Blessing, rightly understood, is the invisible bloodstream pulsating through the universe—alive and life-giving.

David Steindl-Rast

Alive and Life Giving

Topic: Gratitude

Listening closely, we can hear how similar they sound, the words blessing and blood. Blessing, rightly understood, is the invisible bloodstream pulsating through the universe—alive and life-giving. “Just to live is holy,” says the great Jewish sage Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Just to be is a blessing.”

David Steindl-Rast

Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., was born Franz Kuno Steindl-Rast on July 12, 1926, in Vienna, Austria. Raised in a Catholic family during a time of political unrest, he endured the hardships of World War II, including conscription into the German army, though he did not see combat. He earned a master’s degree from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Vienna in 1952. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and entered Mount Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York, becoming a Benedictine monk in 1953.

With his abbot’s permission, David Steindl-Rast began interreligious dialogue in the 1960s and studied Zen Buddhism with teachers such as Haku’un Yasutani and Shunryu Suzuki. In 1968, he co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies alongside leaders from several religious traditions. His writing and teaching explore the relationship between mysticism, science, and spiritual practice. Among his published works are Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Belonging to the Universe (with physicist Fritjof Capra), and The Music of Silence. He spent extended periods in monastic communities and in solitude at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California.

Gratitude has remained central to David Steindl-Rast’s teaching, which he describes as a way of recognizing our shared life and cultivating peace. In 2000, he co-founded A Network for Grateful Living to support this vision. His TED talk on gratefulness has reached a wide audience, and his message continues to resonate through interviews and dialogue with spiritual and cultural leaders. He emphasizes that religious forms must remain alive by reconnecting with their inner vitality, encouraging a return to what he calls “the fire that’s within.” Now in his late nineties, his life continues to reflect a sustained inquiry into gratitude, belonging, and interfaith understanding.

(1926 - ) Christianity
Inner Peace Through Gratefulness

Steindl-Rast, Brother David. Stop-Look-Go: A Grateful Practice Workbook and Gratitude Journal. Edited by Gary Fiedel and Karie Jacobson, A Network for Grateful Living, 2016, p. 76 [in collaboration with The Greater Good Science Center].

David Steindl-Rast

Theme: Gratefulness

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Brother David Steindl-Rast—96 year-old author, scholar, and Benedictine monk currently living at the Gut Aich Priory monastery in St. Gilgen, Austria—is beloved the world over for his enduring message about gratefulness as the true source of lasting happiness. He speaks of mysticism as the birthright of every human being, and of the anatomy and practice of gratitude as full-blooded, reality-based, and redeeming.

Br. David has been a source of inspiration and spiritual friendship to countless leaders and luminaries around the world including Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and more. He has been one of the most important figures in the modern interfaith dialogue movement, and has taught with thought-leaders such as Eckhart Tolle, Jack Kornfield, and Roshi Joan Halifax. His wisdom has been featured in recent interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Krista Tippett, and Tami Simon and his TED talk has been viewed almost 10,000,000 times. —Grateful.org [For more click on “Show Bio.”]

Additional Br. David Steindl-Rast Quotes

“At any moment the fully present mind can shatter time and burst into Now.”

—Brother David Steindl-Rast.

“Gratefulness unlocks joy. Nothing that we take for granted gives us joy. Yet the smallest surprise, received gratefully, yields a harvest of delight.”

—Brother David Steindl-Rast.

A Network for Grateful Living

Br. David Steindl-Rast is the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. His books include Gratefulness: the Heart of Prayer, Belonging to the Universe, and A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness.

Inner Peace Through Gratefulness

Brother David often says that if more people were grateful, the world would actually begin to change for the better. You can’t be grateful and hateful; you can’t be grateful and selfish. Gratefulness confers a host of benefits for the individual and for the world.

Gary Fiedel, Peace of Heart.

A favorite practice of Gary Fidel’s comes directly from a quote by Brother David:

“We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart.”

—Brother David Steindl-Rast [Inner Peace Through Gratefulness (Stop Look Go, The Art and Science of Grateful Living)] P. 76.

When I turn my attention to feeling grateful, I feel happy and blessed. My mind is at peace. The practices in this book were created to cultivate gratitude and the joy, kindness and well-being that gratitude brings. My wish for you is that your life is happier and better as you learn to practice living gratefully.

—Gary Fiedel [Co-Founder Gratefulness.org and A Network for Grateful Living].

The one most frequently repeated command in the Bible is not “love your neighbor,” but “fear not.” And if there is one thing that we need in our world, if there’s one thing that we should write on our mirror and see every morning when we look into the mirror, it’s “fear not.” If we went into the day with that command deeply tattooed on our heart, “fear not,” we’d be completely different people and create a completely different world—a world of faith.

So we participate in this tremendous dance in which the gift comes forth from the source and through thanksgiving returns to the source, where the word comes out of the silence and through understanding returns to the silence. Gratefulness is not just saying “thank you.” It’s acting. It is being your self. A mother is grateful, shows gratefulness by mothering, a scientist by doing science. That is what the Bible calls “in God we live and move and have our being.”

—Brother David Steindl-Rast [On Gratitude, Interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly].

Alive and Life Giving

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