An Additional Br. David Steindl-Rast Quote

“There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is. If we’re grateful, we’re not fearful, and if we’re not fearful, we’re not violent. Then, we act out of a sense of enough instead of scarcity, and we start to share. We start to enjoy the differences between people, and are respectful to everybody. That can change our society’s entire power pyramid.”

—David Steindl-Rast [TEDGlobal 2013].

More About Br. David Steindl-Rast From Krista Tippett [Excerpt from On Being Interview]

Mysticism is the birthright of every human being, says Br. David Steindl-Rast. He speaks of the anatomy and practice of gratitude as full-blooded, reality-based, and redeeming. Now in his 90s, he has lived through a world war, the end of an empire, and the fascist takeover of his country. He was an early pioneer, together with Thomas Merton, of dialogue between Christian and Buddhist monastics. He’s also given a TED talk, viewed over six million times, on the subject of gratitude—a practice increasingly interrogated by scientists and physicians as a key to human well-being.

David Steindl-Rast is the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. His books include Gratefulness, A Listening Heart, and most recently, a new autobiography, i am through you so i.

I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, at the Gut Aich Priory in St. Gilgen, Austria, with Br. David Steindl-Rast.

[music: “Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, II. Allemande” by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Edgar Meyer]

MS. TIPPETT: There are a few qualities—say, aspects or qualities of the experience of gratefulness and thanksgiving that you’ve noted that I’d love to just draw out. And one of them is beholding—that surprise can be a beginning of being grateful, and beholding, and also, listening. I guess what we’re talking about here is attending.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: Well, for me, this idea of listening and really looking and beholding—that comes in when people ask, “Well, how shall we practice this gratefulness?” And there is a very simple kind of methodology to it: Stop, look, go. Most of us—caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.

But that doesn’t have to be long. When you are in practice, a split second is enough—“stop.” And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in. And if we really see what the opportunity is, we must, of course, not stop there, but we must do something with it: Go. Avail yourself of that opportunity. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, tonight, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.

I always say, not—I don’t speak of the gift, because not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence or domestic violence or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful.

For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience—what to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up and take a stand—that is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, “Can you be grateful for everything?”—no, not for everything, but in every moment.

MS. TIPPETT: And you are a Benedictine. And it seems to me that the Psalms, in fact, provide such a rich demonstration of—gratitude is woven into almost every Psalm, in some way. But it is held together with an expression of every conceivable human emotion—anger, fury, murderous fury, a sense of injustice and unfairness and despair and sadness and disappointment. And the gratitude is still there as an insistence, but it’s more resilient than the circumstances of the moment. It’s not a reaction to their circumstances of the moment, but it’s an intention that is held. I don’t know. What is it?

BR. STEINDL-RAST: It’s not a—you put it very well. It’s not a reaction to the present moment, because that would be something automatic, but it is a chosen response.