Hello and welcome to the Secular Buddhism podcast, a podcast that presents Buddhist teachings,

concepts, and ideas from a secular perspective.

You don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use what you learn to simply be a better whatever you already are.

I am your host, Noah Rusjeta, and let's jump in to today's topic.

For today's podcast episode, I thought it would be fun to share some thoughts on the topic

of gratitude, but specifically gratitude as a byproduct of awareness of interdependence.

So this is a time that culturally, a lot of us are thinking about the topic of gratitude

with Thanksgiving right around the corner.

Gratitude is a universal sentiment that is present across all cultures and traditions,

but in the United States this week we celebrate the topic of gratitude with a specific holiday Thanksgiving.

And that's part of why I wanted to share my thoughts around the topic, exploring gratitude as seen through the lens of Buddhist teachings, a couple of Zen stories, and some practices, for example, Nikon practice.

But first I want to emphasize that in Buddhism, from the Buddhist perspective,

gratitude is not a commandment.

It's not something that is expected or that you are supposed to experience.

It's a sentiment that arises naturally through mindfulness and awareness.

So with that, I want to start out with the topic of interdependence, really, the teaching

of dependent origination, and recognizing that all things, all phenomena, are interconnected.

This is because that is, as the Buddha said.

And recognizing that gratitude is something that can flow naturally when we see how deeply our lives depend on others.

If you think about farmers, the farmers that contributed to planting and growing the food that you are eating, the workers,

the teachers, the education that you have that's come from them, family members,

...