In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;What is Gratitude?and#8221;, Sangharakshita reflects on the Buddhaand#8217;s achievement of Enlightenment, drawing our attention to an often overlooked feature of this great event and#8211; the Buddhaand#8217;s expression of gratitude to the tree that sheltered him. A timely look at ways to cultivate this essential positive emotion.
This is an excerpt from the talk Looking at the Bodhi Tree given in 1999.
[Music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [Music] So what is gratitude? What do we mean when we use this term? Turning to the dictionaries which are very useful, very helpful, and to which we should be grateful. Very grateful to the great makers of dictionaries. I am personally very grateful to Dr. Samuel Johnson. His historic dictionary is always at my elbow, at least up in Birmingham, who carried around with me. And if I am writing especially, I sometimes consult it several times a day. Dr. Johnson defines gratitude as duty to benefactors, and as desire to return benefits. Coming to more modern dictionaries, the concise Oxford says, being thankful, readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. And Collins has a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation as for gifts or favors. So these are the definitions of the English word. And they are all right as far as they go. They give us some understanding of what gratitude is. But from a Buddhist point of view, we really need to go further. We need to look at the Pali word which we translate as gratitude. And this word, this Pali word is katanyuta. So what does it mean, literally, this word katanyuta? I hope it's a word that in the course of the next few months for beyond everybody's lips in the F.W.B.O. katanyuta, it consists of two parts, kata. Kata, which means what has been done, that which has been done. Especially that which has been done to one. And the second part is annuitar, which means knowing or recognizing. So katanyuta means knowing or recognizing what has been done to one. Better to say, knowing and recognizing what has been done to one for one's benefit. And you're going to once see that the connotation of the Pali word is rather different from that of its English equivalent or its English translation. The connotation of the English gratitude, we could say, is rather more emotional. We speak of feeling gratitude, feeling grateful. But the connotation of katanyuta is rather more intellectual, more cognitive. It makes it clear that what we call gratitude involves an element of knowledge. So an element of knowledge of what, obviously, knowledge of what has been done to us or for us, for our benefit. If we do not know that something as benefitless will not feel gratitude. The Buddha knew that the Bodhi tree had sheltered him. He knew that his five former companions in asceticism had been helpful to him, so he felt gratitude towards them. Not only that, he gave expression to that feeling of gratitude. He acted upon it. He acted upon it in the first place by spending a whole week, according to tradition, simply gazing at the Bodhi tree. And then he went in search of his five former companions of asceticism, so that he could communicate to them. Out of gratitude, the truth that he had discovered. So here there's a very important implication. The implication being that it's natural. It's a perfectly natural thing to feel gratitude for benefits which we have received. It's a natural thing, a natural response. I'll be going into this a little later. But of course, the benefit has to be recognized as a benefit. If we don't feel someone or something actually has benefited us, we won't feel grateful to them or to it. And this suggests that we have to understand what is truly beneficial, have to understand what has really helped us to grow and develop as human beings. We also have to know who or what has benefited us. We have to remember that they've benefited us. Otherwise, no feeling of gratitude is possible. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freeBuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
