Gratitude

 

 

Life is given to you. Capacity to grow is given to you. Every opportunity to come to your ultimate peak of consciousness is given to you. A heart that can blossom in love is given to you. Just feel grateful to life, and as you will feel grateful, you will become more and more worthy, and more and more humble -- no grudge, no complaint.

 

This is exactly the state of a religious man. It does not need you to belong to any organized religion for you to become religious.

 

Religiousness is your gratefulness towards existence.

 

Such beautiful trees, such infinite sky, so many stars and you have not paid for anything.

 

This immense universe is given to you with all its beauty, sunrises, sunsets, and all the flowers and beautiful people. Just watch and you will be aware that so much is already given, but you are taking it for granted. You have never looked at it as a gift from existence without your asking, without your demanding.

 

Once you start seeing all that has already been given, your heart will be full of gratitude.

 

And that gratitude will open all the doors, all the windows. Existence is bridged by only one thing and that is gratefulness. Then miracles start happening to you. Then mysteries go on opening their doors to you. The more humble, the more simple, the more grateful, the more worthy you become -- and your worthiness has no limits.

 

-Osho, "The Invitation, #10, Q1“

 

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I am reminded of a Sufi story. A very strange mystic, Junnaid, used to pray and every time he would pray – in the morning, in the evening, in the night – he would end up his prayer with a deep gratitude towards existence: “Your compassion and your abundance of gifts to me is so much that I feel embarrassed. How am I going to repay it? Except my empty gratefulness and my tears, I don’t have anything to give to you.”

 

They were on a pilgrimage. He had many disciples with him. It happened that one time, for three days continuously, they passed through villages where there were fanatic Mohammedans. They would not give Junnaid and his disciples food, not even water. There was no question of shelter either. For three days in the desert without food, without water, without shelter... but the prayer continued to be the same and the gratefulness towards existence did not change even a little bit.

 

This was too much for the disciples. When days were good, it was perfectly okay to be grateful, but for three days they have been starving, thirsty, in the cold nights of the desert – no shelter, and there is no hope that tomorrow things are going to be better. Finally, they encountered their master Junnaid and said, “There is a limit to everything. We have listened to your prayer for years, and we thought it was perfectly in tune with existence. Existence was giving us everything. But these three days we have waited, thinking that perhaps you will stop being grateful or maybe you will even complain, but you seem to be the same. Again the same gratitude, the same tears – we can’t understand it. For what are you being so full of gratitude?”

 

Junnaid laughed and he said, “These three days were the most important in my life. These three days showed me whether I have any gratitude or not. Is my gratitude simply a bargain, a persuasion, or is my gratitude something that has grown in my heart? It doesn’t matter – as far as I am concerned, I don’t have a choice. Whatever existence gives to me is needed by me. These three days of starvation were absolutely needed by me; for it to be otherwise is not possible. These three days of thirst, coldness in the night, almost facing death, were absolutely my intrinsic needs. I don’t know about you – my gratitude is not conditional. My gratitude is unconditional; it is not because God is good to me. It has no reason at all; it is simply my joy, my blissfulness, my prayerfulness to existence. I don’t have a choice.”

 

A choiceless awareness simply means whatever happens to you is perfectly the right thing to have happened. You don’t have any judgment about it. It does not mean that you will stop doing things; you will continue doing things but your doing things will be more like a man flowing in the current of the river, not swimming, not swimming against the current.

 

-Osho, "Om Mani Padme Hum, #7“

 

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In being yourself, you are fulfilled. You have come home, the wandering is finished. Now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. You have known the eternal life, its beauty, its bliss. All that you can do now is share it - which comes automatically. When you see people stumbling in the dark, you start helping them, trying to move them in the right direction. It is a joy. When the gardener sees his rosebush full of flowers one morning, his heart also blossoms with the flowers.

 

And that's what happens to a man who has known himself, who has become himself. He starts sharing his joy, his bliss, his love, in different ways with different people - whoever is available.

 

And whenever he sees somebody moving in the right direction, he is immensely gratified, satisfied.

 

Existence has given him so much, and he has nothing else to give to existence to show his gratitude.

 

This is his gratitude. And when he sees others also reaching home, he feels that he has not been ungrateful - and that is a tremendous experience.

 

When I see you moving, growing, this is my gratitude towards existence. It has given me so much, there is no way to pay anything back; there is no word even to express gratitude. The only way is that my every breath should be used in helping people to reach to the same Everest of consciousness.

 

-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #19, Q3“