November is Our Annual Reminder to Be Grateful

 

Thanksgiving is a holiday that encourages us to cultivate gratitude, to celebrate the harvest season, and share our good fortune with others. Celebrating Thanksgiving should feel natural to us, since practicing gratitude is central to our Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition. In fact, one of our guiding statements, the KyoSho, or “The Essential Teachings of Jodo Shinshu” offers this valuable guidance on approaching life: “Having entrusted ourselves to the teaching of Namo Amida Butsu, we experience the joy of having received the assurance of Buddhahood. From the constant gratitude that arises within, we shall strive to live in service to the community and humanity.”

Photo: Thankful for our friends and community this Thanksgiving season...

But even though this teaching of constant gratitude is so important to our practice as Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, often our imperfections, our selfishness, also get mixed into our attempts at gratitude and it gets hard to stay grateful for long. This contradiction is expressed in this poem by Haru Mastuda, a Hawaiian Jodo Shinshu practitioner:

Embraced by Namo-Amida-Butsu*,

I vowed never to complain.

Thinking thus, again I complained.

Does this sound familiar? As Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, we try to live a life of gratitude, but that gratitude doesn’t override our natural foolishness and limited perspectives. And so our foolishness, selfishness and our gratitude are always getting mixed up together.

And even though there is so much to be grateful for, we often take most good stuff for granted. A simple example: I breathe in about 20,000 times a day and I don’t even notice. I don’t breathe in thinking “wow I am so lucky to have all this air to breathe in 20,000 times a day.” I only think about breathing when I have a stuffy nose and can’t breathe or when something smells especially good or especially bad. The rest of the time, I don’t appreciate breathing at all.

I also never think to be grateful when the toilet flushes. But when it clogs, I am cranky. When the alarm clock doesn’t go off when it is supposed to, I get mad at it. And also when it goes off like it is supposed to, I also get mad at it. I’m NEVER grateful for my alarm. We humans are, indeed, silly beings!!!

I challenge each of you to find something—one ordinary thing—to be grateful for this season….let me know how it turns out!

In Gassho, Rev. Anne Spencer

* "Namo-Amida-Butsu"  means “I turn to Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Wisdom and Compassion.” Reciting this phrase is not an intellectual practice; it is an expression of gratitude and acceptance--a way of opening one’s heart to receive whatever life brings us. When one recites the nembutsu it is an expression of gratitude, humility, open-heartedness and wonder.  In fact Namo-Amida-Butsu is also an expression of whatever spiritual feeling is arising at that time. 

Location: Ontario, OR 97914, USA

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