Many people recommend beginning your day with gratitude. They encourage journaling, each morning, a list of ten or more things for which you’re thankful. You can also sit with a mind of gratitude, imagining the list of things you’re grateful for.
I think this is a wonderful practice, and I find no argument with its benefits, which a quick internet search confirms include better attitude throughout the day (better emotional regulation), improved resilience, and overall increased happiness.
So why is this, and what can we do to add more meaning to this small effective practice?
If we understand karma (cause & effect), we understand that positive feelings come from practicing virtue and that negative feelings come from practicing non virtue. How can generating minds of thankfulness create happiness? What makes gratitude virtuous?
In order to maximize the positive effects of this practice, we should cultivate this attitude with wisdom. Instead of being mindlessly thankful for things like a sunny day or having a roof over our heads and offering this thanks aimlessly toward the universe at large, we can actually add power to our practice by offering our appreciation and our love to the kindness of living beings who continuously help us enjoy the things we attribute our happiness to.
The building you dwell in didn’t simply appear over night. It started as an idea in someone’s mind. It became a blueprint. Materials were sourced: wood from trees, mined metals melded in factories, synthetic materials invented and recreated. Kind humans putting in mental and physical energy to flesh out a building that began as a mere thought.
You may have heard a variation of the concept “It takes the whole world to make one object.” It takes machines built in one place to harvest crops in another. When we break apart an object we typically enjoy mindlessly, we have the potential to see literally limitless dependent relationships. This thing relies on this which relies on that, which ultimately all relies on the kindness of living beings.
If we cultivate an attitude that appreciates living beings for their kindness and cooperation, we are creating specific and positive causes to feel much deeper and lasting positive feelings than the temporary and misplaced joy of thanking the sun for shining, wrongfully believing the sun is the source of today’s happiness.
Mindfulness Challenge 1:
Choose three objects that you use every day in your home. Three objects that you feel grateful for or happy when you use them. Three objects you may rely upon.
Think about how you came to obtain them. Did you purchase them at the store? Did someone have to stock the shelves with them? Did someone give it to you as a gift? Meditate on the warm feeling of gratitude and love toward the people who helped you attain this item that you benefit from daily.
Now think about how that object was created. What materials is it made of? How were they harvested or created? How is the object put together? How many beings were involved in the assembly of such an object?
Finally, think about how this object was conceived? Did someone invent it? Did it begin as a mere thought or conception in someone’s mind? What plans would need to be prepared before such an object was actually physically created?
Once more, try generating a warm feeling that actually cherishes the people, the kindness of those people, for helping make it possible for you to enjoy this phenomenon each day.
Results
I hope that by journaling or meditating the above mindfulness exercise, you can move your practice of cultivating gratitude from something that generates a temporary happy feeling to something that brings more meaning in your life.
By understanding how connected we actually are, and how it is the kindness of living beings that creates the world we experience, we bring much more fulfillment and ultimate meaning to our practice. We direct our gratitude toward our neighbours, our coworkers, the employees at our local grocery stores. We can grow our patience, our compassion, and we can reduce our resentment and blame.
None of us would be alive today without the kindness of others. For that, we can be extremely grateful. No matter the hardships we’ve endured, we have benefitted from the kindness of others. How wonderful!
Listen to Gen-la Kelsang Khyenrab teach about developing a happy mind.
“We need to improve the quality of our mind if we want to be truly happy.”
Gen-la Kelsang Khyenrab
Motivation Challenge 1:
Identify three problems in your day. See if you can respond to each problem with a positive mind. How can you control your desire for things going a certain way and accept the situation as it is?
At the end of the day, reflect (i.e. journal) on what you learned from each problem. If you were able to help someone else, rejoice!
In doing mindful activities like this, we can accomplish two things:
Accumulate positive karma through helping others, patiently accepting what is, and transforming adverse conditions
Train our mind to become strong, peaceful and happy
Meditation: Challenge 1:
Spend one to two minutes meditating on how you helped others in your day. If no examples come to you, you can always imagine doing things to help others. Try to generate a warm feeling of love or compassion or gratitude toward the people you’ve helped. (Keep pets or animals in mind too – just as important as people!)
Spend two to three minutes meditating on this warm feeling at your heart. This is your object of meditation. Try and hold it for as long as possible. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to your object as soon as you notice. Do so without any judgment.
If this is your first time meditating, try repeating the following to yourself a few times before you start:
“I can meditate. I have the ability to hold my concentration. I will learn to develop concentration, because it is important. I can and I will focus on my object of meditation.”
This is more helpful than negative self talk like “I’m no good at meditating. Meditation isn’t for me. I’ll never be able to concentrate. I can’t control my mind.” These thoughts cause nothing but harm, so there is no purpose in encouraging them.
If you’re worried about getting “stuck” in meditation, simply set a timer for five to ten minutes, or whatever you can spare.
For a real challenge, try this for one whole week. Keep a journal and pay attention to how your mind is throughout the day. Do you feel as stressed? How is your patience? How are you sleeping?
I’m sending lots of love and positive energy your way. Good luck!
I yearn for the values of my grandmother not catholic, not starched and sterilized by religion not rusty morals nor ignorant rules
I yearn for the values of my grandmother curled around me with love and kindness virtuous actions bringing peace to minds
I strive to create a pure moral discipline in my self, as I saw in my grandmother something rare in the face of today’s anger hatred, attachment, confusion
I yearn for the wealth of my grandmother an uncontaminated purity, patience her undeniable courage and unconditional love
I am a spectacular person. I love myself inside and out. I love myself unconditionally. I love all my excellent qualities, good qualities and poor qualities. I love that I have poor qualities because my suffering gives me the opportunity to empathize with others, develop compassion, and wish to become a better person. I love my good qualities because they feel natural, I can strengthen them and improve their power. I love my excellent qualities because they allow me to serve living beings, shine a positive light in the darkness, and be an example, or leader, to others.
In all ways I strive to be virtuous: kind, compassionate, free from misery, wise, patient and understanding. Now, there is not a day that goes by where I do not do something wonderful for my higher self and for others. Once there was a time I lived in the dark. My only friends were loneliness and despair; I believed good was not possible, all was lost. I had not the will nor wisdom to make intentional efforts to consciously design and build my future. I did not understand cause and effect, karma. I have suffered at the hands of my self-cherishing mind (ego/pain-body). I have made bad choices.
Still, with faith I have lost all despair. Even when things are difficult, even when I lose control, even when I am hanging by a thread, there arises a resilient mind of faith that I can and will keep going, and I can and will be better.
This letter is to affirm that in the process of becoming better, I love myself as I am. For keeping this desire in my heart and never giving up means that I have already achieved my wishes and dreams, even as I work to achieve them. There is nothing I cannot do.
Love, my wisdom self
Feel free to adapt this letter for your self, for your own expression of love to the beautiful soul inside, the soul struggling to get through the shit. It deserves your unconditional love. It deserves your support, your compassion and your striving for permanent happiness and liberation from suffering.
The Halfwit Writer 