True gratitude

Gratitude, even in a Jodo Shinshu context, is a tricky thing. As Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, we should feel gratitude as easily as we breathe but of course, it's not that easy.

It's tempting to regard gratitude for a thing given as the same as the gratitude we feel for Amida's all-embracing compassion. If a friend helps you with your car, or helps you land a job, you do feel grateful. To take that a step further, you probably feel grateful for the good friends in your life, and the fact that you are so well taken care of.

Gratitude in that context is important, and we should never hold back from thanking those who help us. Mom and Dad were right: 'please' and 'thank you' are just as important now as they were when we were kids.

But our gratitude toward Amida is an entirely different thing. It isn't a response we feel when we're particularly happy about how well things have been going, or when we pass through some particularly dangerous moment intact. The gratitude we are called upon to demonstrate is far more profound than that. It is a gratitude that extends beyond that moment of satisfaction.

In Tannisho, Yuienbo credits Shinran with saying "When I consider deeply the Vow of Amida, which arose from five kalpas of profound thought, I realize that it was entirely for the sake of myself alone! Then how I am filled with gratitude for the Primal Vow, in which Amida resolved to save me, though I am burdened with such heavy karma."

Shinran, despite whatever misgivings he had about himself, despite what anger he might have been feeling, or disappointment, or - indeed - gratitude toward another person for a kind favor, expressed a far more profound sense of gratitude for the one thing that exists and will continue to exist long after the anger and nice favors have been forgotten.

The gratitude Shinran spoke of transcends mere quotidian gratitude. It's gratitude of another level altogether, a gratitude realized only when we understand just how complete and enveloping Amida's compassion truly is. When I think about just how greedy or selfish I am, when I consider just how often I have hurt or harmed others by my own self-absorption, and then consider the fact that Amida has extended her compassion even to me, I feel and understand a true depth of gratitude that surpasses anything else.

In his essay "The Problem of the True and the False" Takamaro Shigaraki wrote:

To say that shinjin is the experience of awakening means, in a more concrete sense, that we awaken to the compassion of the Tathagata. Not only that, we also awaken to the depths and weight of our own karmic evil, which is illumined by that compassion.

To understand that fully is to realize true gratitude.