Thinking About Gratitude

  In my research on gratitude, I have stumbled upon three different ways of looking at gratitude. Although the basic core principle is the same throughout--that of appreciating a gift received--the orientations toward the gift itself are different. I want to explore some of these ideas, in a rough way, in this blog entry.

  Firstly, I want to talk about a "situated" view of gifts and gratitude. This amounts to saying that we appraise the gift based on the specific qualities that are inherent to the gift and the giver. If I appraise the gift as having a value, or the giver as being caring or thoughtful, I am basically appraising the gift based on the qualities that I believe exist in either the giver or the gift. That is, the gifts are thought to have qualities that are situated in the gift or the giver. My appreciation of the gift is subject to how I attribute certain positive characteristics to the giver and the gift. If I don't see the gift as having quality, or the giver as having thoughtfulness, then I am not able to feel gratitude. Studies operating under this paradigm might ask the question: what are the specific elements or situations that make people tend to feel grateful or gifted?

   A second view is called "intentional" view. According to this view, a person's gratitude is subject to an ability to frame situations as furnishing reasons to feel grateful or gifted. According to this model, gratitude does not arise from gifts or givers, but from the intention, reflection, and thoughtfulness of the receiver. According to this view, gratitude is a cultivated habit that comes from cognitively framing situations as gifts. This view is somewhat expanded in comparison with the first, because the function of gratitude can include many situations, including difficult or even negative ones. In these cases, my ability to feel grateful is not based on the qualities of the giver or the gift. Rather, it's based on my ability to find reasons to be grateful and find satisfaction even in adversity. Gratitude, according to this view, is not limited to appreciating positive or esteemed qualities in gifts or others, but it is about cognitively framing the situation as a practice of appreciating the good in all things. Studies operating under this paradigm might ask the question: what kinds of attitudes or practices should I cultivate to feel grateful or gifted?

A third view of gratitude might be said to be "transpersonal" (or perhaps, cosmic or existential?). According to this view, the source of gratitude is neither found in the receiver or in the giver. Instead, it relates to a sense of inalienable interconnectedness to a whole. I am not limited to gifts, and nor am I limited to my own attitudes as a receiver. Instead, gratitude relates to a general feeling that one's existence is gifted, as reflected through (but not limited to) the gift itself. Unlike the previous two views, there is no privileged sense of a separate receiver or giver who exists in a transactional relationship with others. Rather, there is an already existing interconnectedness with all things that serves as a ground for feeling grateful. Gifts serve not as separate entities with special privileged qualities in themselves, but more so as reflections of a transpersonal sense of interconnection with all beings. Gifts connect people to this basic ground of interbeing. Studies operating under this paradigm might ask the question: how do gifts remind us of our inherent wholeness? 

Now why is this model useful in terms of my study? I would have to say that first of all, it provides a holistic view of gifts. Instead of limiting one's idea of the gift to an exchange or a transaction, such a tripartite model allows me to imagine what's possible when one experiences a gift. Second (and related to the first), it forms a kind of rudimentary roadmap for how to look at current studies in gratitude. When I look at a gratitude based study, I might firstly ask: what assumptions does this researcher make about the source and origin of gratitude? 

I am not sure if any of this holds weight in the long run, but my literature review compels me to advance this idea and model as a way of understanding my future data.

Poetry and Solitude

  In Writing Alone and With Others, Pat Schneider urges prospective writers to find "a room of their own" in which to cultivate the solitude necessary for writing. She remarks:

     If you have not yet claimed and made for yourself a room of your own, begin to to so. Do what is           possible: love it, use it, and dream of the day that you can take the next step. The first "room" of             my own  was a few lines each day in a five-year diary. From that tiny seed grew the studio in which I   work today (p.30).

When she describes "a room of my own", of course Schneider is not simply talking about having a separate room in the house to collect one's thoughts and write (although that is certainly a vital aspect of writing). More so, she is describing every small turn inward as a "room of one's own": crafting one's own narrative on a daily basis, learning to attend to the raw details of lived experience, putting all one's senses onto the page, and so on. These "rooms", as it were, are really steps toward having a relationship with one's innermost being or soul, which to a certain degree is always experienced as a deep solitude that is untouched by the world's changing events. In fact, this might be one of the benefits of writing: it slows people down enough to pay attention to the most vital thoughts that pulse underneath the plethora of distracting ones.

   I have recently been re-reading two collections of poems I wrote some time ago. To tell the truth, some of the poems mean less to me now than they did back when I wrote them. Sometimes I don't even recall what I was thinking when I wrote the poems. However, reading these poems after so many years feels to me like visiting an alien from another planet. "I" am the one person I can never encounter, except through a glass darkly. Has anybody, in fact, ever really "met" the person in the mirror? One of the most intriguing aspects of writing is that it can be like chasing the tail of an elusive dragon that lives in the air. Writing attempts to capture the impossible, or to grasp something so deep an infinitely changing. We think that others are "graspable", because they have familiar traits and appearances, but if we even try to fathom our own writing after many years, we might see that this self is really unfathomable and mercurial. And it is precisely this mercurial aspect of reading one's past writings that makes the exercise such an intriguing experience. Who is this "I' who wrote these poems some years ago? Is it the same "I" who experiences them today?

   I no longer feel that poems are meant to be for others or are even judged worthy based on their being published or not. More so, I see poetry as a method of peering into an infinite depth, and thus challenging the surface, conditioned view of self that one tends to identify as "me".

Schneider, Pat (2003). Writing Alone and With Others. Oxford University Press.

Phronesis

 I have recently read about the term "phronesis", a Greek word which refers to practical wisdom in decision making. In other words, phronesis asks the question: what qualities make one's decisions most in alignment with wisdom? And what kinds of emotions are most in alignment with wise, practical decision making? If I understand the concept correctly, I believe that there are many aspects of Buddhist teaching  and cultivations that lend themselves to tools for practical decision making. Three I will describe below:

   First is equanimity. To make a good decision, I believe, requires a sense that all outcomes, in fact, have advantages and disadvantages. To look at possibilities with equanimity involves calming the mind so that each aspect of the decision can be weighed carefully with some peace of mind. If I am attached to one outcome, then naturally, I will be somewhat impervious to the drawbacks of that outcome, and will also be oblivious to the advantages of the other outcomes. So, this sense of equanimity might be summed up as saying, "Whether it's A or it's B or C, there is something to be said for each choice. Each choice surely has both positive and negative. Let's explore each choice with a sense of care and deliberation."

    A second aspect is the Buddhist notion of operating without a strong self-reference. When I make decisions with the self in mind (or a concept of self), I am usually attending to the decision with a sense of attachment to "my" likes and dislikes. I operate from a self-referential point of view: rejecting what feels uncomfortable to me and craving what feels good for me. If, on the other hand, I move beyond the self and consider the self as something interconnected with whole systems, I am no longer operating from a narrow view of the self as being separate from wholes. Instead, I see this body as only one part in a larger system that is continually in flux. This idea touches upon both the notions of no-self and impermanence.

    A third aspect of decision making that relates to Buddhism is impermanence (anicca). When I understand that the factors that go into a decision are continually shifting, I become less paralyzed in making the decision. People who tend to be perfectionists or indecisive often operate from the view that decisions have fixed, predictable outcomes that can be definitely known before they come to fruition. In reality, this is hardly the case, and one can only really approximate what could happen. Knowing that even one's decisions operate in a state of flux might mitigate the sense of paralysis that might sometimes come from decision making.

   Finally, decisions need not be made in isolation. According to the Buddhist ideas of dependent origination, decisions are in fact the result of many causes and conditions working together in the given moment. With the idea of interconnection comes the need to know as many factors and experiences as we can before we can make a decision. Building consensus and getting others to support the decision can be important steps.

   A preliminary survey at best! But I hope to expand upon this theory of how practical wisdom might touch upon or draw from Buddhist themes.

Gift Paradoxes (Part I?)

  As I reflect on today's birthday, I am thinking about the nature of gifts. My brother always surprises me with gifts that I could never possibly expect---often relating to music that we have listened to in the last or when we were growing up. What's unexpected is that one of us might remember what another did not remember, and then we have to kind of give each other context clues (the time when we first heard it, the circumstances, and so on) to establish the place of that gift in our past. The gift is that of nostalgia or perhaps a shared childhood. But it's also a surprise, because memory has a way of being inconsistent across the same siblings, or even non-existent for one of the siblings!

  What's paradoxical about gifts, for me, is that they are both "surprising" and "not surprising". Think about it: gifts can never be random. I choose a gift for someone based on what I think I know about them, such as their tastes and clothing size. Gifts such as bath soap baskets at Shoppers Drug Mart or, worse still, Christmas cakes, are often held in contempt precisely because they mean little to the receiver, and are often seen as last-resort gifts. They become "standard cliches" for those who don't know enough about the person to be acquainted with their tastes. On the other hand, when a gift becomes too predictable, it too reflects a certain lack of thoughtfulness on the part of the giver. Sometimes one might even refer to such kind of a gift as "uninspired", precisely because it all too accurately reflects how a person self-identifies. 

    The best gifts always straddle the line between familiar and unfamiliar. The surprise aspect is that they sometimes extend the receiver's experience by introducing them to something completely new, which the giver discerns they may like. Gifts such as these involve risk--and may even involve a potential embarrassment to the giver if it turns out that the receiver feels uninspired by it. But I believe that people tend to see these surprising gifts as the most inspired, thoughtful and dialogic. These gifts allow the receiver to see something new in themselves as well as in the giver.

Contributing to Others

   In World of Chan, Master Sheng Yen has remarked "Whatever most people receive in life, they don't think it's enough; whereas, when they contribute a little bit, they feel they've given a great deal". Several things come to mind as I read this article. The first is that I too have not done enough in this life to contribute to other beings. I might think that what I have done counts on a certain level, but that is just a thought. There are innumerable beings out there, and what one person recognizes as success or contribution may not be recognized by anyone else. At the end of the day, who is to say that one has contributed "enough"? This, to me, is an exhortation to work harder and not make any excuses to not carry out any task. Even something that I am completely unfamiliar with should be accepted as a challenge and a responsibility, particularly if its aim is to aid all sentient beings. There is no such thing as a "limit" to what people can do, except for the limits that a person imagines or conjures up in their minds.

  The second is about letting go of the self or the ego, which always wants to take credit for things that is not necessarily its own doing at all. Many people contribute to one event or situation happening. When I don't feel "recognized" by others, this is only a fact of life that I am only one part in a totality that includes all sentient beings. So this craving for recognition or "desserts" for efforts undertaken is just an illusory view which is based on a mistaken view of the self. The self alone does not contribute very much to the totality of all sentient beings. It too is only one of many selves. And, again, going back to my first paragraph, even what I perceive as a good may not be seen by others as good at all. Good intentions may sometimes lead to harmful or unwise actions, or even tactless actions. So. again, I think it's important to cultivate the attitude that nothing is ever "good enough" and there is no such thing as "good enough". These are only illusory ideas that people create in their minds to "measure" their own value.

All of this attitude can contribute to a more diligent orientation to my own life and an attitude of "saying yes to everything", so far as it benefits communities or sentient beings. I take this as a fresh start: as we transition to a new presidency in 2020 at DDM Toronto, I hope to contribute a whole lot more than the little that I have. I take this sincere repentance as a promise to myself and others.