“My God-gratitude-heart
Makes everything sweet
In my life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Our heart’s gratitude
Produces a sleepless energy
Which helps us bring about success
In each and every aspect of our life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“To roar
With a lion-strength,
We must soar
In our God-gratitude-heart-sky.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“What enables us to see God?
Definitely not our capacity-strength,
But our heart’s gratitude-length.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“A moment of gratitude offered to God is an hour of most intense meditation on God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Our heart’s gratitude
Is the measure
Of our spiritual progress.”
– Sri Chinmoy
These beautiful poems and aphorisms celebrate the unparalleled beauty, sweetness, power and strength of gratitude. So significant and essential is this quality, the burning question for us all must surely be: How can we access and bring forth gratitude from within? Sri Chinmoy’s answer to this question is disarmingly simple:
“It is through the constant inner cry. We cry outwardly when we desperately need name, fame, outer capacity, prosperity and so forth. But when we cry inwardly, we have to feel that we are crying only to please and fulfil God in His own Way. The outer cry is for our own fulfilment, in our own way. The inner cry is for God-fulfilment in God’s own Way. If there is a constant inner cry, that means we are trying to please God, satisfy God and fulfil God in God’s own Way. If we can cry inwardly, in silence, then our gratitude increases, because inside the inner cry is the abode of gratitude, and inside the abode of gratitude is God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Nothing else is perfect
And
Nothing else can ever be perfect
Except the soulful cry
Of our fruitful gratitude-heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“Gratitude
Is by far the best
Attitude.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When asked, “What is the power that brings down God’s Presence in all our actions?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“There are two powers that bring down God into all our actions and multifarious activities. One power is our gratitude-power. Always we have to offer our gratitude to God for everything that we do, for everything that we have become. The other power is the power of seeing God in others. If we don’t see God in others, if we only see God in ourselves, then we will not be successful. We have to see divinity inside everybody, even inside our worst enemy. Let us see inside our enemy the Presence of God. God’s Presence is everywhere. But if we deny His Presence inside a particular thing, then that thing will eventually attack.
“Right now God’s Presence is not sufficiently operating in the mind, whereas inside the heart it is operating most powerfully. So from where it is operating most powerfully we have to carry it elsewhere. Everyone and everything has a soul. Even a bench has a soul. If we can feel the presence of the soul inside the bench, then we will never feel that we are without God.
“So there are two powers that can keep us always one, inseparably one with God’s Reality. One is our constant offering of gratitude. The other is the power to see in others the things that we see inside ourselves. If we see and feel that we are God’s instrument, then we have to feel that he and she are equally God’s instruments. In this way we can feel that God is constantly operating in and through us. Then we remain in the same highest level of consciousness while participating in God’s cosmic Game.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“There are many roads
That lead to our Destination.
Our gratitude-heart-road
Is the shortest.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was asked: “What is the most magical word?” He replied:
“The most magical word is gratitude. The most magical thing is to offer one’s gratitude to the Supreme for what He has granted to you and not granted to you, out of His infinite Bounty, in order to fulfil His own Dream-Reality in and through you.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“In my spiritual life,
Nothing can be as sweet,
Illumining and fulfilling
As my God-gratitude-heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Question: “Since you say that gratitude is the most beautiful thing on earth, what is the effect of gratitude on man and God?”
Sri Chinmoy’s reply: “When an individual offers gratitude to God, immediately his receptivity increases. His vessel becomes large. Then God is able to pour more of His Blessings into the person or enter more fully into that vessel with His own divine Existence. God is infinite, but only according to our receptivity can He enter into us. God is like sunlight. If I leave this window open, sunlight will come in here. If I keep all the other windows closed, it cannot come in there. The more we offer gratitude, the more we increase our receptivity and capacity. The more windows we open, the more God enters into us with Light, abundant Light, infinite Light. When we offer gratitude, immediately God’s Light comes pouring into our being.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Along with light pouring into our being, gratitude brings supreme energy, as Sri Chinmoy elucidates:
“The divine in me grows
Only when I devotedly allow
The supreme Energy to flow.
What is the supreme Energy?
The supreme Energy is my constant
Offering of my gratitude-heart
To the Supreme.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“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
