The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So good morning and good day, and welcome to this first five-part series, a talk on gratitude, series on gratitude.

And gratitude is a Buddhist topic. And one of the nice things about gratitude is that with other kind of foundational practices of Buddhism,

like generosity, ethics, it puts us more closely connected, connect to a healthy relationship with others.

Gratitude that's sincere is a beautiful way to be in relationship with other people and

helps establish healthy relationships.

Being ethical, not causing harm, but actually working for the benefit of people,

also benefits the relationships, the relatedness in all directions. And the third is gratitude

to be grateful.

And sincere gratitude is a wonderful leavening for our society,

for our communities. It's a wonderful sharing of our hearts

with other people. It's a wonderful way to see

and acknowledge other people for whom's a wonderful way to see and acknowledge other people

for whom we're grateful.

The Buddha has this wonderful teaching.

There are four qualities of a person who is wise, skillful, a good person who maintains oneself without causing any self-harm,

who is blameless and beyond reproach from the wise, and who generates much merit.

The only way the Buddha defines merit or describes it is with the word happiness. It's almost

synonymous. one generates much happiness

so four things

four actions

...