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Gratitude is the recognition of all that holds us in the web of life and all that has made it possible to have the life that we have and the moment that we are experiencing. Thanksgiving is a natural response to life and may be the only way to savor it. Both Christian and Buddhist traditions, perhaps all spiritual traditions, recognize the importance of gratefulness. It allows us to shift our perspective, as the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop counseled, toward all we have been given and all that we have. It moves us away from the narrow-minded focus on fault and lack and to the wider
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Acceptance means not fighting reality. Gratitude means embracing reality. It means moving from counting your burdens to counting your blessings, as the Archbishop had recommended, both as an antidote to envy and a recipe for appreciating our own lives.
Anthony Ray Hinton
The interviewer incredulously asked, “But they took thirty years of your life—how can you not be angry?” Hinton responded, “If I’m angry and unforgiving, they will have taken the rest of my life.”
Unforgiveness robs us of our ability to enjoy and appreciate our life, because we are trapped in a past filled with anger and bitterness. Forgiveness allows us to move beyond the past and appreciate the present, including the drops of rain falling on our face.
“It’s taught that the best way to create good karma with the least amount of effort is to rejoice in your good deeds and those of others.” Rejoicing predisposes us to repeat those good deeds in the future.
“On this planet, over the last three thousand years, different religious traditions developed. All these traditions carry the same message: the message of love. So the purpose of these different traditions is to promote and strengthen the value of love, compassion. So different medicine, but same aim: to cure our pain, our illness. As we mentioned, even scientists now say basic human nature is compassionate.”
The Buddha supposedly said, “What is that one thing, which when you possess, you have all other virtues? It is compassion.”
It is compassion that makes us human among the animal kingdom, and sets us apart from most of its remaining members. Other higher-order mammals, such as dolphins, whales, elephants, and primates — especially the great apes — all have it in their capacity to express compassion toward others of their own and even different species.
Speciesism is a doctrine that asserts the superiority of humans over all other life forms, and bases this false premise on an erroneous understanding of what is believed to be a God-given entitlement to “subdue the earth”. But this very doctrine of speciesism negates and cancels the idea of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God; in other words, of what it means to be simply human.
To be truly human means one no longer sees one’s station as being “above” other races and other species in the Earth. We are not above the animals, we are *among* them; we are in fact one of them. Enslavement by humans of other humans and animals, for the sake of personal gain, comfort, benefit, or utility, is among the most egregious of sins. It is rooted, not in any God-given entitlement so called, but in arrogance based on ignorance. Inhumanity, then, is always inhumane no matter if it be perpetrated on man or beast.
It is when we possess gratitude for what we have, and have accrued at no expense and without resort to the harming of other sentient creatures, that we then are experiencing what it means to be truly human. A grateful heart makes a joyful soul, even as joyful souls make a peaceful world.
“Compassion is a sense of concern that arises when we are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to see that suffering relieved.”
It probably takes many years of monastic practice to equal the spiritual growth generated by one sleepless night with a sick child.
What the Dalai Lama was describing—explaining that compassion is in our self-interest—evolutionary biologists have called “reciprocal altruism.”
We fear compassion because we’re afraid of experiencing the suffering, the vulnerability, and the helplessness that can come with having an open heart.
Many people are also afraid of receiving compassion
that they will at least feel indebted. Finally, many people are even afraid of being self-compassionate
Gilbert says, “Compassion can flow naturally when we understand and work to remove our fears, our blocks, and our resistances to it.
Self-compassion
having compassion for our human frailties and recognizing that we are vulnerable and limited like all people.
it is a fundamental basis for developing compassion for others. It’s hard to love others as you love yourself, as both men pointed out, if you don’t love yourself.
“Lack of self-compassion manifests in a harsh and judgmental relationship with ourselves.
When we go through a difficult time, we are caring and kind to ourselves, as we would be to a friend or relative.
And finally when we are feeling down, we try to understand this feeling with curiosity and acceptance rather than rejection or self-judgment.
...The solution to the problem we are facing often lies embedded somewhere in the problem itself, "hidden in plain sight", waiting for us to suss it out. And when we do we become both humbled and empowered from the whole experience. Self-compassion in times of trial is essential to learning and personal growth.
It is probably for this reason that charity is prescribed by almost every religious tradition. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, called zakat. In Judaism, it is called tzedakah, which literally means “justice.” In Hinduism and Buddhism, it is called dana. And in Christianity, it is charity.
“We are fundamentally good. The aberration is not the good person; the aberration is the bad person. We are made for goodness. And when we get opportunities, we mostly respond with generosity.
We have become dehumanized and debased. As Martin Luther King Jr., said, ‘We must learn to live together as sisters and brothers, or we will perish together as fools.’
people are fundamentally compassionate,” the Archbishop said,
The Dalai Lama jumped in. “Yes. That is the basis of our hope.”
