Thanks giving
Here in the states today, we celebrate Thanksgiving. Ironically, it’s the one holiday in this country anyway when gifts are not given, wars not honored, or religious differences not celebrated. There are no gifts, ideologies, or remembered casualities, or revolutions required. It is simply about simple thanks, expressed in simple ways, usually around tables of abundance. It is the one day a year, we set aside the unconsciousness of deficiency perspectives and realize reality in its essential abundance.
On other Holy and Hallmark holidays, I am often asked what Buddhists celebrate. No, we are not holiday orphans, Today is our day. In Buddhism, the highest emotion in our nature as human beings is gratitude, second to none. Not because gratitude is a virtue in a transactional spiritual system of merit. Not because gratitude makes us morally superior or higher order intellectual capitalists. But because gratitude reflects our understanding of the impermanent and interdependent nature of things. It flows from our being enlightened to this understanding, our awakeness.
