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

Please visit our website at audiodarma.org.

Great. So hello again, hello and welcome to Happier everyone. So in the U.S.

tonight is the Eve before. the holiday of giving thanks. And I know that our Canadian friends.

The holiday of giving thanks. And I know that our Canadian friends have had their

Thanksgiving about a month ago already but you know it's always good to give thanks.

So in honor of coming together and giving thanks, we'll practice

gratitude, the gratitude practice, which is a beautiful practice and uplifting practice.

It's one of the beautiful heart practices.

So let us engage together in this way and just one thing that I say before we get

started is gratitude practice it it's best not as an obligation that you should be grateful because you have this or that or because you're not suffering grossly or

are there people who are suffering more in the world so this this this shooting

of gratitude doesn't work. It feels

contracted. It works most beautiful. It opens the heart

best when it's genuine that the heart really has a deep appreciation for

something for anything and I usually like to start the practice not thinking about what you have in your life that you want to be grateful for.

That's a great practice too, but what I like to do actually, usually starting this practice from right here and now.

So the way I like to lead it tonight is for us to just come to our bodies and breath

and just settle, just settle in the silence without any thoughts of what to be great real for and just be to settle, just settle in the silence.

And then from this place of stability, see what bubbles up, see what bubbles up in this moment,

maybe appreciating the silence. Oh, appreciation gratitude for that, maybe appreciating the

softness of the cushion you were sitting on. Just let it be more arising from the

...