Finding gratitude in happiness and suffering

The thirteenth lojong slogan is "Be grateful to everyone." I think this holiday time is therefore a great time to blog about this in the #lojongchallenge, since I feel the Christmas period is always a time to reflect on what I can be grateful about. As the year draws to a close, I always think about what happened in the past year, and so much has happened. Although I never feel I have enough time to accomplish what I want to, nevertheless stuff happens and papers do get published, data gets collected, and grants get submitted. In this past year, my lab doubled in size, which is quite sobering.

Grateful for the delicious food on the Christmas table (a vegan roast, gravy, loads of veggies...). Picture by Maya Thierens.

Being grateful is a one of the easiest way to enhance your happiness. There is even some research that shows that being grateful is a great way to enhance satisfaction with life and self esteem. I often forget to be grateful for what I have in the mad rush to get stuff done. When things slow down towards the end of the year, gratefulness gets a chance to re-emerge. When you think about it, there is a lot to be grateful about: having a (somewhat) healthy body, having a roof over your head, food to eat, friends and family, a sense of purpose in life...

Image of my injured knee

Some of the aspects of gratefulness that are emphasized in Lojong are also worth a mention: we usually have the habit to think that all the good things that befall us are our own merits. But actually when you think about it, a lot of the good things that happen are due to many causes and conditions that make those emerge. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche writes in The Intelligent Heart:"it is a gift from other sentient beings". Without the care of your parents, you would not be able to grow up into a functioning adult. Without the care of colleagues, you would be able to succeed and get promotion in your job. Without food to eat you would not be able to be healthy and survive. In this way, contemplating the kindness of others in acquiring what we enjoy can open our hearts to these others, instead of being oblivious to them. One thing that I was particularly grateful for in the past days is a chance to be a dancing angel in a Christmas mass/celebration for patients in the hospital. Such a gift to be able to give something to those suffering with my dancing!

Grateful for the chance to be a dancing angel for patients in the hospital

But there is more: we can even be grateful for the challenges provided by others. An example I got to work with this month was that another bicyclist hit me one morning as I was cycling to work. I fell on the pavement and my whole left side was scraped, blue and bloody (see picture for an impression). Even now, my knee is still a bit swollen, although it does not hurt anymore. While I was definitely not happy (especially about the fact that I had to skip several ballet classes because of my injured knee), this was my chance to practise "being grateful to everyone." I was definitely not very successful at appreciating this, but every so often I managed to use my injury as a tool to develop compassion for everyone else who was suffering as well. Feeling the pain in my own body somehow made other's suffering much more real, and I did the healing practices of Vajrasattva for both myself and others. So, in the end, there was benefit in the suffering, and looking back upon it, I can be grateful to the bicyclist who hit me. I feel that for every bit of suffering that I can transform, I become a bit less fearful, and acquire some wisdom that no-one will be able to take away from me.

Finally, for another reflection on gratitude, see this article by Salmaan Sana.