A LIFESTYLE OF GRATITUDE

"Being grateful is a state of consciousness, a state awakened awareness. Are we grateful for every breath we breathe?" - Radhanath Swami

Every opportunity that comes to us in life, we should learn to be grateful for. We can't take anything for granted. I recently got the opportunity to go to Mauritius and had a good experience there but, if it was not for Krishna's mercy, so many things could have gone wrong. It could have rained heavily and spoilt the experience. I could have got sick there and not been able to move out. The flight could have met with an accident. And the list can go on and on. There could have be "n" number of possibilities to disrupt my experience there.

We cannot take anything in life for granted. The difference between children and adults is this - the children take for granted whatever they get but a mature adult knows that things don't come that easily. A child is in the mood of demanding what he doesn't have but an adult is the mood of being grateful for what he is already given access to. We all have the choice of still being in the mindset of an immature child or growing from this childhood phase and embracing the mindset of a mature adult. We need to remember that, the life we are experiencing now is a dream for many. Yes, we do have problems to overcome and we do have our goals to achieve but while we overcome our problems and strive to achieve our goals, we can't afford to be ungrateful for the present life that we already are experiencing. If we focus too much on what is missing in our life, we miss to recognise all the blessings that is already present.

Life is not meant for complaining and crying about what is not there but it is meant to be grateful for what is already there. How often have we offered a prayer to God just thanking Him for all the wonderful gifts and experiences He has awarded us with? Even while praying to God, our mood is always to ask for something or the other, our prayer to Him is to fill in the missing spaces in our life. We need to remember that our state of happiness and peace is directly proportional to our state of gratitude. As the saying goes - "it is not the happy people who are grateful but the grateful people who are happy". Therefore, let us begin the day with thanking God for another day to live and end the day thanking Him for all the wonderful experiences that came across our way during the day. Let gratitude be our way of thinking, our way of feeling and our way of living.

- Achyut Gopal Das

Comments

THE SPEAKING RIVER

Rivers are considered lifelines of humanity. They not only nourish us physically but also emotionally and spiritually. No wonder, our culture has rightly given them status as mother's. Imagine, if rivers could speak, what message they would like to give us. Here are few lessons that we can learn from them. In fact if we remain in the mood of submissive students of life, there is so much we can learn even from "so called" inanimate objects. Many of these lessons are from Radhanath Maharaj's memoir - 'The Journey Home'. Lesson 1 - MAGIC OF SETTING GOALS The river is so desperate, so determined, so focused to reach the sea that nothing can stop it. It goes over, under or around all impediments. It never gives up. It has learnt the art of overcoming all obstacles. In fact it is said that, obstacles are those things that you see when you loose focus of your goals . The river teaches us that the first and most important key to overcome obstacles in lif...

WHEN MASTER BECOMES A SERVANT..

" If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go for a picnic. If you want happiness for a month, get married. If you want happiness for a lifetime, serve others. " - Chinese Proverb When and where have we seen a master take the role of a servant? Probably never or if at all, very rarely. Here, I would like to briefly touch upon a few touching stories from the life of Lord Krishna, who even though is The Supreme Master of everything and everyone, still happily chooses to play the role of a servant to His devotees. THE RECEPTIONIST Much, much before the Mahabharata war, when Yudhishthira was performing the Rajasuya sacrifice to be crowned as the undisputed emperor of the world, all his friends and relatives were assigned different departments to take care of, depending on thier tastes and inclinations. Bhima was in-charge of the kitchen, Sanjaya was in-charge of the protocol and of taking care of Kings from various lands, Duryodhan was in...

RACE AGAINST TIME

Time and tide wait for none. Time is one of the most powerful feature of this world. In fact, Lord Krishna introduces Himself as time in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. However powerful a personality one may be, at the end everyone has to bow down in front of time and surrender to it. History is the proof of the power of time. Big, big people reduced to dust by time. Time is so imperceptible in it's working that we don't even realize how days, weeks, months and years pass away - until it's too late . Our life can be compared to a video game with a timer on. Only, the one who wins the game before the time runs out is declared the winner. The only difference between the video game and and the game of life is that in the video game, you know how much time is left but in the game of life, you don't know how much time is left. If while playing a simple game we have to be fully focused and conscious not to waste time to win it, how much more, we hav...

The Wisdom Park

Search This Blog