If you're ever in a funk, feeling deprived or forsaken, try a little gratitude. Contemplate all that has been done for you and given you by parents, teachers, friends, strangers. And then contemplate all the things given to them. Soon the universe reveals itself to be a vast field of benefaction, of giving and receiving, throughout space and time.
Gratitude helps soften our hard shells of selfishness. None of us achieves anything entirely alone, you know. Even when we are working "by ourselves' we are using skills, knowledge, and resources others have developed. Your life is made possible by your parents and all the people who have helped house, feed, clothe, and cure you over the years.
The Pali word often translated as "gratitude" is katannu, which means something like "acknowledging what has been done."� Endeavoring to repay a debt of gratitude is katavedi. Katannu-katavedi often appears as a single word to represent a single virtue.
The Theravada monk and teacher Ajaan Chah has called katannu-katavedi "a virtue that sustains the world." It helps to sustain relationships, families, communities. We humans may be greedy and selfish, but if we weren't generous to each other also we wouldn't have lasted this long as a species. Let's be grateful for that.
Awhile back I wrote about the Verse of Gratitude written by my teacher that we chant at the end of services at our Zen center. It occurs to me that it makes a pretty good verse for Thanksgiving. Here it is again --
For all beneficent karma, ever manifested through me, I am grateful.
May this gratitude be expressed through my body, speech, and mind.
With infinite kindness to the past,
Infinite service to the present,
Infinite responsibility to the future.
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