How to Train a Happy Mind

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 an...

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 If you're e...

A guided meditation combatting fear of the Coronavirus through compassion using the technique of Taking and Giving (in Tibetan, Tonglen). We soothe our own fear and anxiety by imagining how others are suffering now, just as we are. And we sincerely wish to help, to take away their pain, through a powerful guided visualization. Episode 8. Guided Meditation: Combatting Coronavirus Fear With Compassi...

This guided meditation takes us through different ways of observing the mind, first examining its ever-present parts: perception, feeling, will, and awareness. Then we explore the nature of subjective reality itself by asking what is the mind without thoughts? Where is the space of our consciousness? And, how finely can we slice moments of consciousness? Do we ever arrive at a quantum of conscious...

If the mind is our thoughts, then what is it that observes those thoughts? What are we without thoughts? Do we ever truly see an object, or only its mental reconstruction? Though we are all convinced that we have one, science has no agreed definition for consciousness or mind. Even subjectively, the mind is elusive, difficult to pin to any specific mental experience. Episode 6. What Is the Mind? J...

A guided meditation on the preciousness of our next 24 hours alive and our unique place in the universe as science understands it: intelligent, self-aware beings at the end of 14 billion years’ cosmic and biological evolution. Episode 5. Guided Meditation: The Preciousness of Life If you are enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating and review Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind t...

Regarding the possibility of reincarnation, Voltaire once said, “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once.” In this episode we contemplate the miracle of existing at all, from our place at the end of our universe’s 14 billion years’ evolution, to the simple joy of another 24 hours alive. Episode 4. The Preciousness of Life from Cosmos to the Kardashians If you are enjoying our podcast,...

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 Leave us a rating and review Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with ot...

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...

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 o...