Thanksgiving has been a long standing tradition within many countries that commonly signifies the giving of thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Its first appearance in the United States as an official holiday started when the President of the United States, George Washington, marked November 26, 1979, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God.” It is a day in which people can stop and think about what has been provided to us regularly, specifically the harvest, but also the many other things that allow us to live fruitfully and well on a day to day basis. However, over the course of time, this mind of gratitude has disappeared, if it had existed in the first place. Nowadays, people really don’t think about having gratitude, but rather replace it with complaints about not having enough. This is why people are dissatisfied with life and their loneliness and sadness increase. People are still searching for that key to continuous happiness and joy in their life, but unfortunately are looking in the wrong place.
In the world, people have many difficulties, including, but not limited to, money, family and love. This boils down to their greed to amass as much as possible in these areas or any area for that matter. Anyone can live in the world without greed and live a very happy life. But people mistakenly believe that their happiness depends on having more of these things. Also, they would grow to believe very strongly that this life is about gaining these things and so their life is about hoarding as much as possible. Their focus is not about living but about taking as much as possible, whether it be material or non-material, such as knowledge or love. Think about your own case and where your difficulties lie. If you are trying to gain or accomplish more, that is why you have difficulties. As humans, we continuously try to add more to our life to enrich it and improve quality of life and we think that this ‘adding’ is the solution to enriching our life and making us happy. We do this without thinking.
There are many people who are able to obtain great quantities of these things and there are still an even greater amount of people who feel that they lack many things or even everything. So when Thanksgiving rolls around, people have great difficulty in finding something to feel grateful for and it feels forced if they do find something. They have forgotten why we need to be thankful. As humans, we are given the perfect conditions to live in the world. There is nothing more grateful than this. We are provided things like air, water, food, clothing, shelter and the conditions to be truly happy in the world, but still, it isn’t enough, and we have to try to gain more. It is the greedy mind of addition that hides the original meaning of Thanksgiving. But this original meaning can be found after all of those greedy minds have been eliminated.
Furthermore,the common thing that everyone is lacking is true gratitude. When you feel gratitude, you also feel happy. Think of the time when you were surprised by a good deed like someone helping you when your car had broken down or when you were given a random gift by a friend or loved one. At that moment, you can feel gratitude and thus, happiness. However, it is only momentary and so that happiness is also fleeting. True gratitude is lasting through any moment, any time and so the happiness will also become true happiness. This is something everyone is seeking but has not yet found it through continuous adding.
So the solution should be subtraction. By throwing away all of those things in our mind, then we can find true gratitude because we will know our true nature. The adding of mind just covers up this original foundation that is pure gratitude. And so this person who has found his original nature can truly be happy because he is just that original existence itself and it is pure gratitude. Because the world exists, then I can be born in the world and exist just as it is.It is such a simple thing to be grateful for: to be born in the world and to live in the world. But we have never really known this being swamped with adding. It is time to change this mind and become truly grateful by finding and becoming our true nature.
Thus, not only can I be grateful during Thanksgiving for everything, but in every moment, I can be grateful and therefore happy forever. Thankfully, that solution has already been revealed: this meditation. A new era has come where anyone can be unconditionally happy and grateful just by subtraction. It is time to get on the boat.Happy Thanksgiving!
