Expressing gratitude makes me feel good. I believe others get similar pleasure form saying thanks. It could be that we have this response hardwired by our genes or that it is beaten in by our parents as a kind of important social meme. Either way it appears to lead to a more harmonious society so no doubt there are good social-darwian reasons for it all.
\nRecently I have been dwelling on the spiritual aspects. Saying thank you is an admission of dependancy. It is an acknowledgement of our identity being entirely contingent on others – and so a tiny step along that path of awakening.
\nMany things spin out of this.
\nThere is no need to have a ‘target’ for our gratitude. We can just say thank you in acknowledgement of our existence.
\nWe don’t only benefit from saying thank you for what we like. Even the receipt of something unpleasant is turned around if we acknowledge it with thanks.
\nGratitude is a real key into compassion, wisdom and spiritual growth. So how do I get my family to say grace before meals – directing it at no one in particular? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Expressing gratitude makes me feel good. I believe others get similar pleasure form saying thanks. It could be that we have this response hardwired by our genes or that it is beaten in by our parents as a kind of important social meme. Either way it appears to lead to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mindfulness_buddhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hyam.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}