Gratitude

Like many of you I imagine, I have taken to leaning out of the window on a Thursday evening at 8.00 p.m.. Several of those I live with are doing the same from different windows and as we look out, clapping away, we see others across the Lace Market Square doing the same. It is great to see our neighbours whom we otherwise don’t know or get to speak to and of course it is great to show our gratitude and appreciation for all those working in the NHS. A wonderful new collective ritual has developed that I shall be participating in for the foreseeable future. Like many rituals, it allows me to feel certain emotions more strongly - the emotion of gratitude and appreciation but also just that rising in my heart and throat as I feel moved by what we are all doing.

However, it is difficult to really imagine what it is like for those working on the front line. Not only are they working long hours in a demanding situation - they are also witnessing others die and dealing with making difficult decisions on a daily basis. Beyond that, they are being asked to put their own lives at risk, often without decent preventative equipment to hand.

So clapping on Thursdays will continue, token expression of my gratitude that it is.

But this gratitude - and the way it moves me so much - is a wonderful thing to be able to express. By its very nature, it takes me out of my own little world of self-preoccupation, helping me to realise how dependent my life is upon all the efforts of so many other people.

The word for gratitude in the Buddhist tradition is katannuta (in Pali) and it implies, alongside an emotional response, a kind of knowledge. Literally it means ‘knowing and recognising what has been done to one for one’s benefit’. In today’s language, we might describe it as an intelligent emotion. But this knowledge of what has been done for one’s own benefit leads us into a much wider appreciation of our whole place in the world. If you really start to reflect on what has been done for you, it becomes almost endless. The physical environment in which we live - houses, sewers, water pipes, electricity grids etc. - has all been created and built over many years, even centuries, by others. All our food more than likely is grown by others and shipped to us - we had little to do with it. Our culture has been developed and passed on to us by literally hundreds of generations of people. Language itself - through which we are able to communicate with each other - was not our own creation. And then there are all those who have maintained and preserved the teachings of the Buddha for us and passed them on in such a way that we can access them and make them meaningful in our lives.

Gratitude leads us to a sense of our interdependence in this world. Perhaps it is not too strong to say that it has something of the transcendental (lokuttara) in it.

So in this time that we have - the lockdown time - let’s reflect on what has been done for our benefit and find whatever ways we can to begin to express our gratitude.

Saccanama