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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, hello and welcome to this second talk on gratitude, thankfulness.

And today I want to talk about gratefulness as a emotion or a feeling that we have inside, that it's certainly possible to be grateful on principle

or on an intellectual understanding that someone has done us a favor. It could be that's a habit

that someone does a small favor or does something nice, that we say thank you.

Someone opens the door, thank you. And someone hands us something, thank you. Someone helps us in a

store. Thank you. And it's an acknowledgement of what they've done. It's kind of like saying hello and acknowledging that someone is there. They're saying, it's an acknowledgement of what they've done.

It's kind of like saying hello and acknowledging that someone is there, they're seen.

And it's kind of a clear acknowledgement.

But there's a difference between doing it as a habit or doing it as intellectual acknowledgement of something,

and the feelings that can arise, to be really touched,

some people are moved to tears in gratefulness,

so moved by a benefit someone has provided.

Sometimes I've been deeply moved, almost as tears, watching or seeing or knowing

what someone has done for someone else. And it's so moving for me. It's not exactly that I

get gratitude, but it touches that space inside where gratitude is born. And so gratefulness to be a feeling, a sense, something goes deeper than just the mind.

It's not a calculation, it's not a habit, it's not merely an acknowledgement.

And maybe it's not even an acknowledgement that does appreciate what goes on,

but it's allowing the experience we've had, the gift we've been given,

to be absorbed.

Some people will very quickly try to respond to something that's done for us in a way that kind of little bit stops it from really

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