Understanding Gratitude

 Last Sunday’s class was about Gratitude. Dr Sane shared his valuable insights about gratitude, why it is important to make conscious efforts to recognize the good things in our lives and be appreciative and thankful for them, what it does to our wellbeing. He told us the story of Sudama and made references to several verses from the Bhagwad Gita.

In the discussion that followed, a senior group member connected gratitude with humility. 

I had chimed into this discussion briefly during the session and later privately with Dr Sane. It was a personal insight that crept up in the mind during the Sunday class. Again derived from an observation of a verse from the Bhagwad Gita. 

Krishna tells Arjun:( chapter 9: v 26)

पत्रं पुष्पं फलं तोयं यो मे भक्त्या प्रयच्छति |
तदहं भक्त्युपहृतमश्नामि प्रयतात्मन: || 

Whatever a devotee offers to me with love I accept most graciously. Whether a leaf, flower, fruit or anything. 

The Lord of the Universe, the essence of all beings and all creation, is acknowledging this attitude. What is the sentiment in his statement ? Gratitude and Humility. 

This calls for more attention to details. Krishna an idol and role model for his followers. But when we study the Gita we learn that he is more than that. He is the essence in all of us. The purest form of our being. By that logic, the gratitude and humility, that he reveals in his Being, is inbuilt in us. He is inbuilt in us in his entirety. Love, joy, peace, kindness, awareness, even infinity is inbuilt in us. 

Whenever we experience lack of his qualities, it is a sign that we are moving away from our center. It should be an alert to regain the center. Regain our essence. There is no better way to express devotion than to remain centered in our pure form. 

What does it mean to experience infinity within us? 

For one thing, at any given moment whatever broad vision we have about the world around us, it must be recognized as limited only to that moment. In reality it is more than what can be perceived by anyone at any place or time. Technically even the source of all creation cannot estimate itself. All efforts to estimate infinity are going to be in vain. 

It is due to this fact that humility becomes part and parcel of the central reality. 

Tendency to see multiplicity is another inbuilt feature of this reality. Gratitude maintains cohesiveness when multiplicity manifests. Without the cohesiveness, multiplicity can displace anyone from their center. 

Therefore life is not just about understanding matter in terms of electrons, protons and neutrons or positive and negative charges and energy and big bang, calculating distances and time and dimensions. It has to be simultaneously understood in terms of gratitude and humility, kindness and fairness, tolerance and forgiveness, love and surrender. 

Every view must be understood that it carries an inevitable tag : “and more”. 

When infinity is lived and understood, no moment can ever stagnate. No grievance or disappointment can last or hurt. Feeling of incompleteness can become a positive experience without needing “something” or “someone” to bring the imaginary completeness. Take the example of the sun. Does it melt with its own heat? Does it suffer from its inherent fire? Similarly once you are seated within your center, you experience only bliss. No suffering reaches there.