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+ | ====== The Lessons of Gratitude (old ATI-edition) ====== | ||
+ | <span hide>The Lessons of Gratitude (old ATI-edition)</ | ||
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+ | Summary: | ||
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+ | In saying that kind and grateful people are rare, the Buddha isn't simply stating a harsh truth about the human race. He's advising you to treasure these people when you find them, and — more importantly — showing how you can become a rare person yourself. | ||
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+ | Kindness and gratitude are virtues you can cultivate, but they have to be cultivated together. Each needs the other to be genuine — a point that becomes obvious when you think about the three things most likely to make gratitude heartfelt: | ||
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+ | -- You've actually benefitted from another person' | ||
+ | -- You trust the motives behind those actions. | ||
+ | -- You sense that the other person had to go out of his or her way to provide that benefit. | ||
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+ | Points one and two are lessons that gratitude teaches kindness: If you want to be genuinely kind, you have to be of actual benefit — nobody wants to be the recipient of " | ||
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+ | Points two and three are lessons that kindness teaches to gratitude. Only if you've been kind to another person will you accept the idea that others can be kind to you. At the same time, if you've been kind to another person, you know the effort involved. Kind impulses often have to do battle with unkind impulses in the heart, so it's not always easy to be helpful. Sometimes it involves great sacrifice — a sacrifice possible only when you trust the recipient to make good use of your help. So when you're on the receiving end of a sacrifice like that, you realize you've incurred a debt, an obligation to repay the other person' | ||
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+ | This is why the Buddha always discusses gratitude as a response to kindness, and doesn' | ||
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+ | The first passage concerns appreciation of a general sort: | ||
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+ | "No, lord." | ||
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+ | "And what should the man do in order to be doing what should be done with the raft? There is the case where the man, having crossed over to the far shore, would think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the far shore. Why don't I, having dragged it on dry land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing this, he would be doing what should be done with the raft." | ||
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+ | The second passage concerns gratitude in particular: | ||
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+ | "But anyone who rouses his unbelieving mother & father, settles & establishes them in conviction; rouses his unvirtuous mother & father, settles & establishes them in virtue; rouses his stingy mother & father, settles & establishes them in generosity; rouses his foolish mother & father, settles & establishes them in discernment: | ||
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+ | In other words, as the first passage shows, it's perfectly fine to appreciate the benefits you've received from rafts and other conveniences without feeling any need to repay them. You take care of them simply because that enables you to benefit from them more. The same holds true for difficult people and situations that have forced you to develop strength of character. You can appreciate that you've learned persistence from dealing with crabgrass in your lawn, or equanimity from dealing with unreasonable neighbors, without owing the crabgrass or neighbors any debt of gratitude. After all, they didn't kindly go out of their way to help you. And if you were to take them as models, you'd learn all the wrong lessons about kindness: that simply following your natural impulses — or, even worse, behaving unreasonably — is the way to be kind. | ||
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+ | Debts of gratitude apply only to parents, teachers, and other benefactors who have acted with your wellbeing in mind. They' | ||
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+ | As the Buddha' | ||
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+ | <div freeverse> | ||
+ | Mother & father, | ||
+ | compassionate to their family, | ||
+ | are called | ||
+ | Brahma, | ||
+ | first teachers, | ||
+ | those worthy of gifts | ||
+ | from their children. | ||
+ | So the wise should pay them | ||
+ | homage, | ||
+ | honor | ||
+ | with food & drink | ||
+ | clothing & bedding | ||
+ | anointing & bathing | ||
+ | & washing their feet. | ||
+ | Performing these services to their parents, | ||
+ | the wise | ||
+ | are praised right here | ||
+ | and after death | ||
+ | rejoice in heaven. | ||
+ | ]! < | ||
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+ | However, AN 2.32 shows that the only true way to repay your parents is to strengthen them in four qualities: conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. To do so, of course, you have to develop these qualities in yourself, as well as learning how to employ great tact in being an example to your parents. As it happens, these four qualities are also those of an admirable friend ([[en: | ||
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+ | This principle also applies to your teachers, as the Buddha told his disciples: | ||
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+ | <div excerpt> | ||
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+ | In other words, the way to repay a teacher' | ||
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+ | As for the debts you owe yourself for your past good karma, the best way to repay them is to use your benefits as opportunities to create further good karma, and not simply enjoy the pleasure they offer. Here again it's important to remember the hardships that can be involved in acting skillfully, and to honor your past skillful intentions by not allowing them to go to waste in the present. For example, as Ajaan Lee once said, it's not easy to attain a human mouth, so bow down to your mouth every day. In other words, respect your ability to communicate, | ||
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+ | These are some of the lessons about kindness and empathy that well-focused gratitude can teach — lessons that teach you how to deal maturely and responsibly in the give and take of social life. Small wonder, then, that the Buddha cited gratitude as //the// quality defining what it means to be civilized ([[en: | ||
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+ | But well-focused gratitude can also teach lessons that apply further to the training of the mind. | ||
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+ | First are the lessons touching on the nature of human action itself. The sense that you've benefited from another person' | ||
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+ | All three of these points — the efficacy of action, the importance of intention, and the existence of choice — were distinctive elements in the Buddha' | ||
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+ | Gratitude also gives practice in developing qualities needed in meditation. As the Buddha noted, the practice of concentration centers on the power of perception. Training in gratitude shows how powerful perception can be, for it requires developing a particular set of perceptions about life and the world. If you perceive help as demeaning, then gratitude itself feels demeaning; but if you perceive help as an expression of trust — the other person wouldn' | ||
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+ | Similarly, gratitude requires mindfulness, | ||
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+ | However, not all the lessons taught by gratitude and empathy are of a heartwarming sort. Instead, they give rise to a sense of //samvega// — which can be translated as dismay or even terror — over how risky and precarious the goodness of the world can be. To begin with, there' | ||
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+ | You've probably heard of the passage in which the Buddha says, | ||
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+ | When you think about how difficult each of these relationships can be, it's no surprise that the Buddha didn't say this to make you feel warmhearted to all the beings you meet. He said it to induce // | ||
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+ | <div excerpt> | ||
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+ | Even the debts of gratitude you owe to yourself for the good actions you've done are enough to induce a sense of dis-ease. You know that not all your past intentions have been skillful, and yet these are the things that will shape the conditions of your life now and into the future. You're in a precarious position — enough to make you want to find a way out even of the network of kindness and gratitude that sustains whatever goodness there is in the world. | ||
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+ | This desire grows even stronger when you allow your empathy to spread to those who have had to make unwilling sacrifices to keep you alive. Every day, the Buddha advised, you should reflect on the fact that life depends on the requisites of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Many are the beings who have had to die and suffer other hardships because of your need for these things. Contrary to the song that concludes Mahler' | ||
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+ | The sense of indebtedness that these reflections induce goes far beyond gratitude, and is certainly not pleasant to think about. This may be why so many people try to deny that they owe anyone a debt of gratitude at all. Or why those who //do// encourage the contemplation of gratitude as a source of happiness tend to reduce it to a generic sense of appreciation and contentment — in the words of one writer, " | ||
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+ | Yet there' | ||
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+ | So to avoid these entanglements, | ||
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+ | This is because unconditional happiness allows you to abandon the cravings and attachments through which you repeatedly take on the identity of a being. To identify yourself as a being means having to find food — both physical and mental — to keep that identity going. This is why, when you're a being, you need to depend on a network of kindness, gratitude, and sacrifice. But when you can abandon the need for that identity, the mind no longer has to feed. It's no longer a burden to anyone. As for the body, as long as you're still alive, those who provide for its needs reap merit many times over for the gifts they provide. This, in fact, is one of the motivations for gaining awakening: | ||
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+ | At the same time, the example of your behavior and freedom of mind is a gift to others, in that it shows how they, too, can free themselves from their debts. This is why the Buddha said that only those who have attained full awakening eat the alms food of the country without incurring debt. They' | ||
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+ | Of course, it's a rare person who will take this route to freedom, but that doesn' | ||
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