By Chaitanya Charan Das
Millions celebrate the secular holiday of Thanksgiving* this week, which can serve as a helpful reminder to all of the importance of giving thanks and expressing gratitude regularly. Creative devotees also use this annual event to highlight living a non-violent lifestyle that doesn’t involve killing animals and even hosting Thanksgiving day events to share our philosophy, prasadam, and ahimsa recipes. In today’s reflection, Chaitanya Charan Das focuses on expressing gratitude and thanks to Krishna.
“I write a journal daily (well, almost daily), and sometimes, when I can’t think of anything to write, I just type “Thank you, Krishna …” and let my fingers move on the keyboard. I thank Krishna for whatever good things have happened in my life. I thank him for whatever good ideas I have got for my writing because writing is my main service and I can’t write without ideas. And I thank him for whatever good service I was able to do, being grateful that whatever needed to go right for doing that service did in fact turn out right and the many things that could have gone wrong didn’t go wrong.
As my fingers move thus, I am often surprised at how easily I meet my daily journal quota (I try to write at least 500 words daily). More importantly, by writing about my thankfulness, I start feeling thankful. Even more importantly, I notice many things to be thankful for – things that I had overlooked while being caught in the rush of life. I find it revealing how just the attempt to thank, more specifically the attempt to express that thanks through verbalization, nourishes the attitude of gratitude. Such nourishment inspires me to cherish journaling as a daily devotional ritual.
Nourishing our higher side is, in fact, the purpose of rituals. They provide a stimulus and structure for expressing and thereby experiencing refined emotions. Rituals may be private such as journaling or public such as the festival of Thanksgiving being celebrated in America and elsewhere this week.
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/thoughts-on-thanksgiving-and-gratitude/
Comments