The Concept of Gratitude to the Buddha (Buddhānussati) and the Science of Gratitude

Abstract

This article examines Buddhānussati (recollection of the Buddha) as a contemplative form of gratitude and proposes an interdisciplinary framework for interpreting its personal and social significance. Rather than treating Buddhānussati as a merely devotional act, the article argues that it functions as a disciplined recollective practice through which attention, emotion, and ethical orientation are reshaped by sustained reflection on the Buddha’s qualities. Drawing on selected Pāli sources and modern scholarship on gratitude, the discussion shows that Buddhist texts associate recollection of the Buddha with confidence, joy, tranquility, and concentration, while contemporary psychological and neuroscientific studies link gratitude with well-being, prosociality, and neural activity related to valuation, moral cognition, and emotion regulation. At the personal level, Buddhānussati may support emotional balance, resilience, ethical self-regulation, and reduced self-centered rumination. At the social level, it may foster humility, compassion, the expression of gratitude, and relational harmony within families, classrooms, and religious communities. The article argues, however, that scientific findings should not be used to reduce Buddhist soteriology to neurobiology, nor should speculative claims be treated as established evidence. The most defensible conclusion is that contemporary gratitude research can illuminate selected psychological and social dimensions of Buddhānussati, while Buddhist sources provide the deeper ethical and liberative framework within which the practice should be understood. Future research should employ philologically grounded textual study and culturally sensitive empirical designs to examine individual and communal forms of Buddhānussati more rigorously.