The Buddhist study group met tonight and dissolved again into the cold air. I felt all the tensions or worries of the day dissolving into a sense of gratitude. What is this feeling of gratitude? I think I would like to explore the meaning of the 'felt' sense of gratitude, since all too often I tend to think of gratitude in terms of external things (such as being grateful for work or for a non-violent existence).
I don't think being grateful means that one only focus on positive aspects of life. The gratitude I felt tonight was more a sense of equanimity. I somehow felt that each comment the participants made was a rare gift, like a sparkling jewel. But the mental attitude I adopted in that space of listening is not to reject and not to seek anything from what is being said. Everything, as even the Buddha had taught, is a kind of experiment of sorts. "Try for yourself", and see what works for you, put down what doesn't, and explore for other connections when it does work. One doesn't stop learning this way, and over time, even the strong vexations can be seen in the same light as contributing to a loosening of self-attachment.
The other aspect of gratitude is to feel supported in a genuine way. I mentioned earlier this idea of being one's own best friend, or at least conceiving the possibility to nurture oneself in this way. I think this is very hard to do. It's easy to get into the habit of being the worst on oneself, in the interest of training mind to bear every kind of suffering 'out there'. Gratitude allows a person to see that there are real friends in one's life, including one's own awareness, who are going to be there and respect one's being, no matter what. Even if this position is not available, one can still find a way to generate that inner compassion in a balanced and sincere way. This again seems important; not easy to do, but important to balance and harmonize.
By reflecting on the things that have gone somehow well or what one has learned, one can see that not everything is terrible. Sometimes things can seem terrible if deep inside, one does not have this basic sense of self-love: the idea that I will not allow the misfortunes of life to affect the sense of my true nature, my true being. One needs to practice speaking more softly, thinking more softly, and even writing more softly (!) to get to this sense that things are well overall. But balance is most important.
I also think that gratitude is a choice, a kind of commitment one makes to see things as genuinely supportive. For the most part, people live in a very competitive time, particularly in industrialized communities where the emphasis is economic growth. It's very easy to start to see oneself as replaceable, like a cog in a wheel. Gratitude allows me to re-person myself. I start to think, for example, on the people who have been one's teachers, or lovers, or people who might have shared some feeling that impacted us. Here too is a kind of gratitude: the sense that one has never been alone in their journey.
A final way of feeling gratitude is to know that this writing is mind-to-mind, and nothing more. It is to know that the words leave an impression in mind but don't leave any trace on the screen as they are typed. This is a more subtle kind of gratitude, but perhaps I can sum it up as the natural gratitude of knowing that all is of the mind, and there is no need to reach outward to be in the home of one's mind in every moment.
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