D. Feeling Grateful

Fourth is gratitude. When Jesus was crucified he said to God “Please forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.” That is the emotion of Karuna. Further he said “They decreased the distance between you and me and made us one.” That is gratitude. That I feel grateful even for this death they gave to me. If it was done to us we would have lots of anxiety, anger, frustration. Taking inspiration from this to look at things in such a way, that even when we are harmed we thank the other. In this awareness we remove karma and we grow in emotions. We can start with small things to cultivate the emotion of gratitude.

For example, this body is so beautiful. Scientists say that to convert one piece of bread into blood, we would need factories which would spread at least in one kilometre area. Just to turn one piece of bread into blood. And we have such a small digestive system which does it beautifully. Such an amazing gift we have, but we hardly ever love our body. Do you remember any such moment where you loved your hands or your eyes thinking “You are so beautiful.” So if we want to love others we have to love this body and remain so grateful that we have such a beautiful tool with us. This is one way to look at this or another way is that “Everybody has a body, what’s the big deal?” That way, we limit our potential. We start feeling and living differently if we start thinking “Wow, it’s really a great tool.”

There are many ways in tantric practices enabling you to change the form of objects. For example, a piece of wood can be converted into a delicious sweet. There is a science for changing the forms of an object. It’s the spiritual way of doing it and then there is modern science. I have seen these things, but that time I had no interest learning these things. But how amazing things are in the inner world, I feel grateful for that. We sit at this beach, we sleep here, near to these waves. This water in which we swim everyday a number of times essentially is the same water which is inside of us. Same combination. The kindness of that water and our water inside is the same. That’s also another reason why sitting at the seashore the meditation goes deeper. Because we are made of the same water. Do we feel grateful about it, that we come from that? When the evolution started the first creatures were in the oceans and then they developed further. One way of thinking is that, “This is abstract. I don’t know if I came from the ocean or not. If I have the same water or not. Even if, so what?” Feeling grateful about carrying the same water inside the body, it changes the way of life. Those who we call ‘Yogis’ leave everything which is connected to the worldly ways. But if you look at it from a different perspective, those are the guys who enjoy the best of the best. They have no attachment to material things, money, power, acquiring things, but they enjoyed the ultimate bliss. The finest of the finest they enjoyed. And that happened only because they purified their body, purified their thoughts, purified their emotions. They went beyond, separated from the body, separated from the thoughts and separated from the emotions. And that opened the gateway for them to be in Samadhi, to be in the natural state.
So if we start changing our way of looking at things, start spreading love, the rays from inside us to the other person, it will change our life significantly. For example, just touching someone and before the touch we feel so much love in our heart towards that person. Feeling that love in the heart and then feeling that I am transmitting that love to the other person by this hand, then touching that person. Just try this and see for yourself. This will be magical. The other person will feel really good with this touch. And there’s nothing to lose. So one way is to feel love deep inside our heart and then transmitting that feeling through the touch. Another way is, “Hey buddy, what’s up?” Or like a robot, “What’s going on?” Just for the sake of saying something, just to start some conversation and waste energy. Or talking about the weather. Just so the other person doesn’t get offended or we are not uncomfortable. It’s the easiest thing to start a conversation chatting about the weather. But how different, feeling that love and then touching the other person. If touching is not appropriate or the other person doesn’t like it or the situation doesn’t permit it, feel that love in the heart and then look at the person. With so much love in your eyes look at the person. This is a whole different way to speak, to communicate. And it doesn’t need any investment, any bank balance. Another way to look at it is “I have other work to do than feeling love and feeling deep inside the heart and then transmitting it to the other person, who has time for this?” If we don’t have time for this, what do we do with the time? Go home quickly and watch TV. Or attend a politician’s rally and he will say, “We can do it! We can do it!” What can we do? We don’t know. “We can achieve it!” What can we achieve? We don’t know. So Hilary Clinton or Trump, they just use those mechanisms of slogans like ‘We can do it’ and we just start to repeat it and then suddenly five thousand people raise their hands saying, “Yes, we can do it. We can achieve it! Yes, we can achieve it!” What? We don’t really know. But we can achieve it. So we watch these useless people and don’t have time for feeling the love inside our heart and talking to other people with love. Or we are busy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram hitting the like button even if you don’t really like it. We have time for that. So small things that really matter will consolidate and change the way we are living life.