Cattāri Brahmavihārā

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmosley/2019/11/27/the-business-impact-of-gratitude/

While many of us tend to view and express gratitude in relation to our personal lives, gratitude in the workplace is especially critical because it satisfies the higher psychological need to feel a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves–to feel a sense of meaning at work.

If you do not contemplate death in the morning, the morning is wasted. If you do not contemplate death in the afternoon, the afternoon is wasted. If you do not contemplate death in the evening, the evening is wasted.

It can be so easy to believe the voices that complain, criticize and fault find in our minds. It is so easy to casually hate the photos and posts of acquaintances and friends on FB and IG. But why? What do we gain?

What do I gain by begrudging my childhood friend her family’s vacation? Nothing but bitterness. I must, instead, train the mind to rejoice in the success of others until mudita becomes second-nature.

Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love. We should have gratitude toward them.”

-Dalai Lama XIV

This is an attitude that I’m familiar with but that requires much more practice. It is difficult to feel gratitude for those who make our lives difficult but it is indubitably true that we could never cultivate patience if we were only surrounded by people who were kind and loving towards us. Besides, how ridiculous is it to imagine that we’d ever be in such a situation?

After taking a series of kicks to my left thigh last night I was unsure if I would be about to make it to my 7:30 kickboxing session. I forced myself to run my normal 5k this morning in order to try and get blood flowing through the knotted muscles but the rest of the day involved me sitting at a desk.

Regardless, I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied having given in to pain and, since I knew I would not be causing myself lasting harm, I resolved to meet Mo (my coach) at the boxing gym.

Resolved not to complain and to do whatever he suggested I followed through and behaved almost as if my leg weren’t cramped and painful throughout the full hour of kicking and punching.

It was a small victory for my B resolve and a reminder that we are all capable of doing much more on a regular basis than we dove ourselves credit for.

For some strange reason I was racked by fear and anxiety all week over the prospect of sparring tonight. It was so bad that I almost didn’t show up. But, and this was an important point, I know that if I let my fear get the better of me it would only get worse. So, I just put my heart down and resolved to make it to the gym. I stopped catastrophizing and just walked. When I got to the gym I changed, wrapped my skinned feet (foot dragging during BJJ will do that) and started warming up. And, as to be expected, fear is a liar.

Initially, when I began to realize I had developed a fear of sparring I was surprised and taken aback. Isn’t this what I signed up for? Isn’t this what I wanted to do? But, as if the case with we putthujjana, I must have forgotten that all conditioned things are subject to anicca, dukkha and are not self.

Like it or not, fear would arise if the conditions were right regardless of how I felt about it. The important thing was that I didn’t yield to it. And, for that, I am pleased.

I chose to fail tonight and decided that I would break fast rather than wait until 11am tomorrow. I didn’t eat enough to keep my energy up and so I threw away months of continuous fasting. And yet…

I’m kind of ambivalent about it. In the end, it is just a practice among others and , for the first time, I didn’t feel like it was serving me well. Maybe it was weakness but I definitely want to reflect on it and my reasons for both continuing and for having given it up.

Yes, the discipline has been invigorating and helpful but I have both caught myself feeling haughty as well as compelled to continue solely by force of habit. Regardless, I won’t give up my goal of pursuing liberation and walking the path of the Dhamma.

The Blessed One said, “And how is there the communal living of the bad? And how do the bad live together?

“There is the case where the thought occurs to an elder monk, ‘I should not correct an elder monk, nor should I correct a monk of middling standing, nor should I correct a newcoming monk.

Sannivasā Sutta

It’s this dilemma that I find so prevalent in our society. This reticence to offend is precisely what Lord Buddha identified as the downfall of a community.