Thank Goodness for Big Favors

Grateful to whom?

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

I always hated all the nonsense about gratitude because “gratitude” is an activity you don’t do alone. You are grateful to someone or something. I knew it was a way — deliberately or unconsciously — to smuggle in the supernatural. You are grateful to God, if Christian, Ganesh, if Hindu, and “the ground of all being” if Unitarian Universalist. I can’t go there with you.

Allow me to explain

I’m a Buddhist, but a very secular one. That causes real Buddhists to look at me with a jaundiced eye. But at the bottom, all Buddhism is secular unless an indigenous religion has been blended with it. Tibetan Buddhism is mixed with a lot of shamanism. Zen Buddhism contains almost equal parts of Taoism and Shintoism. California Buddhism is heavily influenced by Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra.

Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism are about 50–50.

Venerable Nick

Recently I found the youtube channel of a Buddhist a monk called “Venerable Nick”. Each of his videos contains advice on things you can do to improve your productivity and outlook on life and most of it is pretty solid. He also has instructions on how to become a Buddhist monk in Thailand if you’re interested.