In this passage, Sri Chinmoy speaks of the importance of offering gratitude to the Source:
“In addition to our bad qualities, each human being has many, many good qualities. The most important and most significant good quality in our human life is gratitude. Unfortunately, that good quality we somehow manage not to express either in our thoughts or in our actions. Right from the beginning of our life we have somehow learned not to express it. So we have the least amount of the very thing that we need most in order to become a better person.
“The things that most deserve our gratitude we just take for granted. Without air we cannot live for more than a minute or two. Every day we are breathing in and breathing out, but do we ever feel grateful to the air? If we do not drink water, we cannot survive. Even our body is composed to a large extent of water. But do we give any value to water? Every morning we see the sun blessingfully offering us light and life-energy. But are we grateful to the sun? On the contrary, when the sun is too bright we complain that it is bothering us.
“A tree has many branches and countless leaves, flowers and fruits. If we try to offer our gratitude to the millions of leaves, people will say, ‘You are a fool!’ We will get tired just counting the branches, not to speak of the leaves, flowers and fruits. But the tree came from a tiny seed, and the Source of that seed is God. He is the Source of everything in the creation. So if we offer our gratitude to the Source, we are doing the right thing.”
– Sri Chinmoy
(to be continued…)