MJ25 - 38 Blessings - Gratitude (26 Of 39)

This is the twenty-sixth session of the Buddhist path of practice leading from the mundane to the transcendental based on the 38 Blessings of the Mangala Sutta. This twenty-fifth blessing concerns developing gratitude and repaying debts of gratitude, as the groundwork to training the mind toward more esoteric states.

Transcript

Last time you saw me,

We looked at blessing number 24 on contentment.

With the time we talk today,

We'll continue in our series on enlightened living to the fourth blessing in the instilling oneself with basic virtues subsection,

That is,

Number 25 on gratitude.

In our pursuit of basic virtue in this seventh grouping of blessings,

We started by opening up the channel by which we can transfer the virtues of others into our own heart.

The respect of blessing 22 helped us overcome the tendency to find fault with others.

The humility of blessing 23 helped us to avoid overestimating ourselves so that we don't look down on others.

The previous blessing 24 on contentment equipped us to connect with inner happiness rather than materialism.

In this blessing,

We complete the tilling of the ground in redness for the sowing of the seeds of the Dharma.

So gratitude allows us to recognize specific and potential benefits brought into our lives by other people and things.

Many of the beneficial things mentioned in connection with gratitude are things we have already come across in the preceding blessings,

Such as blessing three,

Where we discuss gratitude towards the Buddha,

The community of monks,

Teachers,

And exemplary employers.

Also in that blessing,

We discuss attitude towards inanimate things like educational objects,

Dharma scriptures,

And pagodas.

In blessing 12,

We met up with gratitude towards our parents.

And in blessing 16,

We discuss gratitude towards exemplary rulers.

You might be tempted to think we are repeating ourselves,

But there are a few new things for us to study,

Which go beyond the mundane household situations already discussed.

Because in this blessing,

Gratitude is considered particularly in the context of learning virtue.

On the face of it,

Gratitude may look a lot like respect,

Because the list of those worthy of respect is similar to those worthy of gratitude.

However,

In this blessing,

We meet up with the idea of latent benefit,

And gratitude mostly intended to help us acknowledge the shared provenance of our goodness rather than thinking it's merely an individual achievement.

It helps keep us humble about the origins of the goodness in life we have managed to cultivate for ourselves,

Rather like the idea of it takes a village to raise a child.

The character quality of altruism is generally thought to develop in a person with maturity.

According to the research of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg,

In the late 50s,

People are supposed to become less self-centered as they go through life.

From birth to age 11,

Children tend to be motivated mainly by self-interest,

Avoiding punishment and maximizing rewards from their parents or teachers.

During the teenage years,

Motivational shifts to give more credence to social approval.

They need to be liked by their peers or else conform to social orders such as staying on the right side of the law.

Only those who manage to extricate themselves from the frame of mind of a teenager can upgrade their ethical motivation to considerations of social contract,

Such as spiritual obligation or respect for universal rights.

Altruism belongs to this final category of abstract ideals.

From Kohlberg's research,

We learn two things,

Namely that an altruist is rare and,

Without an attitude of gratitude from those on the receiving end of such acts of altruism,

Will certainly have less motivation to be altruistic in the first place.

Just as Western social psychologists have realized that we cannot underestimate the role of social contract in bolstering the motivation to do good deeds,

According to the words of the Buddha in the Yangutra-Nikaya,

There are two very rare sorts of people,

Or Dula-Pak-Bhugala,

In the world,

The first being those who initiate favors towards others,

Or Bhupa-Kari,

And the second being those who are grateful and return favors they receive from others,

Or Kattan-Yu-Kattavetti.

Most of us are quite familiar with hearing about the importance of developing gratitude,

With all the associated stories that get trotted out every year on Thanksgiving.

We have previously mentioned that there are advantages of gratitude along with patience and respect as a way to bolster our conscience against temptation.

If left to our own devices,

We can succumb all too easily to temptation.

Since it is the nature of cultivating virtue that one must always come across obstacles and hindrances,

Problems from our associates or our immediate surroundings,

Or from our subconscious defilements,

Not to succumb to discouragement in the face of such hardships needs special strategies to help us not to backslide on our journey of self-transformation.

Sometimes,

Where we are unable to rationalize our way to behave properly,

In cases where it is hard for us to get our head to rule our heart,

We need to engage with patience.

If patience fails us,

Sometimes we can fall back on respect for all the elders and betters in our lives who we might disappoint if we were to give in to the temptations on hand.

If respect fails us,

The final line of defense is to bolster conscience by practicing gratitude.

Gratitude enables us to remember what we have to be thankful for in our life.

Focusing on these things can help you ride out the storm rather than binge on destructive habits.

This is how gratitude can help give us social traction to elevate the usual threshold of our motivation in cultivating virtue to the level of the ideal,

Even beyond the bolstering effect of patience or respect.

Something which remains of the utmost importance in the cultivation of virtue is that we must train ourselves a great deal in the regular practice of meditation,

Especially at times when we must ride out conflicts without interfering or feeling demoralized.

If we are quick to sit for meditation when the going gets tough,

It can make all the difference to the sense of resilience in our cultivation of good deeds.

The Pali word for gratitude,

Or katanyu,

Used in this blessing,

Means recognizing benefit or virtue.

It is similar to the Western ideal of loyalty,

But specifically loyalty to the people or things that have previously brought us benefit.

Furthermore,

It includes the nebulous concept of latent benefit,

Which means recognizing that benefit comes to us not only by any past concrete actions,

But may be brought simply by the presence of a personage or a thing with latent virtue.

Easy to understand examples in this category might be things like an insurance policy or a local doctor,

Who help us feel safe just by having them around,

Even if we have not yet made an insurance claim or had a medical emergency.

A more specifically Buddhist example of latent benefit that deserves gratitude might be that of the solitary Buddha or Pacheka Buddha who is enlightened and has rid themselves of all defilements,

But nonetheless lack teaching skills.

Buddhists consider their presence to be a blessing to the world,

At least as a field of merit for those who give the solitary Buddha their support.

The same concept of latent benefit also applies to things like merit in our mind,

Accumulated by our past actions.

You will see that latent benefit is something new in this blessing that we have not yet met in the preceding ones,

And it also diverges from what we would generally expect from the idea of respect.

So,

To reflect on the degrees to which a person can be grateful,

Let's start by listening to an account of the life story of the right-hand disciple of the Buddha,

Who is called Sariputta.

Besides being gifted in explaining the Dharma,

Second only to the Buddha himself,

Sariputta was also unsurpassed in the practice of gratitude.

He would not let even the smallest favor pass by unacknowledged.

One day,

In the town of Rajagaha,

The Buddha was residing at Veluvanam temple along with Sariputta.

In that temple,

There was an aged Brahmin called Ratha,

Who had been shunned by his wife,

Family,

And in-laws because he could no longer support them.

They had abandoned Ratha instead of looking after him in his old age.

Ratha didn't want to bother anyone unduly,

So he thought of becoming a Buddhist monk for the final days of his life.

None of the monks in the temple were interested to take responsibility for his ordination because they thought he was already old and would be a burden on the temple.

No one would take responsibility for organizing his ordination.

The Buddha asked if there was not a single monk in the temple who had received benefit from this Brahmin in the past.

Sariputta spoke up and said that once,

A long time ago,

Ratha had given him a ladleful of rice when he was on alms round.

The Buddha therefore asked Sariputta to help out Ratha on this occasion.

So,

Sariputta ordained Ratha and allowed him to stay in the same lodging as himself,

Teaching him meditation and the Dharma.

Ratha practiced hard and before long was able to become an Arahant.

When the Buddha inquired as to Ratha's well-being,

Sariputta spoke only praise of his student.

So,

From this incident,

It is obvious that Sariputta was certainly one to show his gratitude and the Buddha revealed that it's not only in this lifetime that he had been grateful for something he had cultivated in many past lifetimes as well.

So,

From this story,

We can see Sariputta's gratitude was manifested on three levels.

Firstly,

He was able to appreciate favours received from others,

In this case having thankfully remembered the ladleful of rice he had received in the past from Ratha.

Secondly,

Not only did he remember a favour received,

He made sure he took the opportunity to repay that gratitude to Ratha by organizing his ordination when none of the other monks would.

Lastly,

Having recognized and returned the favour to Ratha,

When the Buddha asked how his student was doing,

He still regaled Ratha with praise for being a good and obedient student,

Which counts as honouring the goodness of a person who has done us a favour.

Not everyone's gratitude is as fully developed as that of Sariputta.

For example,

Some people ignore favours received from others.

Some people recognize favours but fail to return them.

Some people recognize and return favours but fail to honour the altruism of that person.

But in the case of Sariputta,

He practiced gratitude on all three levels.

Similarly,

We can discern differing levels of ingratitude in people's behaviour and the distinctions are well illustrated by a parable of the lion and the woodpecker that is found in the 308th Jataka,

Which is called the Jāva-sakūna Jataka.

Once upon a time,

In the Hima-Vanta forest,

A mountain,

A lion was devouring his prey under a tree near his den.

A piece of bone got stuck in his throat,

Causing the lion extreme pain.

A woodpecker perched above him in a tree heard the lion's cries and asked what was the cause of the pain.

The lion replied,

A piece of bone has stuck in my throat.

I can take it out for you,

Offered the woodpecker.

Please hurry up and remove it,

My friend.

You will be saving my life,

Roared the lion.

But it's not going to be easy.

I don't see why it's so difficult.

The problem is I don't dare to go inside your mouth,

Said the woodpecker.

I'm afraid you will eat me up.

Oh,

I wouldn't worry about that,

Said the lion.

Hurry up and save me before I choke to death.

Reluctantly,

The woodpecker agreed to help the lion,

But didn't let his guard down.

He used a stout branch to prop the lion's jaws open first,

And only then did he enter the lion's mouth and pull the bone from the lion's throat with his beak.

Only when he was safely clear from the lion's mouth did he remove the branch,

Propping the lion's jaws open,

And then the lion's pain subsided.

Later,

Fit and well,

The lion caught a wild buffalo and returned to sit under the same tree to devour his prey.

The woodpecker learned of the lion's hunting success,

So he dropped a hint,

Asking,

Aren't you going to spare a few scraps of food for me?

Be off with you,

Growled the lion.

You don't deserve anything from me.

Think yourself lucky that I let you live when you're inside my mouth.

The woodpecker criticized the lion for his selfishness and ingratitude,

And then flew away,

Never to return.

So in this case,

The lion manifested ingratitude on three different levels.

Firstly,

He failed to acknowledge the woodpecker had helped to remove the bone stuck in his throat.

Secondly,

Given the opportunity to pay back the favor to the woodpecker by sharing his food,

The lion refused to do that.

Lastly,

The lion added insult to injury by threatening the woodpecker,

Saying he had been lucky to have escaped with his life.

Not all people are ungrateful to this extent.

Most just forget to return favors.

More ungrateful still are those who not only forget to return favors,

But turn a blind eye to favors or help received,

Taking them for granted.

Many assume they are entitled to the help they've received.

The worst of the lot are those who are so keen to deny they have received help from others,

They persecute the one who's helped them.

In this story,

The lion fell into the third category of ingratitude.

So it is no wonder that the woodpecker was quick to remove itself from the lion's presence and not to associate with him anymore.

Ironically,

For those of you familiar with the origins of the Thanksgiving story of the Plymouth colonists in America,

Going back to 1621,

The Pilgrim Fathers thanked God instead of thanking the Native Americans who had saved them from exposure,

Scurvy,

Starvation,

And infectious disease when they first set foot on dry land.

Instead of repaying the favor as soon as the white people were well again,

They infected the Wampanoag tribe with smallpox,

Forcibly removed them from their ancestral land,

And eventually enlarged the same policy to all Native American tribes until the suffering of Native Americans culminated in the Trail of Tears.

The irony of the Thanksgiving story is that it ticks all the boxes for ingratitude as Buddhists define it.

So to return to our subject matter of gratitude for today,

A recent research study indicated that people who cultivate gratitude by counting their blessings tend to be happier and less depressed.

The study in 2017 by Joshua Brown and Joel Wong that surveyed nearly 300 adults struggling with mental health concerns found significant improvements in mental health in those who wrote three weekly letters of gratitude to another person,

As compared to participants who merely wrote down their deepest negative experiences or did not do any writing activity.

The researchers interpreted their findings to mean that gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions,

That gratitude helps even if you don't share it,

And although gratitude benefits may take time,

But they have a lasting positive effect on the brain.

Apart from writing letters of gratitude,

Robert Emmons of the University of Berkeley has highlighted 10 further pieces of self-help advice for those hoping to cultivate more gratitude in their lives.

The first piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to keep a gratitude journal.

All you need to do is establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts,

Graces,

Benefits,

And good things you enjoy.

Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events,

Recalling others' personal attributes or valued people in your life will help you to interweave a sustainable theme of gratitude into your life.

Writing down several things that you're thankful for every day will keep positivity topmost in your mind.

You should keep the list at hand and read through it whenever you feel gloomy feelings creeping up on you.

According to Buddhists,

There is a ready-made list of things to be grateful for that can help to boost our conscience,

Including gratitude for having been born a human rather than a savage,

Gratitude to your family and its reputation which you'll be letting down by getting into your temptation,

Gratitude for your level of age and experience,

Thinking that at your age you ought to know better,

Gratitude for the good things that you've done in the past and how this small slip-up will ruin your track record,

Gratitude for your level of education and how with all your knowledge you ought to know better,

And lastly gratitude to your spiritual teachers who you'll be letting down by not putting into practice what they have taught you and exemplified.

The second piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to recall difficulties that you've now put behind you.

To be grateful for your current state,

It's helpful to remind yourself gently of past tough times that you've weathered out.

When you remember how difficult life used to be and how far you've come,

You will set up an explicit contrast in your mind and this contrast will be fertile ground for appreciating a relatively good fortune in the present time.

A third piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to use the Nikan introspection technique.

This technique was invented by the 1940s businessman and Jodo Shinshu priest called Yoshimoto Inshin.

The technique involves reflection on three questions.

Firstly,

What have I received from this person?

Secondly,

What have I given to this person?

And lastly,

What troubles and difficulty have I caused this person?

The awareness generated by the introspection is supposed to be especially effective as a way to increase gratitude towards family members.

The fourth piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to learn affirmations of gratitude.

In many spiritual traditions,

Affirmations of gratitude are considered to be the most powerful form of motivation booster because through such affirmations people recognize that they are but a small part of a much bigger cosmic picture.

The fifth piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to come to your senses.

Through our senses,

The ability to touch,

See,

Smell,

Taste and hear,

We gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and what an incredible miracle it is to be alive.

Seen through the lens of gratitude,

The human body is not only a miraculous construction but also a gift.

The sixth piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to use visual reminders.

This might include prominently displayed pictures of those towards whom you would like to develop gratitude or simply by regularly visiting with that person.

Because the two primary obstacles to gratitude are forgetfulness and a lack of mindful awareness,

Visual reminders can serve as clues to trigger thoughts of gratitude.

The seventh piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to make a resolution to practice more gratitude.

Research shows that resolving to perform a behavior increases the likelihood that the action will take place.

If you write down your own gratitude resolution,

Which might be as simple as,

I resolve to count my blessings each day and post it somewhere where you can be reminded of it regularly.

The eighth piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to watch your language.

Grateful people have a particular linguistic style that uses the language of gifts,

Givers,

Blessings,

Blessed,

Fortune,

Fortunate and abundance.

In gratitude,

You should not focus on how inherently good you are,

But rather on the inherently good things that others have done on your behalf.

The ninth piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to go through the motions.

In other words,

Fake it till you make it.

If you go through the motions of gratitude,

Such as smiling,

Saying thank you,

Writing thank you letters,

The authentic emotion of gratitude will eventually shine through.

The tenth and final piece of advice for becoming more grateful is to think outside the box.

If you want to make the most out of opportunities to flex your gratitude muscles,

Then you need to actively look for new situations and circumstances in which to express gratitude.

Turning now from self-help advice to more specifically Buddhist advice,

We will continue by looking at some special objects of gratitude before looking to see what Buddhism can add to our toolbox for gratitude cultivation.

To avoid repetition in this blessing,

We will cover the details only of the objects of gratitude not already discussed in previous blessings,

Such as gratitude towards the Buddha,

The community of the enlightened monks,

Teachers,

Virtuous employers,

Educational objects,

Dharma scriptures,

And pagodas,

Parents,

And virtuous rulers.

The new items which we are left with in this blessing include animals such as beasts of burden,

Inanimate objects such as our homeland and shade-giving trees,

Goodness such as merit,

And ourselves,

Or at least our own good health.

So let's look at each of these in turn.

First object of gratitude we've not learned about yet is animals,

Especially beasts of burden or perhaps in this day and age,

Service animals of various sorts.

In Thailand,

Before the advent of tractors and motorized rotavators,

Farmers would use water buffaloes to plow their fields,

But never under the heat of the midday sun when it would be tortured to the animals.

They would pamper the water buffaloes with soft grass and pastures to graze during their rest periods.

Some people loved their buffaloes and felt their debt of gratitude so strongly that they would hardly ever whip them,

And some would even put up a mosquito net for buffaloes at night.

They would never slaughter an old beast when it got too old to work.

Out of gratitude for all the years it had served them,

They would put the buffalo out of pasture instead.

When the buffalo passed away of natural causes,

The owner would unsentimentally divide up the meat to share with their neighbors.

In fact,

The farming folk of yesteryear would judge a stranger's behavior based on how they treated their beast of burden.

A cruel or negligent owner of livestock would be treated cautiously by the wider community.

Next we come to gratitude towards some inanimate objects that we've not already mentioned.

Traditionally,

Gratitude for the shade and shelter a person has derived over the years from a tree would mean that the tree was treated with gratitude.

This would lead some people to protect the tree so that others may also benefit.

They would not leave litter around the tree or cut it down.

This is much better than realizing you miss a forest only when it's already gone.

Similarly,

If you have gotten benefit even from a building such as your meditation center or temple,

You ought to treat that place with respect,

Keeping it clean,

Well organized,

And in good repair.

Some people might even go as far as to reflect on the benefit brought to them by their homeland or the ancestors who defended its borders in the past,

Allowing one to grow up in peace in the present day.

Sometimes the value of having a peaceful country to live in only becomes apparent to us when we are forced to become refugees.

If you have gratitude,

You will learn to appreciate even those inanimate objects without having to go through the trauma of losing them first.

The next thing to be grateful for is the opportunity to cultivate merits in our lives.

If you appreciate the value of merit in your past,

As you've seen in blessing number five,

You will also be able to estimate the potential latent benefit,

The chance to cultivate merits in the present,

Will have for your future.

Some people might regard charitable work or even keeping the precepts of meditation as chores.

However,

I have often heard faithful Buddhists who are on the weekly food rota bringing provisions to the temple community describe the chance to offer food on a weekly basis as a privilege rather than a chore.

The reason they describe it as such is that it offers a regular infusion of that special warm fuzzy feeling in the mind that we can recognize as the accumulation of merit,

Which has a knock-on effect on their quality of life,

Not just in future lifetimes,

But often in terms of abundance and relative freedom from obstacles in their immediate life.

So regarding opportunities to cultivate merit with gratitude is a way of turning around charitable chores into something you can relish,

Even though the promise of good things coming back to you in the future is still latent rather than concrete in your life.

I'm sure that none of the objects of gratitude I've mentioned so far will come as any great surprise,

But something which is a little harder to understand is gratitude to yourself,

Because it sounds a bit like the dreaded narcissism.

In fact,

What I mean by self-gratitude comes closer to the idea of having self-respect.

It means recognizing your mental and physical health are irreplaceable.

To do anything to destroy or even neglect your health,

Especially the recklessness of breaking precepts or meddling in the roads to ruin,

Would therefore be considered ungrateful to your body.

We therefore need to regard healthy choices as a way of practicing gratitude.

So how large or small does a debt of gratitude have to be before it's worth recognizing?

Sometimes it's impossible to put a price on a favor one has received in the past.

If you are dying and someone donates a pint of blood to save your life,

How can you put a price on the life it has saved?

The blood was a matter of life and death.

Similarly,

You cannot put a price on the mother's milk that has nourished you as a baby.

Again,

It was also a matter of life and death.

Since you cannot put a price on these things,

The best we can do is take every chance we have to repay debts of gratitude throughout our life.

The complex web of indebtedness might also be another incentive to stand on your own two feet rather than accepting the help of others where it's not strictly necessary.

But where we have fallen back on others' help,

We should do so with consideration of the advice on conditional and unconditional love that we have met with back in blessing number 17 on helping extended family.

If someone has done you a favor,

Be quick to repay your own debt of gratitude without them having to call it in.

Not just once,

But as many times as the opportunity arises.

You will become the sort of person who has constant awareness of the shared benefits brought to you by others around you in the world instead of focusing on negativity.

Also,

It's worth bearing in mind that we need to build up the roots of gratitude in the younger generation.

As with any sort of wisdom concerning self-image,

You need to start learning from an early age.

If you miss out on it when you're young,

Just like a second language,

It tends to be quite hard to pick up later on in life.

So don't overlook simple things like teaching children to say please and thank you,

Or teaching children to express their appreciation of other people's good aspects,

Or giving gifts out of appreciation for things.

All these small things will stick in a child's mind from a very young age and they will have a powerful good influence on them in later life.

If children can see the benefits received from their parents,

Later they will be able to identify the goodness received from others in society.

If they are unable to see the goodness received from their parents,

It's unlikely that they will identify the goodness in anyone else.

Although in Western society a lot of human rights have been entered into law,

And in many countries basic needs are taken care of by the welfare state,

We should not let that safety net desensitize our sense of gratitude for those things that we receive at the hands of others.

It should be noted that gratitude needs to be moderated by considerations of equanimity that we have already seen in blessing number 16,

Without letting gratitude bias us towards unethical dealings.

Otherwise,

Gratitude can easily lead to things like bribery and corruption.

Furthermore,

Supposing you've done someone a favor in the past and they owe you a favor in return.

However,

If you openly call in the favor,

It is too transactional and makes you look like a manipulator instead of a benefactor in others estimation.

This is why if you ever do someone a favor,

It is considered a bad form to call in favors in return.

If you're asking for money back that you've lent someone,

Then that's fair enough.

But when it's a favor that you've given someone,

Asking for the favor back is inappropriate because,

As we said before,

You cannot put a price on a favor.

At this point,

On the subject of gratitude,

I'd like to finish off with a story entitled,

Trying Again,

About a lady who persuaded a homeless man to join rehab.

The story comes from Lenore Pimental of Santa Rosa,

California in The Sun Magazine and was republished by Jack Kornfield in his book,

No Time Like the Present.

So,

The narrator in the story is Lenore during her time working at the social services office in Northern California.

The man was my age,

But he looked many years older.

He was an army veteran.

He was also homeless,

Cold,

And hungry.

I could see that he'd tried to wash up before coming to the social services department to ask for help.

His face and hands were clean,

But his clothes were filthy.

And though he claimed not to have had any alcohol that day,

The smell of it seeped from his pores.

I wanted to get him into rehab,

And I asked him if he was ready to come off the streets.

No ma'am,

He said.

All I'd like is a few dollars and some bus tickets.

If I can get sober enough,

They'll take me into the shelter across town.

That shelter had 50 beds.

Cots,

Really.

The homeless were admitted at night and forced out at dawn to eat breakfast at a nearby charity.

50 beds and nearly a thousand homeless in the city.

Winter here in Northern California means cold,

Rain,

And mud.

Even though this man and many like him slept under bridges to keep dry,

The dampness penetrated everything.

His clothes and the bedroll he'd placed on the floor smelled moldy.

The pages of a book he carried were swollen.

I asked how many times he'd tried rehab.

Two or three.

A long time ago,

He said.

Maybe it's time to try again.

I explained that I had a client who had gone through the program seven times before it took.

Besides,

I said,

We're months away from warm weather.

What else have you got going on?

I watched his face as he considered my offer.

I thought I saw a flicker of hope in his eyes,

Followed by a shadow of doubt.

He'd tried before.

It had been hard.

Impossibly hard.

But so was living on the streets.

Finally,

He lifted his head and looked at me.

I reached for the phone.

Shall I,

I asked.

He barely nodded yes.

An hour later,

I hand him over to a recovering alcoholic,

Also a veteran,

Who would drive him to one of the best rehabilitation facilities in the county.

Come back.

Visit me when you graduate,

I said as he left.

I barely recognized the man when he came into my office six months later.

So tall and handsome,

Smelling like the outdoors and holding a big bouquet of flowers.

So in conclusion for today,

When considering special strategies for cultivating gratitude,

We should bear in mind the words of Henry Nguyen from his book,

The Return of the Prodigal Son.

The choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort.

But each time you make it,

The next choice is a little easier,

A little freer,

A little less self-conscious.

Similarly,

From lack of awareness as to how others have helped us,

We might need to make a special effort first to appreciate the things we are grateful for.

But the process should not stop there.

And we should go on to try to find ways to repay those who have helped us and ultimately honor the goodness of those who have initiated favors towards us in the past.

So,

This session I have introduced to you Blessing 25 on Gratitude.

For my next session,

We'll continue to the final blessing of the 7th group with Blessing number 26 on Regular Listening to the Dharma.

Hopefully,

As a result of today's session,

You will better understand gratitude and ingratitude,

Along with ways to cultivate ever-increasing gratefulness in your life.

So,

For today,

This is me,

Praniklis Tynestro,

Signing off for now.

So long folks,

And stay safe.