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

This is episode number 84.

I am your host Noah Rasheda and today I am talking about how to practice mindfulness daily.

Before I jump into that, keep in mind the Dalai Lama's advice to not use what you learned

from Buddhism to be a Buddhist, use it to be a better whatever you already are.

On the past couple of episodes I have been talking about the four noble truths with the

acronym ELSA as a reminder to apply those as tasks.

The Eightfold Path was the last episode and today I wanted to talk a little bit about some

ideas and tips and exercises regarding how to actually practice mindfulness in our day-to-day

living.

Now I want to bring to your attention something.

With the Eightfold Path it can seem like there is this structured way of trying to go about

living and that can seem to contradict other episodes where I have talked about the idea

of living artfully and I had a recent message from a podcast listener who brought up this

point and said with concepts that I share from time to time like the idea that when you

try, the trying has lost the whole point or teachings like the gaithless gate.

At times some Buddhist concepts and teachings can seem contradictory in their implications

of what's being taught with trying to do something and having effort versus not trying

to do something and just going with the flow and in that case why even try.

So what I explained as a response to this email was the idea that effort is something

that we exert at any given time for many different reasons.

It's always happening.

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