How Gratitude Can Change Your Life

Namo Buddhaya. Welcome everyone to another video. Hope you're having a great day. Today I'm at the viewpoint of our monastery. It's a nice view out here. So in this video let's talk about the gratefulness and the gratitude. Now this is one of the major qualities that we practice in Buddhism. Okay, Buddha considered the gratitude and the gratefulness as the mother of all the good qualities. In Mahamangala Sutra the Buddha says, having a grateful mind is a blessing for your life. Okay, so how can we practice this gratitude and what is the meaning of gratitude? Now the word that is given for the gratitude in Buddhism is called Katanyuta. Katanyuta means the ability to remember what one has done to you. That means the helps that have done to you. If you can remember the people and the helps that you have given, okay, people have done to you, then that is called the gratitude. So how can we practice this? Well, you can be grateful and you can be thankful for almost everything in your life. For an example, let's say you wake up in the morning and then what you can do is you can be grateful for your life, okay, for waking up in the morning, for breathing and for having a life. Because most of the times, like so many people last night, they could not wake up in the morning, okay, so we can be grateful for our life. And then if, let's say, you take your food plate to your hand, you can practice gratitude in there. How? You can be grateful for the people who made that food. Maybe your wife, maybe your husband, maybe someone who helped you, okay. So you can be grateful for them. You can say that, thank you, okay. Genuinely, you can say that, thank you, I am grateful for you, okay. Because of you, because of you people, I live happily and I live in comfort in my life. When you do that, you practice that mind of gratitude in your life, okay. And also, there are so many things that you can be grateful for, okay. Let's say, you're using a computer, right. You can be grateful for your computer because it makes your life so much easier. You can be grateful for the people who made that computer, okay. And also, let's say, you're walking down a street, okay, and you're walking down a nice lane. And then you can be grateful for the people who made the road, okay. You can be grateful for the nature that you're around. Here's the thing, you can be grateful for everything in your life. Because sometimes, it is difficult for us to be happy with our life, okay. Because when we go through tough times, when we hit the problems in our life, we start to think like, my life is not valuable, okay. My life is worthless and there's nothing to be happy about my life. But if you really think about it, if you really consider about it, there are thousands and thousands of things that we can be happy about and we can be thankful for, okay. So that is what you call the Buddhist positive thinking, okay. Buddha considered this as the blessing for your life. And also the Buddha said, in Mahamangala Sutra, Buddha mentions that Santurti and Katanyuta is a blessing for your life. Santurti means being happy with what you have. And Katanyuta means being grateful for what you have. These two qualities are a blessing for your life. It makes your life so much fulfilled and so much happier, okay. So in every morning, okay, in every morning, take a little time to practice this gratitude in your life, okay. Wake up in the morning and say that, I am thankful for my life, okay. I am thankful for the people who lived around me, who helped me, okay. Who was there with me in my life in the hardest times. And also in the same time, we can be happy about the tough times and bad people in our life too, okay. So many people don't think about this, because we become grateful for only for the good people and the good situations in our life. No, we can be grateful for the bad people and difficult situations in our life. How can we do that? Well, because of the bad people and because of the bad situations and tough situations in our life, our life became so much interesting, right. Imagine if your life became all the things like, you got all the things you wanted, okay. And there were all the people who were good and nice to you, okay. You didn't face any tough situations in your life. There's nothing more interesting, nothing much interesting about your life. But because of the bad people and because of the tough situations and the bad days in our life, our life became so much interesting, no. Because there is a story for us to tell, okay. There is an interesting story for us to tell. That is why the more we face tough situations, our life becomes so much interesting. So we can be thankful for the bad people and say like, thank you for giving me tough times. Thank you for bringing me, giving me the ability and giving me the ability to practice the patience and love and kindness and compassion for you. Because a few people in that way, you can be, you see, if you think about it, you can be grateful for every situation and everything in your life. So every single day when you wake up in the morning, take a little moment to say thank you for everything and every people and every person in your life. So keep that in your mind and practice this wonderful quality of gratitude. Namo Buddhaya.