“Gratitude is something in our heart
That helps us
Transcend our experience of earth
And
Intensify our realisation of God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked, how one can develop perfect gratitude, Sri Chinmoy answered:
“First of all, please try to feel that gratitude abides inside your heart. Then ask yourself whether you are the heart. The immediate answer will be, ‘One minute a day.’ The rest of the time, you are the mind or you are the body or you are the vital. But if you can feel that you are the heart, not just for a fleeting second or a fleeting minute, but twenty-four hours a day, if you can feel the presence of your heart as your own existence, then easily you will have gratitude, since gratitude lives inside the heart.
“Now, how can you increase your gratitude? If you have that capacity to feel that you are the heart, try to feel that your heart is constantly becoming large, larger, largest. It is like the father whose salary is constantly increasing. He used to get fifty dollars a week, now he is getting one hundred dollars, and soon he will be getting two hundred dollars. In the same way, the capacity of your heart is constantly increasing. Now, the child of the heart is gratitude. When the father becomes richer, the child also automatically becomes richer because he knows that his father’s property belongs to him as well. If his father becomes a multimillionaire, then in time his father’s wealth goes to him. So when the heart is all the time expanding, when its capacity is all the time increasing, gratitude is also increasing and growing in capacity.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“May the bliss-waves
Of my gratitude-heart
Sleeplessly rise and rise.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked, “What is the best way to think of the Supreme?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“The best way is through gratitude, soulful gratitude. Offer gratitude: that is the best way, the only way. The second you offer gratitude in your thoughts and in your feelings, your oneness will be perfect. If you offer gratitude, you will understand more; your mental vision, psychic vision, everything will become perfect. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude is the only answer. Try to grow the gratitude-flower inside your heart and watch it blossom petal by petal. As it blossoms it is spreading its beauty and fragrance.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our next question: how can we offer God more gratitude?
“We can offer more gratitude to God only by feeling that He is giving us at every moment more and more and more. If somebody gives me a flower, I will offer him my gratitude. If he gives me two flowers, I will give him more gratitude. Then if he gives me three flowers, I will offer him even more gratitude. In God’s case, He wants to give us infinitely more than we need, so naturally our gratitude will increase. But we have to know that He gives everything at His own time and in His own Way — not at our hour or according to our wishes. Our fixed hour is this very moment. But if He gives us something at this moment, then it may create a very serious problem for us. It may increase our ego, pride or vanity or produce many other undivine results. So we can show more gratitude to God by feeling that He is giving us at every moment infinitely more than we need and by offering more of our conscious and sleepless surrender to His Will.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our spiritual life always needs protection, in order that it can grow and flow towards its goal of satisfaction. In these two extracts, Sri Chinmoy reveals the key to both protection and satisfaction is gratitude:
“Gratitude is a form of prayer, a form of protection. If we offer gratitude to the Supreme early in the morning, then immediately gratitude itself will hold protection for us. We are not asking for protection. We are offering gratitude because God has done something for us. The moment we offer our gratitude, God expands our receptivity. When He expands our receptivity, immediately Light enters into us. The function of Light is to enter into us. Light waits at every second to enter into us. And the moment we are receptive, the moment we expand our power of receptivity, it enters. Our receptivity is like a vessel. The bigger we can make it, the more it can contain.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“The modern world is getting satisfaction from new scientific discoveries. What is God’s latest discovery? If we say that God’s latest discovery is man, then we are mistaken. If we say that God’s latest discovery is human aspiration, we are mistaken. If we say that God’s latest discovery is man’s dedication, we are mistaken. If we say that God’s latest discovery is man’s surrender to God’s Will, we are also mistaken. What, then, is God’s latest discovery? It is man’s gratitude, which is absolutely the rarest thing on earth. Each time God discovers it, He feels that it is really His latest discovery. When man offers gratitude to the Supreme, his power of receptivity increases in infinite measure. As his receptivity increases, his satisfaction-power also increases. The supreme Satisfaction lies in man’s constant offering of gratitude to God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy spoke on the connection between receptivity and gratitude:
“Receptivity increases only in one way: by increasing our gratitude to God. There is no other way to increase receptivity. You can offer gratitude to God not only for what you have, but for what you are going to have. What you already have, what you are right now, how can you deny? What you are going to have or what you are going to become, you may not know. But you can use your imagination. The more gratitude you can offer to God, the more you can create positive thoughts, positive ideas and positive goals for yourself.
“So if you want to increase any good quality in your life, just increase your gratitude to God. If you are an artist, offer gratitude; if you are a cyclist, offer gratitude; if you are a singer, offer gratitude. As an individual, you have capacities in perhaps seven or eight areas. For each thing, try to offer gratitude to the Supreme.
“This morning, if you had a good meditation, if you did not suffer from doubt, fear, anxiety, worry, jealousy and so on, then offer gratitude, sincere gratitude. The following day, your meditation will be better.
“We can offer gratitude to God not only for the positive things in our life but also for our weaknesses. We can say, ‘God, I am so grateful to You that I have only one weakness, it is limited.’ If you can offer gratitude to God because you only have one weakness, then God will take away that weakness.
“So our gratitude-heart can be of great benefit to us. The more gratitude we can offer to God, the more He will increase our receptivity and capacity in so many different fields.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Joy is found in newness and newness flows from joy. Both are incalculable treasures in our spiritual life.
When asked, “What is the best way to establish joy in every part of the being?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“The best way to establish joy in every part of our being is by feeling constant gratitude to the One who is responsible for our having accepted the spiritual life. At every second we have to remember what we were before we became consciously spiritual. No matter how far away the Goal still is, we can easily see the distance we have already covered.
“We can offer gratitude to God, or to our spiritual teacher, or to our path; we can even offer gratitude to our own good qualities or to the inner cry that started us on our spiritual journey. Whatever we offer gratitude to, it ultimately goes to the Source, to the One who has inspired us to see a higher reality and run towards the Goal. We offer gratitude to the Source because it has created in us an inner urge to return to it and seek fulfilment there. And gratitude in its various forms gives us total joy in every part of our being.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was further asked: “What is the best way to bring new life into each new day?”
“The best way to bring new life into each new day is to offer endless gratitude to God the Creator and God the creation early in the morning. When our gratitude-heart blossoms, it immediately covers the length and breadth of the world. The beauty and fragrance of a gratitude-heart will always remain unsurpassable among all the divine qualities that a seeker has. So the answer is gratitude, gratitude, gratitude!”
– Sri Chinmoy
When Sri Chinmoy was asked, how can our prayer be made most intense? his answer was illumining and fulfilling:
“You can make your prayer most intense through your gratitude-heart. While you are praying, prayer is coming from your heart. You have to feed the prayer with gratitude. Gratitude is the nourishment. If somebody is going to run a race, he needs to be fed. If anybody is going to do something great or good, he needs nourishment. Similarly, if you don’t nourish the prayer with your gratitude-fruit, then your prayer will not be intense.
“Nothing divine will be intense unless and until you are grateful to the Supreme. You want intense love for God, intense devotion to God and intense surrender to God’s Will. But you will not have these divine qualities unless gratitude comes to the fore for what God has given you and for what God has not given you.
“At every moment during the day you are energised by good thoughts or assailed by bad thoughts. You have to know that the good thoughts which you get are coming directly from the Supreme, and the will to fight and destroy or illumine the bad thoughts is also coming from the Supreme. He is inside you as a Warrior when wrong thoughts come to attack you, and He is inside you as the Heavenly Father, the Supreme Beloved, when good thoughts come to illumine you. So, naturally you are grateful.
“So use your gratitude-heart to feed your prayer. Early in the morning, if you don’t renew your gratitude-heart during your meditation or prayer, then nothing will be intense. At every moment your gratitude-heart must feed your intense inner cry and aspiration. Then you can intensify your prayer, your aspiration, your dedication and everything.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“There are countless approaches to God,
But the easiest and most effective approach
Is to sow the seed of gratitude
And watch it growing every day
Inside the depths
Of your silence-flooded heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked, “How can we learn to love God with all our heart?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“First of all, let us try to know what heart means. The spiritual heart is the sweetest and most intimate part of us. We can expect it to have the feeling of immediate, indivisible oneness with God. Right now, our physical existence separates us from our heart-consciousness. Also, the mind is using us and, therefore, the heart is not being allowed to come to the fore. Again, sometimes we use the vital and think it is the heart that we are using. In order to give our heart’s love to the Supreme, we have first to identify ourselves with the true heart. Next, we have to feel that our heart is composed of only one thing: gratitude. We must feel our oneness with the heart and we must feel that we have become gratitude itself. If somebody calls our name, our inner being will not respond. But if somebody says the word ‘gratitude’, immediately we will feel that he is calling us and nobody else.
“This gratitude is for whom? It is for the Supreme. The moment we can feel that our inner existence and outer existence have only one name, gratitude, we will be able to offer our heart’s love to the Supreme totally, implicitly and ceaselessly. Why do we have to offer gratitude to the Supreme? Because God has given us the greatest blessing imaginable. He has given us the aspiration to lead a spiritual life and realise Him.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was asked to speak of the significance of humility and gratitude. He responded:
“In the spiritual life two qualities are absolutely of utmost importance. These two qualities are humility and gratitude.
“Humility and gratitude. If we can add appropriate adjectives to these two words, then they will convey more height and more depth. For humility I wish to add ‘sincere’: sincere humility. For gratitude, I wish to add ‘soulful’: soulful gratitude. Gratitude has to be full of the soul-consciousness; otherwise it is not gratitude. Then it becomes a tricky way of gaining something more from the person to whom we show our gratitude. But soulful gratitude is offered to someone for what we have received. Even if that person does not give us anything more in life, not even an iota of joy or love, we shall eternally remain grateful to him for what he has done. We shall always be grateful for the way his gift has added to our life of aspiration, or considerably transformed our life and carried us consciously to the highest Source. When we offer soulful gratitude, it is our eternal recognition of what we have received from someone on our eternal journey…
“All spiritual Masters without exception have told us that humility is of constant necessity in order to make the fastest and surest progress in the spiritual life. It is necessary in order to see the Face of our Supreme Beloved, the Inner Pilot. Inner humility and gratitude are our highest achievements. When you feel humble, you feel that your body, vital and mind are responding to your soul’s dictates. If you feel grateful, sincerely grateful, soulfully grateful, then you have achieved the highest achievement that the earth-consciousness can offer to the Heaven-consciousness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was asked, is there anything more beautiful than true humility? He replied:
“Yes, gratitude. The soul’s gratitude, the mind’s gratitude, the vital’s gratitude, the body’s gratitude are much more beautiful than humility. One can be humble but he need not be grateful. Again, one can be grateful and not humble. But if one is sincerely grateful, then there is every possibility that his gratitude-power will lead him to recognise that somebody is superior to him. When we receive something from somebody else, automatically we feel that that person is in some way superior to us. In this way gratitude-power can make us humble.
“If we are grateful, we are grateful because of our achievements or because we have received something from somebody else, so we feel that we are under obligation to be humble. Otherwise, the next time we want to achieve or receive something from that person, he may not help us. But if we have not received anything from someone, why should we be grateful to him? We may feel humble when we are with him, but this humility will not make us grateful.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked: “Is love the purest form of gratitude and, if so, can love and gratitude be the fastest way to perfection?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“No, love is not the purest form of gratitude. Devoted surrender and unconditional oneness are the purest forms of gratitude. Love is very complicated: there is human love, divine love, animal love. Again, even divine love sometimes is mixed up with vital demands. But when there is a constant, inseparable and unconditional surrender and oneness, this is undoubtedly the purest form of gratitude. And this gratitude is undoubtedly the fastest way not only to perfection, but to perfect Perfection.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“The ego deals only with the person and his possessions. If we deal with the universal Consciousness, we become the entire universe. In this consciousness we do not act like a tiny individual who can only claim himself and feel, ‘This is my property. This is my capacity. This is my individuality. This is my achievement.’ No, at that time we will say, ‘All achievements are mine. There is nothing that I cannot claim as my very own.’
“In the spiritual life the easiest way to conquer ego is to offer gratitude to God for five minutes daily. If you cannot offer gratitude for five minutes, then offer it for one minute. Offer your gratitude to God. Then you will feel that inside you a sweet, fragrant and beautiful flower is growing. That is the flower of humility. When you offer Him your gratitude, God gives you something most beautiful, which is humility. When you discover the flower of humility inside you, you will feel that your consciousness has covered the length and breadth of the universe. Think of the blade of grass and immediately you will feel humility. We trample upon grass, but it never complains or revolts. If we walk gently on grass, we can get the sense of oneness with Mother Earth and with the infinite Vast. We touch the heart of the Mother Earth and we feel the heart of Heaven in our joy, for when we touch the heart of Mother Earth, Father Heaven immediately responds with joy. In the spiritual life we grow humility through conscious gratitude. Once it has seen the flower of humility, the ego goes away because it feels that it can become something better: the universal oneness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our sense of ego and need of appreciation, create so many obstacles and problems in our lives. We will often do or give something only in the expectation or at least in the hope, of being appreciated and admired. And if we do not receive the appreciation and admiration we secretly hope for, we feel miserable or that our action, offering or performance was worthless. Our happiness, satisfaction and sense of self-worth are dependent on the appreciation we receive from the outer world.
Sri Chinmoy was once asked, if there is a question we can ask ourselves to see if we are keeping our motives pure, so that when we are doing something, we are doing it for the right purpose and not for the ego?
“Whenever we do something, we look around to see if others are watching. If we are successful, we look to see if they are appreciating us. And if we have failed badly, we look to see if anyone has seen it. Even if it is for God that we are doing something, a kind of pride may come in. But whenever you are doing something, if you have tremendous gratitude inside your heart, sincere gratitude inside your heart, then that gratitude will bring purity into the entire being. Then there can be no problem.
“You have to feel that God gave you the capacity to start, God gave you the capacity to continue, and God gave you the capacity to complete whatever you are doing. Therefore you are so grateful. At every moment, from the beginning to the end, if you can feel the presence of gratitude inside your heart, then the ego does not come into the picture. The ego and gratitude do not go together.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“How to melt God’s Heart?
Just launder your life
With gratitude-soap.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was once asked, “Once we achieve purity, how may we maintain it?” He responded:
“Once you achieve purity, you can maintain it only through constant remembrance of God’s Compassion and through constant offering of gratitude to the Supreme. Only then will your purity stay with you permanently.”
– Sri Chinmoy
It is clear, that gratitude is the key to maintaining purity in our inner life. Yet to someone lacking in purity, understanding or identifying with the very concept of purity can be frustratingly baffling, and to obtain any meaningful degree of purity in our thoughts and lives, is a monumental and sometimes seemingly impossible task.
In the following passage, Sri Chinmoy clarifies the essence of purity and elucidates the means to attaining this elusive quality:
“Purity. In a broad sense, physical purity is cleanliness, vital purity is an open heart and mental purity is the absence of undivine and unhealthy thoughts. Inner purity is our gratitude-heart. If we really want to know what purity is, our gratitude-heart can tell us what it is. In the inner world, gratitude is the only purity. It is through gratitude, constant gratitude to the Supreme in us, that we expand our consciousness and come to know our higher vision and reality. If we can sow a seed of gratitude which will germinate and grow into a tiny plant and then into a banyan tree, then under this huge banyan tree in our gratitude-hearts thousands of seekers will be able to take shelter and grow into divinity.
“Our gratitude-heart is the pioneer-seeker. It is the path-finder and the God-server. Let us feel that what we are and eternally will become is nothing but a gratitude-heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was once asked, what is the best way to seek spiritual healing for all the sickness and sadness of the world. He replied:
“The best way to seek spiritual healing is to offer gratitude every day for a fleeting second to the Supreme Healer. When we offer gratitude to Him for what we have or for what we are right now, then our heart of aspiration and dedication expands. That means that our receptivity increases. When receptivity increases, God’s Light, which is all healing, can enter into us in abundant measure. It is in the heart of gratitude that God’s Light can permanently abide.
“Illness is all around. How can we cure it? We can cure it only through our gratitude-heart. We have to offer our gratitude to the Absolute Supreme that He has given us the sincere inner cry to cure humanity’s suffering. There are many who do not care to cure illness either within themselves or within the world. There are many millions and billions of people on earth, but how many are crying to cure the sufferings and ills of mankind? Very few. But just because we are seekers, we are crying and trying to cure the age-old illnesses and sufferings of mankind. Now, who has given us this good will, this aspiration, this inner cry? God Himself. So, it is our bounden duty to offer Him our gratitude. There are many who do not pray to God or meditate on God. But we do. And who has given us this capacity? God Himself. So, if at every moment we can offer our gratitude to God, then the receptivity of our heart increases. And inside our receptivity is all strength, all light, all power to cure the sufferings of mankind.”
– Sri Chinmoy
