Hello, you are listening to the Secular Buddhism Podcast, and this is episode number 33.

I am your host Noah Rasheda, and today I'm talking about threefold mindfulness meditation.

Welcome back to the Secular Buddhism Podcast, 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. If you're new to secular Buddhism or you're interested in learning more,

check out my book Secular Buddhism, Eastern Thought for Western Minds. It's available as paperback

on Amazon, ebook on Kindle and iBook on iTunes. It's also available as an audiobook on audible.com.

For more information and for links to those book versions, visit SecularBudism.com.

Now let's jump into this week's topic. So before we get started, I want to remind you that

this content is also published on my website getmindful.org. Two common questions I receive quite

regularly are, why do we meditate and second, how do we meditate? So I wanted to address this.

The reason we meditate are, our minds are engaged in an ongoing process of assigning meaning to

events as they unfold. We create stories about ourselves and others, the guy who cuts us off in

traffic, the strange look on the face of the clerk in the grocery store, the tone used by a

coworker and so on. We're generally not even aware of this process and yet these stories that we

create in our own minds can end up being the greatest source of stress in our lives. Meditation

has been practiced for thousands of years as a tool to help us move beyond those stress-inducing

thoughts and into a more peaceful state of awareness that's anchored in the present moment.

And when practiced regularly, meditation has been proven to increase positive emotion,

emotional intelligence and self-control while at the same time decreasing depression,

anxiety and stress. I have links to all of the scientific research on getmindful.org. So you

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