Why is gratitude important in bhakti – how can we develop gratitude?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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what is the importance of gratitude in bhakti and how can we develop gratitude how can we remind ourselves of the importance of gratitude actually suppose you have a child and that child is always dissatisfied with whatever you do for him that will not be a very pleasant relationship I give you one thing for the child you did not give me that toy, you did not give me this you did not give me that then it will not be quite an unpleasant or strange relationship so Krishna is our parent and we are his child so if we don’t have gratitude then we will have the opposite discontent dissatisfaction always dissatisfied this is not happening this is not working this is not there in my life then we cannot be easily related to Krishna so gratitude enables us to create a basic platform of amicability or pleasantness in our relationship with Krishna and we say we have to remember Krishna but it is Anukulyena Krishna Vishuddha I have to remember Krishna in a way that is pleasing to me so there are two different things which are involved over here one is remembering Krishna the person himself and second is remembering what this person Krishna has done for me so you cannot artificially segregate them but still for example when we hear Krishna’s pastimes we are not constantly thinking what has Krishna done for me Krishna came and understood Draupadi Krishna came and accepted me what has Krishna done for me we are not necessarily thinking like that we are just thinking about Krishna and that itself is beautiful and that hearing about Krishna is good but we also want to develop a personal relationship with Krishna and then we want to connect with Krishna so that gratitude is important in taking Krishna or in raising our relationship with Krishna on the level of just just central just a hero and entertaining stories we just hear Krishna’s pastimes and we organize there is superman, there is batman like that there is Krishna nice stories but we want to have a personal relationship with Krishna so gratitude creates a basic platform of pleasantness then we are remembering Krishna and we have a personal relationship with this and for every gratitude one of the easy, one of the most important things to focus on is on what we have the whole advertising industry is focusing on showing us all that we don’t have in fact they say that for the consumer economy consumer dissatisfaction is the fuel to the extent consumer is dissatisfied, they purchase new things that’s how the economy will move on but that’s an unsustainable model if you want to be satisfied we expose ourselves to the materialistic propaganda of the country so minimizing that exposure so we don’t focus so much on seeing what we don’t have we focus on seeing what we have and seeing what we have also means with respect to whatever we have in spiritual life we need to appreciate what we have the father may give give say a will to the child when the child becomes 18 the child gets a million dollars what is the value of it what is the value of it the child doesn’t appreciate it because the child doesn’t understand what it is so like that Krishna gives us many spiritual gifts but if we don’t appreciate what he has given us then we won’t value it so for appreciating that we need to hear the philosophy and if we look at our life there are things that are wrong in our life and there are things that are right the mind by default goes towards the things that are wrong and makes us dissatisfied so we need to consciously go towards the things that are right and remind ourselves of it and that’s why if we consciously sit down and listen what are the things I am grateful for and then when we don’t feel gratitude we look back and read it because there are times I was talking earlier about the spikes of the mind so the mind goes into negative feelings at that time it’s like our intelligence becomes paralyzed it doesn’t work that’s why if at that time we have already written down something then we can read that yeah it’s true you don’t have this, you don’t have this, you don’t have this we have so many other things we read that and we strengthen our intelligence that way by writing down what are the things that we are thankful for and hearing so that we understand that what all we have to be thankful for the two things are there whatever we are thankful for we need to remember ourselves remind ourselves of that and other things, they are valuable but the value we don’t realize so by hearing about it we start appreciating the value and a very important thing for gratitude is monitoring our level of expectation if I come to a program I expect that there is going to be a 12 course feast after the program and there are only 6 items over there I have been dissatisfied by that time I just think there are so many people who every night they go to sleep starving with empty stomach I think at that time 6 course feast is a big thing it’s wonderful so to cultivate satisfaction we need to regulate our expectation so gratitude comes when we don’t go into life with big big expectations if we have too big expectations of everything, we will never be satisfied so by monitoring our expectations by listing what all we are thankful for and by building so that we can appreciate what are the things that we don’t appreciate right now by that we can cultivate gratitude