GRATITUDE AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
There are many kinds of
spiritual practice: yoga and
strengthening the physical body; meditation and focus on breath or on emptying
the mind; prayer and petition; and mindfulness, as the Buddhist priest Thich
Nhat Hanh describes. These are a
few of the ways both the well-known religions and the lesser-known religions
teach us to know ourselves or the universe or god better.
I know the word “spiritual” irritates some of you, since it brings to mind the
mind/body/spirit divisions Plato got started.
To help you get a broader understanding of what is meant by “spiritual
practice,” we’ll look not just at the definitions, but also at the word
origins, of “spirit.” The word “spirit” derives from the latin spiritus, meaning “breath.”
The first definition of “spirit” in the American Heritage Dictionary
says, “the vital principle or animating force within living beings.”
Spiritual practice, then, can be defined as a practice that helps us to
get in touch with that vital principle or animating force within us, what gives
us life and purpose. It is
interesting to me that many meditations focus on breath, which is the root
meaning of spirit.
People turn to spiritual
practice in hopes of understanding themselves better as well as in hopes of
connecting with the vital principle or animating force within living beings,
whether one defines that as god or as human compassion or as wisdom or as
enlightenment. And spiritual
practice does not just end with the internal focus, but rather aims to turn each
of us back out toward the world, toward our connections with each other and all
life, toward a sense of responsibility for shaping the world into our vision of
what is good and just and right.
In addition to meditation
and prayer, yoga and mindfulness, the expression of gratitude is also a
spiritual practice. It is one I
developed early in my life, whether through the teachings of my Unitarian
Universalist congregation or through those of my family, I don’t know.
In many ways, life itself teaches us to be grateful, if we’re paying
attention, and being thankful is a religious precept we all have inherited.
Take Thanksgiving.
In our country, every schoolroom learns the story of the Pilgrims and the
Indians sharing their first harvest meal, and expressing their gratitude for the
help they received from their friends and from the gods.
Blessings at meals is a Judeo-Christian tradition, one which I would
guess translates into many cultures and religions.
When people live at the whims of nature and the seasons, weather and
health, a good meal is not to be taken for granted, and the expression of
gratitude is perhaps universal. Even
when we don’t say blessings or prayers, there is no denying the seed of
appreciation that is in our hearts, whether that gratitude is expressed toward a
deity, or toward humans whose labors have led to our living lives of abundance
and care, or toward nature whose unpredictable interdependence has gifted us
with the fortunate circumstance of eating a good meal.
At bedtime, children are
encouraged to count their blessings, to think on those things that are good in
their lives. Focusing on the good
enables us to realize that our cups are half full rather than half empty,
helping us to choose where we will live our lives. For example, I learned as a mother giving birth that heaven
exists in the two minutes between contractions--that pause that gives rest and
breath until the next tortuous, unimaginable pain. It is the same as when, as a child, one has cried out all
one’s tears only to discover a deep sense of peace.
We can live focusing on the pain and tears, or on the moments of rest and
breath and peace. They exist
side-by-side for all of us, always there as potential and possibility.
I found it hard to find
readings on gratitude and thankfulness. There
were a few in our hymnal, which we’re using today, but there were absolutely
none in Reader’s Digest’s The Treasury of Religious and Spiritual
Quotations. Out of over 260
topic words, not one was a synonym to “gratitude.”
How can gratitude not be religious and spiritual?
I wondered if the editors just made a mistake, if gratitude slipped their
minds as something important in life. Or,
maybe our culture has begun to think of gratitude as a secular emotion, or even
as irrelevant to a society that promulgates a culture of expectation rather than
appreciation.
For those of us born in the
last half century, we have not known war on our own land, or severe economic
depression, or scarcity. We expect
to be able to find what we need or want. We
live like kings and queens in the eyes of the world, and our poorest have much
more than the poorest in so-called Third World countries, who are dying of
famine or war or disease or bad water and over-crowding.
We have so much to be thankful for, and when we enter into an attitude of
gratitude, we are acknowledging that there are others in the world so much worse
off, and that very awareness and recognition can inspire us to want to make
their lives better in whatever ways we can.
Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we can focus on the
abundance that we have created/acquired/been gifted with here in this country,
and share that with the needy in the world.
Gratitude and appreciation
is a simple practice, and doesn’t require belief in supernatural things, like
miracles, but rather an attention to reality as it is.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes of the miracle that is life itself:
“…I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin
air, but to walk on earth. Every
day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize:
a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a
child--our own two eyes. All is a
miracle….” (The Miracle of
Mindfulness, p. 12)
Gratitude is also a practice
that is always with us and doesn’t require a specific place or ritual.
The thirteenth century sufi mystic Rumi wrote a beautiful poem which
expresses this sense of gratitude as something integrally a part of us, though
he speaks of divine relationship:
You’ve
read where it says that
Lovers pray constantly.
Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,
is not enough. Fish like we are
need the ocean around us.
Do camel-bells say, Let’s meet again
Thursday night?
Ridiculous. They jingle
together continuously,
talking while the camel walks.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.
Let us die,
and dying, reply.
(--The Illuminated Rumi,
p. 122)
The spiritual practice of
gratitude is most like Thich Nhat Hanh’s practice of mindfulness.
It is a way of being; it is a recognition of being.
It is constantly with us in all that we do, like the unending prayer of
divine love. The ocean is the miracle of life that surrounds us and the
state of wonder and gratitude is the holy state of being.
The miracle that is this
life on earth becomes even more amazing when we remember that life has been
destroyed almost completely at least twice in history by meteors slamming into
the planet. It is a miracle we have
evolved the way we have, and another miracle that we still exist, considering
the close encounters with comets and such these past few years.
We are becoming aware of just how precious our existence is in this
universe, and that calls even more strongly for a constant appreciation of life
and a compassionate caring for this beautiful planet and all these wondrous
creatures and creations.
Gratitude as a spiritual
practice only requires that we open ourselves to that sense of appreciation for
all that surrounds us and is part of us, to walk on the earth with gratitude in
every step, every breath. When we
know we are part of this incredible creation/evolution, we can know we are not
alone, and that in the way the world supports us, so can we support the world
with our love, compassion and strength.
Reading:
From The Miracle of
Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh, pp. 12, 47-48, 49