How to Train a Happy Mind

In New York City, a couple months ago, I had the honor of sharing a public conversation with one of my Buddhist heroes, the renowned author and scholar Robert Thurman. In this episode's conversation, we share an edited recording from that evening, talking about everything from overcoming self-hatred, enjoying pleasure without attachment, getting ghosted by the Dalai Lama, and how one might come to have compassion for someone as dangerous and deadly as Vladimir Putin.

Episode 161:  Robert Thurman & Scott Snibbe at Tibet House: How to Train a Happy Mind

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A meditation practice of self reflection, taking control of the mental cause and effect that's normally unconscious: the habits and activities conditioned by evolution, our upbringing, society and the media. This is a practice you can do at the end of each day: reviewing your day, rejoicing in the positive, and finding ways to sincerely forgive yourself for anything that you regret, so you can sleep better and be your best self the next day.

Episode 12: Guided Meditation—Mental Cause And Effect

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Science has greater and greater mastery in understanding and controlling physical cause and effect, from planets to particles, but we are only starting to understand cause and effect in our minds. Evolution, habits, and society all affect our behavior. How do we gain conscious control of our behavior, much less our thoughts? One method is a daily practice of self-appreciation and self-forgiveness that lets us release regret and pain to face each day with renewed presence and joy.

Episode 11: Mental Cause and Effect

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

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Yangsi Rinpoche's gave a beautiful talk a couple of months ago with the intriguing title "Contentment Plus Ambition." He was generous enough to sit down with me afterwards for an interview about the same topic in which he talks about how to practice real self-compassion and even how we can create the causes for world peace.
 
Yangsi Rinpoche studied at Sera Jey Monastery in south India until 1995 when he graduated with the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa. Rinpoche now lives in Portland, Oregon where he's president and professor of Buddhist studies at Maitripa College, a Buddhist Institute of higher education, striving to integrate modern academics with ancient wisdom.

Episode 160: Contentment and Ambition with Yangsi Rinpoche

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Restorative justice practitioner sujatha baliga talks to Scott Snibbe about his new meditation book, How to Train a Happy Mind.

Episode 159: sujatha baliga & Scott Snibbe in conversation: How to Train a Happy Mind

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A guided meditation on impermanence that helps us release fear and anxiety to embrace the constant change at every scale of reality: from particles, possessions, homes, and the environment, to our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, and relationships. When we embrace impermanence, we more easily take on challenges like today’s Coronavirus crisis. We become more fully present to those around us and we can even more deeply appreciate life’s impermanent pleasures.

Episode 10. Guided Meditation - Embracing Impermanence

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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We cling to things as if they won’t change, but change is the nature of reality. When we embrace impermanence, we prepare ourselves for big changes, and are able to let go of our fear and anxiety to become more fully present to those around us, to make the most meaningful choices day-to-day, and to more deeply appreciate life’s fleeting pleasures.

Episode 9. Embracing Impermanence

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

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In this guided meditation, Stephen Batchelor invites you to unconditionally embrace your experience of the moment, to simply watch all thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and notice the ground of nonreactive awareness. This guides you toward a path rooted in freedom, openness, and love.

Episode 158: Meditation on Embracing Life with Stephen Batchelor

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 Nearly 30 years ago, Stephen Batchelor wrote a book called Buddhism Without Beliefs that's become a foundational work for those seeking to adopt Buddhism into a non-religious form while still maintaining the power and authenticity of its time tested practices. I had a chance to speak with Stephen Batchelor recently from his home in France, where he shared his own creative struggle with Buddhism: from his origins as an ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk to becoming a skeptical agnostic who admits that he simply doesn't know the answers to life's biggest questions.

Episode 157: Buddhism Without Beliefs with Stephen Batchelor

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Derek Fagerstrom interviews Scott Snibbe about his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at San Francisco’s Book Passage. Derek is the co-founder of Pop-up Magazine, and has worked at Esquire, Interview, and Francis Ford Coppola's literary journal Zoetrope: All-Story. How to Train a Happy Mind is out now in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. You can find it anywhere you buy books.

Episode 156: Book Passage Talk with Derek Fagerstrom

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Scott Snibbe leads a meditation from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, on how to make the most of our precious lives.

Episode 155: Precious Life Meditation

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Scott Snibbe shares a chapter from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind: The Precious Life. If you enjoy this episode, check out the whole audiobook on Audible, which includes guided meditations!

Episode 154: The Precious Life—Chapter Reading from How to Train a Happy Mind

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This is an exciting episode for the podcast because my book, How to Train a Happy Mind, comes out today. To celebrate its release, we're sharing a conversation I had with best-selling author Vicki McKenzie a couple of weeks ago at a book preview event in London, in front of a live audience.

This podcast is where I developed most of the ideas for the book, based on more than a decade leading meditations that eventually formed many of our episodes. I want to thank all our listeners for your feedback and support over these four years. You've helped me develop the book's simple eight-step program that combines Tibetan Buddhism with modern science and psychology. I'm excited to hear what you think about it.

If you'd like to buy How to Train a Happy Mind, you can find it anywhere you buy books. I've donated all my proceeds from the book to the Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment nonprofit. So your purchase helps support this podcast. If you end up enjoying the book, please consider reviewing it on Amazon or Goodreads, which will help other people discover it.

Episode 153: How to Train a Happy Mind book launch conversation with Scott Snibbe and Vicki Mackenzi

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Meenadchi guides a meditation on discovering, playing with, and feeling the good things in your body through a light visualization.

Episode 152: Meditation on Feeling Good with Meenadchi

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A couple of decades ago, a friend introduced me to a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Over the years, I've tried imperfectly to use its gentler forms of communication. At various points in life the techniques of NVC, as it's known for short, have saved me from losing a lawsuit, losing a job, and losing a partner. Still, these techniques didn't always work for me. When our producer Annie Nguyen recently introduced me to a book called Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, it put words to those challenges. 

The book's author, Meenadchi, a somatic healing practitioner, spoke with me recently about the ways that she's updated nonviolent communication to account for the power structures in our society that exacerbate conflicts, and the interdependence between people and our environments that may have been missing from nonviolent communication's original formulation. 

I find her approach, distinctly Buddhist as a "middle way" that helps us draw strong boundaries and fight the injustices in the world, while still holding love and compassion, even for our enemies. Meenadchi's therapeutic work centers on social change and embodied transformation. She specializes in healing members of communities impacted by gender-based violence, complex trauma, and serious mental illness. 

Episode 151: Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication with Meenadchi

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Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is the author of The Inclusive Language Field Guide. An academic for many years, she now specializes in analyzing and addressing bias at work, helping companies like Google and Reddit promote speech that's more inclusive and more connecting. After I read Suzanne's book, I was struck by the parallels between her work and the Buddhist ethical foundation of right speech. 

In our interview, we talk about embarrassing mistakes we both made in our speech, how to both forcefully and compassionately confront harmful speech, and how to recognize and transform the bias in our own language. Suzanne and I spoke for so long that it far outran our normal episode length. So, if you'd like to hear the full unedited hour and a half of our great conversation, including many specific examples of ways to speak inclusively and compassionately, check out the Skeptic's Path YouTube channel.

Episode 150: Compassionate Speech with Dr. Suzanne Wertheim

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A complete guided meditation session expanding your compassion, stabilizing concentration on the breath, and observing your thoughts.

Episode 3: Guided Meditation: Stabilizing the Mind and Watching Thoughts

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

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Over the past few years meditation has become popular as a way to help reduce stress, be focused at work, sleep better, or simply relax. Yet meditation isn’t just a tool to improve focus or relax, but a way to strengthen the positive qualities we all naturally possess: compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humor, and finding joy in everyday life. This episode explores this higher purpose of meditation through the less familiar technique of analytic meditationthat uses stories, thoughts, and emotions to steer our minds toward happiness, meaning, and benefiting others.

Episode 2: What Is Meditation?

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

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Scott Tusa leads an equanimity meditation—based on the Mahayana Buddhist tradition—that works with three kinds of relationships in our life. The purpose is to cultivate compassion, loving-kindness, and understanding.

Episode 149: Equanimity Meditation with Scott Tusa

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After ordination by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Scott Tusa spent nine years as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Today, he's an irreverent meditation teacher and a brand-new father. In this episode, Scott and I talk about some hard decisions we've faced in life, and that the world faces today, asking ourselves, What is the right thing to do? Is there a right and wrong from a Buddhist perspective? How did Scott and I deal with the painful decisions we faced in our lives to get divorced and to give up a monastic life? We also grapple with one of the biggest ethical dilemmas facing the world today, the violent conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Episode 148: What Is the Right Thing to Do? with Scott Tusa

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Even a short 10-minute meditation has the power to calm your body and mind. Here’s a helpful guided meditation that in just 10 minutes a day can improve your well-being. Even though it's short, this is a complete meditation session including establishing proper meditation posture, motivating our meditation to be a force for good, stabilizing the mind on the breath, letting go of thoughts, cultivating beneficial thoughts, and a dedication to seal your meditation practice.

A Guided 10 Minute Meditation to Calm the Mind

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

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Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations.

Episode 1: What Is A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment?

Introducing A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment, bringing the inner science of Buddhist meditation to twenty-first century people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. We take a secular approach to meditation that requires no belief beyond our current understanding of science and psychology, based on powerful Buddhist mind training techniques that use imagination, intelligence, and emotions to probe our inner and outer realities, and expand our compassion.

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Scott Snibbe shares a gentle Buddhist approach to self-forgiveness, letting go, establishing good habits, and rejoicing in all the good we've done. Move into the new year with your best intentions and best self.

Episode 147: Letting Go and Looking Forward in the New Year

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Grammy Award winning artist Laurie Anderson, a longtime student of Buddhism and meditation, shares her personal path with Buddhism, approaching art with a beginner’s mind, staying present with suffering without letting it overwhelm you, and making our lives meaningful.

Laurie Anderson is one of our greatest living artists. Her work includes spoken word and performance, top-charting albums and music videos, digital art, film, virtual reality, and the invention of ingenious instruments like the tape bow violin and the talking stick. She’s won the Grammy Award and many other honors, and is currently the subject of a fantastic solo show at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Episode 106: Laurie Anderson's Buddhism: Art, Meditation, and Death as Adventure 

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Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor and host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, talks with Scott Snibbe about love, skepticism, Buddhism, and the "cheesy upward spiral."

Episode 134: Dan Harris: Love, Skepticism, and the "Cheesy Upward Spiral"

This is a rebroadcast of one of the year's most popular episodes.

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Dr. Katherine MacLean leads a meditation practice called RAFT: Remembering to be Aware of Feelings in your body and Trust your experience. Katherine says that mushrooms shared this practice with her as a way to help others access the space of psychedelics from a sober standpoint.

Episode 146: RAFT Meditation with Dr. Katherine MacLean

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Ten years ago Dr. Katherine MacLean conducted the first scientific study of the combined effects of psychedelics with meditation. The encouraging results of the study showed the long-term beneficial effects these substances can have on our concentration, emotion regulation, openness, wellbeing, and happiness. 

In our conversation I learned what psychedelics have in common with meditation and how they can compliment one another. Katherine also shared when psychedelics aren't useful or even when they can be harmful. She offers careful advice as to when these substances might be of benefit and when they aren't.

Episode 145: Psychedelics, Meditation, and Buddhism with Dr. Katherine MacLean

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Psychedelic psychotherapist Dr. Michael Sapiro leads a guided meditation on mindful awareness that connects you with the present moment and your senses.

Episode 144: Mindful Awareness Meditation with Michael Sapiro 

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Psychedelics have been in the news a lot lately as a new way to help people work through otherwise intractable issues of grief depression and PTSD. Dr. Michael Sapiro is a psychedelic psychotherapist and researcher who has worked successfully with psychedelics in his practice for years. 

He focuses on helping combat vets and first responders overcome PTSD and other trauma; in his words, transforming worldly warriors into spiritual warriors. Listen to this episode to hear how psychedelic substances, meditation, and Buddhism have helped his patients overcome huge problems and open up to themselves and to the people around them.

Episode 143: Psychedelic Psychotherapy with Michael Sapiro 

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On several occasions I’ve heard people ask the Dalai Lama how to end war, and he’s always answered the same way: begin by trying to resolve the conflicts in your own life. But how do we do that? This meditation goes through some of the Buddhist approaches to understanding the causes of war, both in ourselves and others, and how we might eventually be free of them.

Episode 142. War Meditation

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Take an expansive tour through the four foundations of mindfulness in this sweeping guided meditation with Dr. David Kittay: mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and mental objects.

Guided Meditation: Four Foundations of Mindfulness with Dr. David Kittay

Listen to our previous interviews with Dr. David Kittay here:
Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology (Part 1)
Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology (Part 2)

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Professor David Kittay talks with Scott Snibbe about whether we should treat AIs with compassion, whether we are living in a simulation, and whether technologically assisted enlightenment might be possible.

Dr. David Kittay teaches philosophy, religion, and technology at Columbia University, where his students call his courses life changing. Dr. Kittay is also an author, a translator, and a Tibet House board member. His latest publication is the Vajra Rosary Tantra, available from Wisdom Publications.

Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay
Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay (Part 2)

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A guided meditation by Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald) on the natural goodness of our mind, or Buddha nature. In this meditation we let go of all our negative, disturbing states of mind like anger, anxiety, or fear; and cultivate our positive mental qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage.

36. Guided Meditation on the Natural Goodness of our Mind — Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald)

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In this episode, I have one of my heroes back for a third time. Dr. Jan Willis is an extraordinary Buddhist scholar and practitioner and today she's talking with me about the question, Are we fundamentally good? 

Buddhism sometimes seems quite depressing with its focus on suffering and death. But at the core of Buddhism is the idea that in fact, our nature is fundamentally good. Is there any evidence for this? And if so, how do we come to see it? 

Listen to my interview with Dr. Willis to hear the answers to these questions, and whether we might even come to see the good in someone as destructive as Vladimir Putin.

Episode 140: Are We Fundamentally Good? with Dr. Jan Willis

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How can we use pleasure in our meditation practice? Buddhism offers specific techniques for meditating on pleasure as a way to deepen our qualities of concentration, fearlessness, loving-kindness, and even our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 85: Guided Meditation on Pleasure
Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Pleasure is often viewed as a hindrance to the spiritual path, a hotbed of craving and attachment, but what if we told you that pleasure can actually be a positive part of the spiritual path, a portal to love and happiness?

Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Tenzin Chogkyi leads a guided meditation to cultivate compassion for yourself and others.

Episode 139: Guided Meditation on Compassion with Tenzin Chogkyi

 

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In this episode Tenzin Chogkyi dives head on into the challenging topics of hierarchy, patriarchy, gender, and sexism in Buddhism. As a practicing Buddhist since the 1970s who spent 20 years as a nun ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, she has deep, hard-won insights into these topics. 

Tenzin Chogkyi is one of the most thoughtful, independent thinkers I know, and a person of extraordinary integrity who has dedicated her life to both inner development and advancing fairness and equality in the outer world. I think you'll enjoy listening to our conversation just as much as I enjoyed being a part of it.

Episode 138: Patriarchy, Gender, and Sexism in Buddhism with Tenzin Chogkyi

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Artificial intelligence expert Kristian Simsarian joins host Scott Snibbe to discuss how we can create ethical, unbiased and compassionate AI, whether we should be scared of AI, and the implications of AI on the future of work and spirituality.

Kristian Simsarian has a Ph.D. in human-robot collaboration and worked as a Robotics and AI computer scientist before holding leadership positions at IDEO, the California College of the Arts, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and many other organizations. He helped found Humans for AI and helped grow the Center for Humane Technology in its early years. His work has appeared in NYT, Business Week, Huffington Post, along with several best-selling business books on innovation. He's also a board member for A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment.

Episode 80: Compassionate AI with Kristian Simsarian

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Host Scott Snibbe offers touching personal stories and a meditation on how to best love our parents and our children using powerful Buddhist teachings and techniques on understanding, listening, and compassion.

Episode 76: Loving Our Parents, Loving Our Children

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Sujatha baliga leads a guided meditation to work through past traumas in a gentle, loving, and healing manner.

137. Guided Meditation on Healing Trauma with sujatha baliga

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Macarthur Award winner sujatha baliga discusses healing trauma, restorative justice, and the power of love and meditation to build a better world.

sujatha baliga is a restorative justice educator and advocate and a 2019 winner of the MacArthur fellowship. She has served as the director of the restorative justice project at Impact Justice, a co-founder of Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, and a Soros Justice Fellow at Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth.

Sujatha earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and went on to earn her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her life's work in restorative justice was born of the personal advice she received when she was 24 years old from His Holiness the Dalai Lama on forgiving seemingly unforgivable acts.

136. sujatha baliga on Healing Trauma and Restorative Justice

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A 20-minute guided analytical meditation on how money exists through parts, causes, and the mind in our interdependent reality, seen through the Buddhist lens of emptiness.

Episode 71. Guided Meditation: How Money Exists

Previous Episode: Bitcoin and Buddhism

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What can Buddhism teach us about how Bitcoin works and why it's so valuable? What can Bitcoin teach us about emptiness, the interdependent nature of reality?

Episode 70. Bitcoin and Buddhism

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Dan Harris, host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, leads a loving-kindness meditation for skeptics. Recent research has shown that this practice positively impacts mental and physical health.

Episode 135: Dan Harris Loving-Kindness Guided Meditation

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Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor and host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, talks with Scott Snibbe about love, skepticism, Buddhism, and the "cheesy upward spiral."

Episode 134: Dan Harris: Love, Skepticism, and the "Cheesy Upward Spiral"

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A 10 minute guided meditation on the body, relaxing into the open connection between body and mind through mindful awareness.

Episode 63. 10 Minute Body Meditation

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Could the true cause of happiness be simply thinking about whatever we are doing at the moment, what scientists and meditators call mindfulness?

Episode 60. Why Mindfulness?

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Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the greatest living science fiction writers, and one of the few people ever to have developed a credible solution to the climate crisis, which he describes in his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future. 

In this interview, we talk about climate change solutions, Buddhism in his life and work, sci-fi and cli-fi (climate fiction), colonizing Mars, the outdoors as meditation, and how to stay optimistic.

Episode 102. Kim Stanley Robinson on Solving the Climate Crisis, Buddhism, and the Power of Science Fiction

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Rob Hopkins, climate activist, co-founder of the Transition Network and host of the podcast series From What If to What Next talks about an engaged, passionate form of Buddhism that actively works for positive change in our communities and in the world.

Episode 103. From What If to What Next — Rob Hopkins' Climate Optimism

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

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