Gratitude is like a secret door to happiness.
It looks like we'll be happy if we push things around in the world until we get what we want. But as the Buddha pointed out, it is in the very nature of craving to suffer. It is in the very nature of suffering to be clinging to thoughts of how the past should have been or how the present should be now.
When we complain, hold judgments, grumble about the world, assume bad motives in others, etc., we destroy ourselves. Suffering is inherent in such attitudes.
When we delight in the world, when we love it as it is, when we "rejoice in the way things are," as Lao-Tzu put it, we cannot help but feel peace.
And as a side effect—an unexpected one—we become a channel for more energy and more effectiveness in nurturing the world. The very opposite of what we might have thought would happen.
The joy of gratitude comes about through a kind of deep falling down at the feet of the way things are—to seeing the beauty and necessity of all of it. Then, in the midst of that surrender, we simply do whatever we can.
—jim sloman, fall 2000 for Jul 20
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