感謝 Gratitude

在經驗豐富的人面前,我常覺得十分地謙卑。幾天前,我有機會和一群教育者吃午餐,他們有著不同的專長,包含一位數學老師、一位小提琴家、一位英文老師等等,我很自然地開始與語文老師交談,她最近到加爾各答的傳教士慈善團體當義工。德雷莎修女(1910-1997)是創辦人,影響力而後擴展到世界各地。在餐廳,這年輕女士表達極大的感激之情,讓她有機會真正的奉獻她的時間、力量去服務他人,她表達一個獨一無二的感謝形式是知識:感謝是以領悟為基礎,藉由幫助他人而獲得智慧。這個禮物是獨特的,因為純潔必須不依慣例:不求回報。現今在西方國家最重大的疾病不是肺結核或痲瘋病,而是不被需要、不被喜愛、不被關心。我們可以用藥物治療身體的疾病,但只有愛能治癒孤單、絕望。在世界上有很多人死於一塊麵包,但是有更多的人死於一點點愛。在西方國家,貧窮是一個不同種類的貧窮,它不僅缺少孤單,而且缺乏靈性,渴望得到愛如同渴望上帝。在西方國家,我們有一個傾向是以利益為導向,那裡每件事情是根據結果而被測量,而且我們陷入越來越積極產生結果。在東方國家,尤其是印度,我發現人們很滿足的坐在榕樹下閒聊半天,我們西方人也許稱這是浪費時間,但是它是有幫助的。和一些人在一起,沒有時間限制的傾聽以及沒有預期的結果,是在教導我們關於愛。愛的成功是在愛,不是愛的結果。

加拿大、德國的哲學家艾克哈特‧托勒(西元1948年)告訴我們:多數人從來沒有完全地活在當下,因為下意識地他們相信下個時刻比現在更重要,但是你會錯失你全部的生活,就是現在。勒內‧笛卡兒(1596-1650)曾說:我思故我在,以及感謝活著而且你深愛著你周遭的人,意指這兩個概念是分不開地聯結:兩者都是非常規的。當你不依慣例地給予愛,你是純粹地感謝你能夠給予,當你的母親擁抱你,她是感激你已變得健康活潑,她不期望獲得回報。

然而,練習感恩對於我們時常活在過去或是未來是不容易的,儘管感恩要求我們存在當前:”在現在”,引用我們前述談論到的哲學家。試試這個實驗”在當下” 60秒,坐在一個安靜的地方且專注在你的呼吸,放空你的頭腦且思量片刻。起初當我嘗試60秒,只有15秒是真正的自由且廉潔的思考,我被告知要求練習。

我相信要真正的被感謝,我們必須意識到的現實點就是我不想變成也不是一個薪資奴隸。工作是一個關於擴展自己從一些基本型態離開的概念,可能是需要智力或體力的工作,儘管談論到此事,再一次提醒,你必須100%的努力或什麼事都不做,因為假如你半途而廢,你將會損害到你自己。你了解自己,假如你跨入了一些事情且它是一個夠好的工作就同它所呈現的,我問我自己(因為我現在是個老人):我想生活在一個夠好的生活嗎?假如這答案是肯定的,可悲!看這個社會,有數百萬人的例子,他們生活在夠好的生活,我們不必這樣,尤其是當我們年輕,尤其是當我們不要成為薪資奴隸。一位偉大的精神科醫師和哲學家卡爾‧榮格(1875-1961)留給我們一個思想:回顧那優秀的老師們,感謝那些觸動我們情感的人,課程是如此必要的原料,但是溫暖是地球和孩子的心靈重要的要素。

笑話一則:一位年輕的紳士搬到另一個城市並在一個類似的公司申請一個新的職位,他給了前任經理的推薦函,招聘人員要求離開房間,隨後致電到這位男士先前的公司,當代表回答時他完全不知所措,”他說甚麼?”個人的詢問。”他說事實是你在那3年,但實際工作只有3個月”,是那男士的回覆。

這星期,請思考你擁有的感謝。

引語:當你在早晨醒來,感謝獨一無二的你和世界圍繞著你:努力的讓世界因為你的存在而更美好。

 

I often feel totally humbled in the face of the experience of other people. The other day, I had the opportunity to have lunch with a group of educators. They were a diverse lot and included a math teacher, a violin teacher, an English teacher, etc. I, quite naturally, struck up a conversation with the language teacher. She had recently volunteered at the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. (1) Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was the founder and the driving force behind its worldwide expansion. The young woman in the restaurant expressed great gratitude that she had had the opportunity to go and actually give of her time and her energy in the service of others. She was expressing a unique form of gratitude: the knowledge that gratitude is based on the realization that the self gains wisdom (humility) by giving to others. This giving is unique because to be pure it must be unconditional: it asks for nothing in return. “The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. … In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results and we get caught up in being more and more active to generate results. In the East — especially in India — I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening without a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving — it is not in the result of loving.” (2)

Eckhart Tolle (b. 1948), the Canadian/German philosopher, tells us: “Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.” The gratitude of just being alive, the “I think and therefore I am” of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), and your deep love for the people around you means that these two concepts are inextricably linked: both are unconditional. When you give love unconditionally, you are simply grateful that you are able to give. When your mother embraces you, she is grateful that you have grown into a healthy and vibrant human being, she is not (or should not be) expecting something in return.

The practice of gratitude, however, is not easy for we constantly live in the past or in the future, while gratitude requires that we exist in the present: “in the now,” to quote our above mentioned philosopher. Try this experiment: “Be in the present” for 60 seconds. Sit in a quiet place and focus on your breathing, empty your mind and contemplate the moment. When I initially tried this, of my 60 seconds, only 15 were actually free and uncorrupted with other thoughts. It requires practice, I am told.

I believe that to really be grateful we must come to the realization that I am not a wage slave if I don’t want to be. Work is a concept about extending yourself away from yourself on some type of basic project: that could be intellectual work or physical work. Whatever task it is, once again, your efforts must be 100% or not done at all because you damage yourself if you do something half way. You know yourself, if you step into something and it is a “good-enough job,” that is what it appears. And I ask myself, because I’m an old man now, “Do I want to live a good-enough life?”  And if the answer is “yes,” tragic! Look in the society: there are millions of examples of people who live good-enough lives. We do not have to, especially when we are young, especially when we do not have to become wage slaves. The great psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung (1875-1961) leaves us with a thought: One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

 

A small joke: A young gentleman moved to another city and applied for a new position in a similar company. He gave his former manager as a reference and the recruiter excused himself from the room, and subsequently phoned the man’s previous company. When the representative returned he was totally nonplussed. “What did he say?” the individual inquired. “He said that it is true that you were there for three years but you only actually worked for three months,” was the man’s reply.            

This week, please consider your own gratefulness.

 

Every day look for something magical and beautiful.

Quote: When you awaken in the morning be thankful for the uniqueness of you and for the world around you: strive to make that world a little bit better by your presence.  

Footnotes:

1)    Missionaries of Charity

2)    Mother Teresa