Gratitude and Love
If there is one sin that is the most prevalent today, it is the sin of ingratitude. The Master does so much for us. Our indebtedness to him is enormous, and yet we rarely offer thanks for what he has done. In fact, we don’t even offer thanks over our meals, much less offer thanks for all that God does in our lives. We are much like the little boy who was given an orange by a man. The boy’s mother asked, “What do you say to the nice man?” The little boy thought and handed the orange back and said, “Peel it.”
We might say, “What do we have to be thankful for?” We might even feel dissatisfied with what the path has brought us so far – particularly with regard to our meditation.
We’ve been told that even if we meditate for two and a half hours every day as instructed, yet if the direction of our attention is outwards and downwards for the balance of the day, our efforts will hardly be enough to eliminate the impressions of that day. And we would certainly never be able to account for the mountains of karmas that we have accumulated since the beginning of creation.
But then our Master comes along, and he turns this base metal into gold. Yet we seem to believe that we are entitled to his grace and his love and that we don’t even have to put in the two and a half hours of effort that he asks of us. We forget about the huge amount that he has forgiven and is not even asking us to account for. After all this, can we still ask why we should be thankful?
Gratitude will only begin when the sense of entitlement ends. It’s important to realize that gratitude is an attitude, and it comes from a love of God and appreciation of him. Most of us have difficulty understanding this because we tend to associate gratitude with material blessings. If we were asked to list our blessings, probably most of us, before very long, would get down to things like houses and cars and so on. And yet material blessings are far down the line as far as the blessings that come from God are concerned.
On the surface, we may wonder: God is all-powerful – why does he need our gratitude? The truth is that he does not, but we need it – along with the benefits it brings.
Contentment requires gratitude. Moreover, gratitude also leads to peace of mind. A person who is thankful isn’t given to worrying and fretting, because being thankful takes our mind off our problems and results in peace and contentment.
Gratitude is a huge deterrent to critical, negative, and judgmental attitudes. Thankfulness, by its very nature, has to acknowledge everything that God does in our lives. What happens when we focus on God and start giving thanks? Where is our focus? It’s inward and upward.
But can the words ‘thank you’ ever convey our true gratitude for everything that we are given? Words are a weak expression of our gratitude when we owe everything to the immeasurable grace of the Master.
The truth is that nothing can be achieved through our own efforts. We express true gratitude when we recognize this truth, and live our lives as a gift from the Master; when we thank him through our actions in the way that pleases him most – by giving him our time through meditation, effort, and love.
At the time of initiation we take four vows, promising to abide by them for life. These four vows are commitments we make to our Master, and following them implicitly is essential for us to make progress on the path. We can express our gratitude to our Master not by words, but by adhering to these vows that we made to him at the time of initiation.
We should not express gratitude only when good things happen; the real test is when we accept even the most painful times of our lives as a gift from him. Mystics explain to us that all events which appear to be misfortunes are not really so. With the correct attitude, any difficult karma we go through may strengthen our sense of discipline and our power of resistance.
Maharaj Charan Singh often referred to adversity as “a blessing in disguise”, for it is during the most difficult times that we are pulled closer to the Lord. We may never understand what his plans are for us, but the mystics explain that the suffering we go through in this world purifies us and makes us worthy of that eternal joy within. We should be grateful for any occurrence in our life that reminds us of him and makes us shift our focus to him.
Even if we meditate every day, if the essential ingredients of love and devotion are missing, we still have a lot of room for improvement. It’s true that our effort every day counts and that the Master loves his disciples for that effort. But that effort must eventually result in the growth of our love and devotion.
Our mechanical simran has to transform into a love so strong that instead of battling to finish two and a half hours a day, we are saddened when that time with our Beloved is over and we have to enter the world’s rat race again. We have to develop a longing so great that we wait impatiently for the time when we are in his presence again. For indeed, whenever we sit in his remembrance he is most certainly present.
But is this love in our hands? Love is first in the heart of the Beloved, who then gives it to the disciple. But gratitude goes a long way towards developing this love.
Each one of us would like the Lord to make his abode in our heart. But have we ever considered whether this heart, where we would like the Lord to live, is fit for him? Have we ever spent a sleepless night out of love for the Lord or because we are separated from him? Have we ever shed tears out of love and gratitude for the Lord? Our heart longs for the world, and yet we want to meet the Lord. Until we rid ourselves of our love and attachment for everything other than him, our heart will never be fit for him.
We might say we have not seen the Lord, and we do not know how to love him. But a Master is the manifestation of his love, and to love the Master is to love the Lord. Love and devotion are needed for us to succeed in meditation, but the seed of love can only grow and be nurtured with meditation.
And if our love for the Master seems weak or non-existent to us, we can be held fast by his love for us – which, as we go forward on this path, we will find is as wide as the whole world. His love for us is love for the Lord – for the All, for the One. He embraces all in his love. And in his eyes we too are part of that One.
Our capacity to love is still limited. The love the saints lead us to is not a matter of fluctuating emotions. The affection and gratitude we feel may be only a dim reflection of the real love, the love that dissolves all separation and leads to union.
How do we grow in this love? The Master has given a simple answer. He says that love means to give, give, and give. So we begin by giving the only gift we have – our time and attention. Two and a half hours of our time. It may seem to us a paltry gift when we consider the scattered attention we bring to the meditation practice. But nonetheless, it is a gift of love.
And then, with immense generosity, the Master accepts our poor offering and rewards us by giving us the wherewithal to turn our lives around. And as we attend to meditation with sincerity and faith, eventually we will experience his presence all the time. That includes the good days and the difficult ones. Then, there will no longer be any need for words; our entire being will be filled with gratitude.