Hello you are listening to the Secular Buddhism Podcast and this is episode

number 26. I am your host Noah Rasheda and today I'm talking about gratitude.

Welcome back to the Secular Buddhism Podcast. I am recording this episode from

a room in the Seattle Airport while I'm waiting to catch a flight so I want to

apologize and advanced if you hear any background sounds that you don't

typically hear when I record these podcasts. This is a weekly podcast that focuses

on Buddhist concepts, topics, and teachings presented for a Secular Minded

audience. The Dalai Lama has said do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism

to be a Buddhist. Use it to be a better whatever you already are. So please keep

that in mind as you listen to this episode. And as always if you enjoy this

podcast please feel free to share it with others, write a review, or give it a

rating and iTunes. And if you're in a position to be able to help I would

greatly appreciate if you were able to make a one-time donation or become a

monthly contributor to the podcast by visiting SecularBudism.com. Now let's

jump into this week's topic. So in the past I did a podcast episode that was

called Freedom from the Pursuit of Happiness. And it was a podcast about

happiness and reframing the way that we approach our pursuit of happiness and

kind of shifting our mindset from the pursuit of happiness to the happiness

of the pursuit. And it was a very popular podcast episode and I wanted to

expand a little bit on that idea. So in the past several days I've been thinking

a lot about the topic of gratitude and how gratitude plays into happiness.

So before we can talk about gratitude I wanted to talk about happiness for a

...