Gratitude

Close your eyes. Take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Focus your attention there and then try to stay there. Any thoughts come in that are not related to the breath, just let them go. Watch the breath carefully to see if long breathing is comfortable. If it’s not, you can change. If it is, keep it up. If you need to change it, make it shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. See what feels best. Give the mind a good place to settle in.

Today we’re marking the 73rd birthday of Rama X, king of Thailand, 10th king of the Chakri dynasty. It’s good to stop and think about what we owe to people in the past, because the Chakri dynasty was responsible for re-establishing the practice of Theravada Buddhism in Thailand. And from Thailand it spread throughout the world.

Rama I saw that Ayutthaya, the old capital, had fallen because people had strayed from the practice. And so he tried to revive the practice. Rama II sponsored a council where they tried to correct the versions of the Pali Canon that were available.

Rama IV, before he became king, founded the Dhammayut Order, dedicated to being strict in the practice of the Vinaya and in meditation. It was in the Dhammayut Order that the forest tradition arose. And it’s because the monks of the forest tradition were inspiring in their behavior that Westerners going to Thailand studied with them. Now it’s come back here.

Rama IX was an avid supporter of the forest tradition, as is Rama X. So it’s good to think that the Dhamma that we have here is not just here on its own. It’s here because of the activities and the wise choices of people in the past. As the Buddha said, his Dhamma wheel cannot be stopped, but it can be stopped if people just forget about it, don’t care about it. The Dhamma wheel keeps rolling in the hearts of those who practice it.

So this is our way of making sure that the Dhamma stays alive, thinking about the example of people in the past who have made sacrifices to keep it alive—and having a strong sense of responsibility that we have to help keep it alive as well. Of course, the best way to keep it alive is to practice it.

As Ajaan Lee, my teacher’s teacher, once said, if you don’t practice the Dhamma, it’s like a recipe for medicine that’s just on a piece of paper. You’ve never made the medicine, so you don’t know how valuable it is. So it’s very easy for that piece of paper to get lost. But if you make the medicine, take it, and realize it is really good for curing disease, then you’ll take very good care of that little slip of paper. In the same way, you take care of the Dhamma because you’ve practiced it in your heart, you’ve seen the benefits, so you want to make sure that it stays alive.

Ajaan Suwat made the comment one time that when you’re practicing along the path, you do everything you can to make sure there are no weeds, no obstacles in your way. When you get to the end of the path, then as far as you’re concerned, the weeds can grow up again. But then you look back and you see other people struggling. So you want to make sure that no one’s placing more rocks and weeds in the way.

So. For your sake and for the sake of the people who come after you, make sure that you give yourself to the practice, get the benefits that come from it, and have an appreciation for all the efforts that have kept the Dhamma alive.

So it’s good on a day like this to think of the efforts of the Chakri dynasty, in particular, because without them there wouldn’t be the forest tradition. Without the forest tradition, Wat Metta wouldn’t exist, and we wouldn’t be meditating here right now. We’d be off doing something else, probably not nearly as useful or beneficial.

So have a strong sense of gratitude. Gratitude, they say, is a sign of a good person because you recognize the goodness that people have done for you. You realize that it required effort, so you’ll be more willing to put forth that effort to do good for other people yourself.