Be eternally grateful for
this Life and this experience! Life is a mixed bag. You often will get what you
don’t want. And you will also often get what you didn’t expect. Every which way
though the best you can do to be anchored in peace is to be grateful for
whatever happens to you, for whatever you get!
Zen practitioners advise using
this mantra in all contexts: “Thank you for
everything. I have no complaints whatsoever!” This may not appeal to most people instantaneously
because when you are caught in the throes of your everyday challenges, the last
thing on your mind is gratitude. And this Zen practice seems almost escapist –
as if you are choosing to deny what is, to deny reality! But if you examine
Life closely, you will appreciate that there is no other way to respond to Life
than with gratitude. Being thankful is the only way to live peacefully. And if
you live without being grateful, for everything that’s given to you in each
moment, you will never be in peace.
The human mind always
craves for what is not there. And rarely appreciates what is there. Look at
you: don’t you bemoan scarcity all the time, rarely celebrating the abundance
in your Life? Years of living like this have conditioned you to miss the
opportunity in gratitude. To break free from this self-defeating attitude, do a
simple exercise. Make a list of all, absolutely ALL, the things that you are grateful for in Life. And
make another list of what’s not there, what you miss, in your Life. Now, do a
dispassionate assessment asking yourself: Do you really think what you miss outweighs
what you have? What you will discover through this
exercise is the power in the Zen mantra we
discussed above.
You will then conclude
that the best way to live is to simple be thankful for everything that Life’s
given you. And you too will stop complaining and start living!
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