Gratitude centers on appreciating the good things in our life. Such an attitude of gratitude is highly conducive to our emotional health; it fills us with feelings of contentment and positivity.
Significantly, gratitude can aid not just our emotional health, but also our spiritual health. To understand how, let’s first consider how absence of gratitude can sour our bhakti using a child-parent metaphor.
Suppose a child claims to love their parents, but also constantly complains about all the things that their parents haven’t provided them. The action of complaining will be a living contradiction, even a blatant refutation, to the words about loving. What if the child doesn’t overtly complain, but just sulks? That too would counter the claim about love, even if not so visibly.
A similar dynamic applies to our relationship with Krishna, the supreme parent for all living beings (14.04). If we complain about all the things that we don’t have, we are indirectly complaining to Krishna (or about Krishna to others) about what all he hasn’t provided us. What if we don’t complain overtly? If we are still fixated on all the things we don’t have, we will end up being silently resentful. The resulting negativity we will feel toward Krishna, even if we don’t ever phrase our emotion in those terms, will be at least a devotion-weakener, if not an outright devotion-killer.
Conversely, while practicing bhakti, if we gratefully appreciate the good things in life, then Gita wisdom can help us remember that those good things have come from Krishna, who is the source and reservoir of all goodness. And that vision strengthens and sweetens our relationship with him, thereby nourishing our bhakti.
One-sentence summary:
Appreciating the good things in our life is not just positive thinking that is conducive to our emotional health; it is also devotional thinking that is conducive to our spiritual health.
Think it over:
- How can absence of gratitude sour our bhakti?
- How can the presence of gratitude nourish our bhakti?
- List three things that you feel grateful to Krishna for.
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14.04: It should be understood that all species of life, O son of Kunti, are made possible by birth in this material nature, and that I am the seed-giving father.
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Attitude dominated gratitude