Writing on Gratitude

A glass mirror is brittle. If it drops, it breaks into pieces. But I have come to realise that a mirror has a longer lifespan than the gratitude of human beings. In order for a mirror to break, it has to drop either from Heaven or from a few feet above the ground. So it takes time-a few seconds. But it does not take even a fleeting second for human ingratitude to come to the fore.

If anything can disappear sooner than the soonest from our heart, then that thing is nothing other than our gratitude. Again, if anything on earth is really beautiful, really meaningful and really fruitful, if anything on earth can sustain our golden connecting link with God, our Source, then that very thing is also gratitude. Dear ones, I am telling you, if you have an iota of sincere gratitude and if you preserve that gratitude as the most precious thing in your life, then the breath of that gratitude will keep you alive in the Heart of God, your Lord Supreme. You people misbehave and torture your Master in so many ways; sometimes you even want to give up the spiritual life. But I assure you, if you keep gratitude alive in your heart, the beauty and fragrance of that divine quality will save you from your spiritual downfall and destruction.

I am speaking about sincere gratitude-the kind of gratitude whose living presence you can only feel inside your heart. If you feel that gratitude is your inner name and also your outer name, if you feel that your only name is gratitude, then immediately your gratitude will jump to the fore and establish its inseparable oneness with your God-oneness-reality.

Gratitude is a most powerful weapon in your life. There is nothing undivine that you cannot get rid of by virtue of the gratitude in your life. Again, there is nothing divine in your life that you cannot increase in boundless measure on the strength of your gratitude. There is only one thing that you need in order to increase your divinity, and that thing is gratitude. If every day you consciously strengthen your gratitude-not to Sri Chinmoy but to the Supreme, who is your Guru, my Guru and everybody's Guru-you will see how much progress you will make and how many wrong forces you will be able to get out of your system. I tell you, all the physical, vital, mental and emotional fever that you are suffering from comes from the fact that you have lost your heart's gratitude-breath. If your heart's gratitude-breath is functioning well, then keep it so forever. This is unmistakably the right way to run fast, faster, fastest to the destined Goal.

Gratitude is not a mere word; it is not a mere concept. It is the living breath of your real existence on earth. There is nothing that God will not do for you if you really treasure the gratitude-breath inside your aspiring heart. Please, please, to each and every one of you I am telling this: If you want to run the fastest, then discard the thing that is delaying you. The thing that is making you lame or paralysed in your spiritual life is ingratitude. If you can always maintain your gratitude-breath, then nothing can stand in your way and nobody can prevent you from doing the right thing and becoming the right person: the most perfect instrument of our Lord Beloved Supreme.

Gratitude, gratitude and gratitude. The soul you do not know; the Supreme you do not know. And at this stage in your spiritual development you do not have to know them. But gratitude you do have to know if you want to connect yourself with your own Highest, with the Supreme. If you want to connect yourself with the Real in you, then your gratitude-breath you have to claim as your own, very own.

• Poems on Gratitude by Sri Chinmoy