Gratitude Not Just About "Having"

  When we think of gratitude, we might describe it as "being thankful for what we have" as opposed to what we might want. This is one way of looking at gratitude which, I think, is perhaps Epicurean in nature, because it rejects extremes in favor of the simple pleasures that come from being present with what we have. I believe there is also an element of anti-consumerism, and the wish to counterbalance a scarcity mindset that positions us as "always lacking". However, is gratitude only about having? 

   What I find a bit paradoxical (and interesting) about gratitude is that it seems to rely on the sense of having that is temporary. For me, the paradox of gratitude is that we feel most grateful when we recognize the conditioned nature of what we have. For instance, if I am feeling ill or in pain, I am much more thankful for times of health, or when the pain subsides for a while. On the other hand, if I am always feeling the same way about something, I might lose the sense that it is conditioned or temporary. In this regard, I lose insight into the emptiness aspect of things and how they are interconnected and therefore only "provisional gifts" provided by life and the world.

   This can create a dilemma for the gratitude practitioner, such as a person who regularly keeps journals or meditates on "what they have". For while gratitude is certainly a celebration of things we have, I reflect that this "appreciating what I own" can have a downside of grasping or trying to conserve something at all costs--even to the point of denying that it was never really "ours" to begin with. The paradox of gratitude is that it comes from the sense of something being a gift. And a gift, by nature, is always provisional, rather than being guaranteed.

    Gifts always point to the relational nature between giver and receiver. In doing so, they suggest that gifts don't really happen as an exchange of effort; instead, they are acts of grace. If a person only gives on the basis that they are required to do so in exchange for some other good or service, then the gifting aspect starts to disappear in favor of a logic of economics. For me to feel gifted by something, I need to also appreciate the fact that the gift could easily not have happened at all. There is something about that gift, in other words, that reminds me that I am not a permanent edifice or a self-sustaining entity. I am sustained by the grace of others, but I am also the grace of others as well.  And this is also the heart of interconnection in Buddhism. Something happens because of this unique coming together of conditions happening in the right moments. That insight into interconnection, for a moment, illuminates a true and miraculous nature of the universe and life itself. But after that moment subsides, one tends to reify the gift into a mere exchange, because one is unable to properly contextualize the gifting moment as an insight into emptiness.

   I will continue this thought later. But the point is that the gift does not simply entail having, as having is only symbolic of an underlying intention and moment that is irreducible and unrepeatable. Hence, we say "it's the thought that counts". But what is that thought? Where does that thought come from?