Gratitude - In Gita Verse 3.12 In charge of the various necessities of life, the demigods, being satisfied by the performance of yajña [sacrifice], will supply all necessities to you. But he who enjoys such gifts without offering them to the demigods in return is certainly a thief.
In this verse Krishna takes us further - he talks regarding Karma from Gratitude. In my blog Bhagavad Gita Verse 2.71, Krishna speaks regarding Give Up Desire. Now he says you live with your Needs and not for your Desire. In my blog Bhagavad Gita Verse 1.12, I have wrote the distinction between Need And Desire. The person who lives their life with the needs are capable of dropping their Ego. Unless you Sacrifice your desire and live the life all your needs can be provided. Dropping your desire is dropping your expectation and living into the present moment. Once you drop your desire suddenly you will find that even for the small need which is provided to you, you will be in gratitude.
Let’s understand Gratitude from Junnaid’s life incidence. How to live in gratitude.
A Sufi master, Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer – and Mohammedans pray five times a day – after each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”
They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water. For three days without food, without water, without sleep, tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay – but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”
On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, ‘You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what are you showing your gratitude?”
Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am – that’s enough. Existence accepts me – that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be; I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise. There has been no difference in my attitude towards existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.
Recollect from your own life, when you do anything from Enthusiasm, at that time you will not find any kind of negative emotion in you. Why because when you are Enthusiastic your whole focus is on giving and not on receiving. Just because we were not self-alert we could not realize this. In that moment you will find not only that no negative emotion but you will find your heart is full of love, and you will be thankful to everyone in that moment.
Remember such incidence from your life and remind yourself again and again. This reminder will slowly spread in all your actions.
Krishna in this verse says to Arjuna that unless you live in gratitude you cannot sacrifice your desire or ego, in that moment not align with Universe or demigods. So he says that they cannot be SATISFY. We are much stuck to the words so we go on doing things with our desire to satisfy the Universe or demigods. In the process we will find only frustration and we find that we are cheating ourselves. Just live Enthusiastically and see how you will be in Gratitude. In that Gratitude you will be Giver and not Receiver. Receivers always has a lot of expectation and desire they are greedy and thief. Don’t follow the words but live Enthusiastically and you will find that you can live this verse in your action.
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