Buddhism Beyond Belief with Susan Piver

Send us Fan Mail This week I share one of the central teachings in Tibetan Buddhist practice: the Four Reminders that turn the mind toward the dharma. I had a recent conversation with Lama Sonam Rinpoche who said to me multiple times in the course of a few hour conversation: there is no more important teaching than this . In this episode, I try to offer some insights into why a great Lama might sa...

Send us Fan Mail It’s episode 60! A perfect place to reach a summation of my new book, Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics which posits that meditation is not about becoming a better version of yourself. It is a spiritual practice that opens you to the three qualities of the awakened mind: wisdom, compassion, and power. How do these qualities arise from sitting there, doing “nothing”? All I...

Send us Fan Mail This episode picks up on the sixth principle of spiritual practice from my new book, Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics : We Dream on Behalf of Others.  Meditation protects our minds from the incessant barrage of those who seek our attention, whether for good or, most probably, for ill. Great forces are vying for agency over your thoughts right now. I hope that doesn’t sou...

Send us Fan Mail “The first rule of magic is containment,” said the great Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and many other books. This points to the idea that the world we live in changes the way our minds and hearts work. The more uplifted our world, beginning with our actual home, the more potency we have in our spiritual quest. Why? It’s magic?   In this episode, I explore the fifth pri...

Send us Fan Mail The spiritual path asks you to open up, and the more you do so, the more you feel everything: your tenderness, things you’ve been avoiding, your deepest longings. It’s important to stay open to all of this but being open takes judgment. I know people say you shouldn’t judge but I say, hell yes, you’ve got to judge. The deepening vulnerability of the journey requires discernment an...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore one of the most persistent misunderstandings about meditation: that it is supposed to make you feel better. From my experience, meditation does not numb heartbreak or smooth out emotional life. It opens us more fully to our experience. I talk about why vulnerability is not a failure of practice, but a sign that something real is happening. I also share t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I reflect on a recent meditation and writing retreat where participants explored grief, heartbreak, violence, loss, and the experiences that shape us most deeply.  I talk about why the personal is not an obstacle to spiritual practice but the very material of the path itself. I explore how teachings on egolessness can become distorted into self-erasure, and why re...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore why spiritual practice becomes sustainable through ritual, not force. I share the story of a month-long meditation retreat where I discovered an unexpected sense of ease in both meditation and writing, and how that experience led me to begin teaching meditation and writing retreats myself.  I also introduce the first principle from my new book, Inexplica...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I reflect on a recent conversation in the Open Heart Project sangha about scientific research on meditation. Yes, meditation can improve brain function and mood. But if we stop there, we may miss the point. There’s a much older, deeper body of “research” drawn from lived experience over thousands of years. Meditation is not just about feeling better. It’s about wa...

Send us Fan Mail Here is a new episode after an unexpected pause. I’m moving to a new house and that has stirred disorientation, emotional complexity, and a break from familiar patterns. The truth is, I just didn’t know if I had anything of use to say. Also, I was in a bad mood? Needy! It happens! It turns out that this unsettled place provided a good context to consider a question raised in our O...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I bring all eight steps of the Noble Eightfold Path together. This teaching is a way of living, not a project of self-improvement. This is about how we relate to experience and how that shapes suffering or freedom. Highlights Right View Seeing clearly begins in the present moment. Meditation helps us loosen our grip on thoughts and recognize we don’t truly know. W...

Send us Fan Mail This week we arrive at the final step of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Samadhi, often translated as concentration or absorption. If the earlier steps help us see clearly and act with intention, this final step gathers the mind into a unified experience. Right Samadhi is not about forcing the mind to focus. It begins with learning to place attention on one thing and come back whe...

Send us Fan Mail This week we explore Right Mindfulness, the seventh step of the Noble Eightfold Path. While the earlier steps shape how we see and act in the world, this step turns us inward again, toward our direct experience. Right Mindfulness is not about self-improvement or optimization. It is a way of relating to the mind as it is. Through meditation, we begin to see that thoughts are not a...

Send us Fan Mail This week we explore Right Effort, the sixth step of the Noble Eightfold Path. While the earlier steps guide how we understand reality and how we act in the world, Right Effort begins to turn inward. It concerns how we work with our own mind and inner life. Right Effort does not mean pushing harder or forcing yourself to improve. It begins with a commitment not to give up on yours...

Send us Fan Mail This episode, we pause our exploration of the Noble Eightfold Path before returning next week with Right Effort. This week, Shambhala Publications (my favorite publisher) is reissuing my book, The Buddhist Enneagram . I’m so proud this is happening and I wanted to take this chance to share thoughts on the two wisdom streams that have shaped my life for more than three decades: the...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore Right Livelihood, the fifth step on the Noble Eightfold Path. We began with Right View and Right Intention, then moved into speech and action. Now we turn to how we earn a living. It may sound ordinary, but the way we work, relate, and exchange value in the world can either bind us more tightly or support liberation. I share three lenses from the Buddhis...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore Right Action, the fourth step on the Noble Eightfold Path. We begin with Right View and Right Intention, then move outward into speech. Now we take those steps into how we live and act in the world. Right Action is not a fixed rulebook. It is nuanced, relational, and always evolving. I share three lenses from the Buddhist tradition that help us investiga...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I explore the third step of the Noble Eightfold Path, Right Speech, and why it might more accurately be called Right Listening. I begin with a story about the so-called “Marcus Syndrome”, the habit of using someone else’s speaking time to prepare your reply. From there, I revisit Right View and Right Intention, and how the way we hold our inner world naturally sha...

Send us Fan Mail When I first started my own business years ago, I was full of doubt, excitement, fear, and hope, often all at the same time. Out of nowhere, a major opportunity landed in my lap that could have launched everything forward. There was just one problem. I did not respect the work of the person offering it. In this episode, I reflect on that moment and how a single sentence from my me...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I begin a conversation about the Fourth Noble Truth, the Noble Eightfold Path, and its first step, Right View. I review the first three Noble Truths and reflect on how Buddhism is often misunderstood as a tool for stress reduction, when it is actually a profound path of liberation from suffering. I explore how suffering arises not simply from loss or disappointmen...

Send us Fan Mail This morning, the Open Heart Project Sangha gathered as we do every day to meditate and reflect together. The group was larger than usual, a clear sign of how shaken many of us are by what is happening in the United States right now. I began by saying there is nothing I can offer that makes this moment acceptable or less horrifying. There is no teaching that explains it away. What...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I introduce the Four Karmas—pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and destroying—as practical actions for meeting chaos, conflict, and confusion without losing clarity or heart. In this Buddhist framework, karma means action, not fate. These are not strategies for getting your way, but ways to protect the mind, deepen compassion, and interrupt ignorance in real time....

Send us Fan Mail As we move into a new year, how do we deepen our understanding: of ourselves, our relationships, and our spiritual practice? In this episode, we explore the three essential steps of learning in the Buddhist tradition: hearing, contemplating, and meditating. Highlights: Why the first step, hearing , is more than listening: it’s opening to what’s being offered without judgment or pr...

Send us Fan Mail For the final episode of the year, I am sharing a short excerpt from a book I am writing called Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics . This work grows directly out of the heart of this podcast and its focus on how we actually live–not as monastic meditators, but as householders. In this excerpt, I reflect on the Buddha’s awakening and on meditation as it was originally under...

Send us Fan Mail As we close out a year many of us are ready to leave behind, this episode reflects on what we might want to carry forward—and what we can gently let go of. I explore the Buddhist teaching of the brahmavihāras , or Four Immeasurables, as a way of giving our hearts a place to live that is honest, resilient, and humane. The Four Immeasurables—loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic...