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
When asked, “Is it possible for the physical mind to veil the gratitude of the heart?” Sri Chinmoy replied:
“The physical mind is veiling the gratitude of the heart almost every day and, in some cases, twenty-four hours a day.
“The physical mind is constantly crying for possession, and not for liberation. But the heart always has the feeling of oneness. I am in no way superior to you; you are in no way superior to me. But when we live in the physical mind, immediately we are separated. Either I am superior or I am inferior; we cannot be one. The physical mind, which is full of imperfection, limitation and bondage, will always try to separate us from our reality.
“We can unveil the heart’s gratitude the moment we are successful in bringing to the fore our soul, which is full of divine light. And to bring the soul to the fore we have to feel that our whole existence is in the heart itself. When we focus our attention on the heart, we have to feel that there is a divine spark, a most beautiful and luminous child trying to come forward. Like the sun in the sky, many times it is eclipsed by clouds. But when the sun finally does come forward, darkness is totally melted away. If we can focus our attention on the heart, slowly and steadily we will see the inner sun — which is infinitely more brilliant, more powerful, more luminous than the physical sun — come forward and illumine our outer consciousness. At that time the physical mind will be transformed by the infinite Light within us. Then, instead of standing in the way, the mind itself will become a conscious instrument of the heart and the soul.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Knowing the miraculous power of gratitude in our life, we must search within while holding this question in our hearts, “How can I be more thankful to God?”
Here is Sri Chinmoy’s answer:
“Just by thinking of gratitude, we cannot become grateful. Our gratitude is like a magnet that pulls God’s Compassion down to us. But before our gratitude begins to operate, first God has to pull us toward Him. Once God has started to pull us up, then our gratitude begins to grow and we can pull Him down into us.
“There is a special way for a seeker to offer thanks or gratitude to God. It is through cheerfulness, constant cheerfulness. A seeker cannot allow depression to enter into his life of aspiration at any time. He always has to be happy in order to be truly grateful. But if his happiness comes from wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance, that is not the right kind of happiness. Real happiness is something within us which constantly makes us feel that we are expanding our consciousness and wholeheartedly embracing the entire world.
“For the seeker, happiness is a feeling of new hope, new life, new dawn, new promise, new achievement. These feelings the seeker has to nourish and treasure within himself. If the seeker in us cherishes these divine qualities, automatically our thankfulness to God will grow; our gratitude-flower will blossom and we will be able to offer it at the Feet of the Lord Supreme.
“In spiritual happiness, in the happiness that comes from self-giving and aspiration, gratitude looms large. When we have inner happiness, we don’t have to search for gratitude here and there. In our devoted cheerfulness, in our soulful cheerfulness, we are bound to discover constantly-increasing gratitude to the Supreme.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Aspiration is the engine of our spiritual life, the indispensable inner cry that compels us to run ever forward seeking new horizons, to dive within seeking ever deeper depths, and to fly to ever higher heights. Aspiration is the wind in the sails of our meditation, our protection against inertia, safeguard of our previous success, and guarantor of our continuing progress.
So it is imperative that we do all we can to nurture and nourish our aspiration-flame within us, our greatest spiritual treasure.
Sri Chinmoy was asked the question: which is more important in our life of aspiration: cheerfulness or gratitude? He replied:
“If you have cheerfulness, you will make progress. And when you make progress, then your gratitude-heart expands. This is absolutely true. But when you want to see the capacity of gratitude and the capacity of cheerfulness, it is gratitude that is all-powerful. Gratitude has the power of all the oceans put together, whereas cheerfulness has the power of ten or twelve drops. Gratitude is unparalleled in God’s creation, both in Heaven and on earth.
“Again, there are many ways to develop gratitude-power, and cheerfulness is one of the ways. It is one of the strong ways to conquer frustration, depression, anxiety, worries and other negative qualities. It is a great help, and from this help we can develop gratitude-power.
“Aspiration and gratitude are inseparable. They are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. Aspiration takes us high, higher than the highest; and gratitude takes us to the vast, to the vaster than the vastest. The aspiration-bird and the gratitude-bird are the same. When it spreads its wings, it is gratitude, and when it flies up it is aspiration. But it is the same bird, the same inseparable reality.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy offered these words of advice, for when we encounter barriers in our spiritual life:
“If we find ourselves in a barren desert, we can do one thing. We can offer our gratitude to the Supreme, our Inner Pilot, for giving us the divine aspiration to be of service to Him in mankind. There is no power either in the outer world or in the inner world that can ever be as strong as our soulful gratitude. If even for a fleeting minute we can offer God our soulful gratitude, then immediately the barrier that exists between our mind and our heart will dissolve. For the power of our gratitude immediately makes us one with God’s Reality.
“When we look for gratitude in the mind, it seems like something dry, silly and unnecessary. When we look for gratitude in the vital, we see that it does not even exist. And in the physical, gratitude is all the time dormant. But if we live in the aspiring heart, we not only discover gratitude but see it as the most powerful reality. If we can become one with the Supreme on the strength of our gratitude, there can be no dry periods; there can be no wall, no barrier, no undivine forces that delay our progress.
“When we have gratitude, we are like a flower that is blossoming petal by petal in the Heart of the Supreme. This flower is full of fragrance, which constantly illumines, energises and fulfils the human in us, the Divine in us and the Supreme in us.
“When you and the rest of humanity have become one, and when you enjoy this oneness divinely, there can be no partition, no barrier, no desert, but only ever-increasing bliss and ever-transcending freedom.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“The seeker’s offering
Of an iota of gratitude to God
Is as beautiful as a rose
Held by God in His own Hand.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Constantly recurring in Sri Chinmoy’s talks and writings on gratitude, are the qualities of beauty, fragrance and sweetness.
“When you feel deep inside you
Something very beautiful
Which you have never felt before,
You will know that God has received
The sweet and charming fragrance
Of your heart’s blossoming
Gratitude-flower.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When Sri Chinmoy was asked, “How can one adequately express gratitude?” he answered:
“You do not actually have to try to express gratitude. If you have true gratitude, it will express itself automatically. It will be visible in your eyes, around your being, in your aura. It is like the fragrance of a flower. True, there are some flowers that do not have any fragrance. But in most cases, if there is a beautiful flower, the fragrance will be there naturally. The flower and its fragrance cannot be separated.
“Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seeker’s life — in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes. The beauty of the eyes is determined not by their shape or their colour. No, the beauty of the eyes depends on the heart’s beauty.
“If there is gratitude inside your heart, then it will be expressed through your eyes in the form of sweetness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Feeling gratitude in our heart, enhances not only our own happiness and wellbeing, it also radiates to the world around us. Sri Chinmoy expresses this truth completely and perfectly in this beautiful jewel of a poem:
“Just one smile
From my gratitude-heart
Immensely increases
The beauty of the universe.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“In one of your poems you say that God will do everything for us if our every breath embodies soulful gratitude. This kind of gratitude seems far beyond our reach. How can we have it?”
He replied:
“Gratitude is not found in dryness or in strictness; it is not found in a morbid life. Gratitude comes from sweetness — sweetness in life, sweetness in breath. The sweetness of our own nature, our own character, our own movements will create everlasting gratitude. Gratitude is nothing but a spontaneous feeling of sweetness, which does not even have to be expressed in words. A child may not say ‘Thank you’ to his mother, but the sweetness of his entire being is expressed through his eyes in the form of a smile. He does not know the word ‘gratitude’, but when the mother sees his sweet smile, she knows that the child is full of gratitude. So the more we can create sweetness in our hearts and in our being, the easier it becomes to offer gratitude to God.
“One way to get sweetness is to look at a most beautiful, fragrant flower. When we look at the flower and smell its fragrance, consciously or unconsciously we become one with its beauty and fragrance. At that time, its sweetness enters into us or our own sweetness comes forward; sometimes both happen simultaneously. Then our whole being becomes sweet and it is easier to have good thoughts. If we are really focusing all our attention on the innocent beauty and fragrance of God the creation through this flower, then impure thoughts disappear, and only sweet thoughts remain. And when sweetness comes to the fore in our nature, it becomes very easy to offer gratitude.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When Sri Chinmoy was asked, “What is the best aspect of the Supreme to concentrate on for transformation?” He replied:
“It is always advisable to concentrate on the Compassion aspect of the Supreme for our personal transformation or world transformation because it is the Compassion aspect of the Supreme that expedites our progress. If we concentrate on His Heart aspect or Delight aspect or Peace aspect or any other aspect, we may have in our mind the idea of give and take. We have given the Supreme a drop and now He may give us the ocean. Always there is a feeling of an exchange. He is infinitely richer and more powerful than we are. So if we give Him what we have, then He will give us what He has, which will be infinitely more. If we have that kind of feeling, then transformation will occur very slowly.
“But if we approach the Supreme through His Compassion aspect, we feel that we are in no way adding to what He has or offering Him anything that He needs. Instead, we feel that we need our own transformation and world transformation and, out of His infinite Bounty, unconditionally He is giving this to us. If we have that kind of feeling, then our heart’s gratitude will overflow and it will accelerate our progress. Gratitude is the fastest way to make individual and collective progress, and gratitude comes when we approach the Compassion aspect of the Supreme.”
Question: “Can we increase our aspiration the fastest by expanding our gratitude?”
Sri Chinmoy: “Yes. We can increase our aspiration by expanding our gratitude. What is gratitude? Gratitude is not only an outer acknowledgement of God’s Compassion-Light but also a discovery of man’s oneness and God’s infinite Bliss.”
– Sri Chinmoy
