you are especially vulnerable to disappointment. With which people or situations are you most likely to predict an unhappy outcome? What were you hoping for? Was it something you had wanted before? What kinds of things tend to disappoint you the most? Notice which expectations you feel most keenly, which you feel are most justified, and which make you most angry when they are unfulfilled.

Use this exercise to carefully observe the dance of expectation and disappointment as it plays itself out in the mind and heart. As you become more aware of your expectations and disappointments, you may begin to imagine other responses, other options. What moves are available to you besides disappointment? What other choices are possible? Which expectations are more open to change and which can be let go? Acknowledge to yourself that all things arise and pass away, that all joys and sorrows are subject to impermanence. Slowly you may begin cultivating a practice of nonattachment, allowing some of your expectations to shift and fall away, making room for a more genuine acceptance of whatever you have been given.

MEDITATION
A Gratefulness Meditation

At the end of the day, sit in front of your table in your place of refuge. Take a few moments to review the day. Recall all the pleasant people and events that occurred, noting also those that were uncomfortable or difficult.

Close your eyes and allow the significant events to arise one by one. Viewing the pleasant experiences one at a time, let yourself give thanks for whatever gifts may have touched your life today. Silently name any gratefulness you may feel for each person or event, taking the time to let your heart open and receive the gift of that experience. Giving thanks for each gift, allow each image to arise and fade away until you feel complete.

Next, begin to recall any unpleasant experiences from the day. Focus your attention on one particularly painful encounter or event. Now, try to touch that memory with gratefulness. What do you notice as you practice giving thanks for something painful? What emotions arise? Does it make you soft or angry? Does it feel easy or hard? Stay with one image, repeatedly giving thanks for the fact that this person or event was a part of your day. Be thankful for whatever teaching they brought, whatever they helped you notice about yourself. One by one, touch each painful memory with some gratefulness.

Finally, give thanks for your life. Take a moment to explicitly name all the qualities of your life for which you are grateful. Practice naming thankfulness for your breath, your body, the people who care for you, your spouse, lover, or children, for the colors of the day, for your home, for your food. Reviewing as many gifts as come to mind, speak a word of silent thanksgiving for everything you have and for all that you have become.

Notice what happens in your body as you practice giving thanks. What emotions arise? You may practice this meditation every day. At the end of a week, what do you notice about your move to disappointment? What do you notice about how you perceive your life? Using the practice of gratefulness, we may begin to rearrange the habitual inertia that drives the machine of expectation and disappointment. Through gratefulness, we open the door to joy.