Hello and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast.

This is episode number 117. I am your host Noah Rasheda.

And today I'm going to talk about Noble Silence.

Keep in mind you don't need to use what you learned from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use it to learn to be a better whatever you already are.

Now before I jump into the topic for today and before I talk about the Zen Kawan that I left

in the podcast episode last week, I want to address the fact that today I am recording this podcast

episode on December 8th which happens to be Bodhi Day in many Buddhist countries, Japan specifically.

Bodhi Day is the day that celebrated as a commemoration of the Buddha's awakening.

So today millions of Buddhists around the world commemorate the awakening of the Buddha and his

realization that he was his own source of light and darkness. For me this is a reminder that

when we learn to look inward and we start to understand the nature of our own minds,

we also start to see things differently. Now what we see in the world may not change but how we

see the world does change and that changes everything. A couple days ago I was talking to my son

Raiko about how as he gets older he's going to rely less and less on what I and others tell him

is the right thing to do and he'll start to rely more on more on what he himself believes

is the right thing to do. And I gave him the example that right now he may only brush his teeth

at night because his parents are telling him to do it but one day he'll probably brush his teeth

because he himself cares about it and he won't need to be told he will just want to do it.

While external sources and guidelines can be helpful and they can point in the right direction

they will never be more powerful than the inner guidelines that we awaken to as we spend more time

looking inward and getting to know ourselves. For me that's the beauty of what we celebrate today

...