Nicholas Weeks
Bodhicitta
From EPISTLE 81:
"We should do all we can to be extremely grateful. For this virtue is entirely in our power, in a way justice is not (though it’s generally assumed to be so), for justice depends on others, while the great part of gratitude returns upon itself. Everyone helps themselves when they help another— not, I say, because the one helped will want to help them, or the one defended will protect them, or because a good model of behavior comes back around to those who set it (in the way that bad models rebound back upon those who set them, and those who suffer wrongs they themselves have proven possible—by doing them—receive no sympathy), but because the reward of all virtues is in the virtues themselves. They are not practiced according to a price chart. The payment for having done a virtuous deed is that you have done it.
I’m grateful, not in order that someone else, stirred by my example, will more willingly give to me, but in order to do a very gratifying and beautiful thing."
"We should do all we can to be extremely grateful. For this virtue is entirely in our power, in a way justice is not (though it’s generally assumed to be so), for justice depends on others, while the great part of gratitude returns upon itself. Everyone helps themselves when they help another— not, I say, because the one helped will want to help them, or the one defended will protect them, or because a good model of behavior comes back around to those who set it (in the way that bad models rebound back upon those who set them, and those who suffer wrongs they themselves have proven possible—by doing them—receive no sympathy), but because the reward of all virtues is in the virtues themselves. They are not practiced according to a price chart. The payment for having done a virtuous deed is that you have done it.
I’m grateful, not in order that someone else, stirred by my example, will more willingly give to me, but in order to do a very gratifying and beautiful thing."
