How to Train a Happy Mind

Today we’re sharing a guided meditation from the wonderful Venerable René Feusi (Scott Snibbe's long-time teacher). Settle in, find a comfortable seat, and let René’s clear, grounded guidance open the warm heart of awareness within you. Episode #199: The Warm Heart of Awareness: A Meditation with Ven. René Feusi Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in Ca...

It turns out that many of the greatest living Buddhist teachers are also some of the hardest to receive teachings from. Lacking ego, they have no need to promote themselves. This is the case with Scott's closest teacher, Venerable René Feusi.  Out of a wish to maintain his solitude and focus on long-term students—and probably mostly out of humility—Venerable René has always declined Scott&apo...

This 20 minute guided meditation comes from the sequence Scott shares in the How to Train a Happy Mind podcast and book. The stages are based on the Tibetan Buddhist lamrim, which was created more than a thousand years ago by the Indian Master Atisha Dipankar.  Over the past decade, Scott has adapted it to be a non-religious way to transform the mind from states of frustration, craving, and loneli...

Welcome to this guided meditation on accessing joy with Tenzin Chogkyi. In this practice, we’ll take time to settle the body, connect with the breath, and gently open to the feeling of joy.  Episode 196: Joyful Effort: A Guided Meditation with Tenzin Chogkyi  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...

Instead of the episode we had planned to share today, a meditation from Tenzin Chogkyi as part of her beautiful conversation on joy, we're postponing that release by a week. In its place, we're sharing a meditation Scott Snibbe led just a couple of days ago with our Train a Happy Mind community.  This meditation was recorded the day after the United States launched a new bombing campaign...

Today's guest is Tenzin Chogkyi, one of our most popular guests, and she's back to talk about another one of the six perfections that we've been talking with other guests about this year. This one is enthusiasm or joyful effort. She talks about not just the Buddhist ideas of enthusiasm, but how to maintain our joy and enthusiasm in life when things are difficult or even when we get...

Scott Snibbe leads a 10-minute guided meditation that is based on the sequence he shares in the How to Train a Happy Mind podcast and book. Many Tibetan Buddhists do this meditation every day. If you don't have much time or want to start small, this is a good place to begin. It touches on the precious life, impermanence, cause and effect, suffering, renunciation, love, compassion, and interde...

"I'll tell you something. I've learned it's hard work to be happy." Brian Wilson In this special retreat episode, Scott Snibbe guides us through the full path to a happy mind—from appreciating the simple miracle of being alive to confronting our deepest mental habits and reconnecting with our capacity for kindness, meaning, and change. It’s not a quick fix or a life hack....

Dr. Larry Ward—student of Thich Nhat Hanh and author of America's Racial Karma—leads a short but powerful breath awareness meditation. Episode 191: 5-Minute Breath Awareness Meditation 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 others and bring these ideas into your life, joi...

Scott talks with Dr. Larry Ward, a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, and author of America's Racial Karma. His book is about how we heal from the trauma of racism, not just as a society, but in our own minds and bodies. In our conversation, Dr. Ward shares a profound truth: racism is a fiction, but one with very real consequences, and it lives not only in the structures of our society, but in our t...

Who am I? From the Buddhist perspective, there’s a systematic way of asking this question of who you are in the form of a meditation on the ultimate nature of the self, or "emptiness." This meditation is said to be the strongest antidote to our disturbing states of mind and a cause for greater self-awareness, happiness, and connection with others. Episode 43: Guided Meditation — The Inte...

Are you your body? Are you your mind? Are you a collection of thoughts, memories, and neural connections that could be uploaded into a computer to live forever? Or are you an old-fashioned soul? This episode probes the nature of the self using the Buddhist notion of emptiness, searching for the partless, independent, unchanging "I" that ordinarily appears to us, and finding a self that&a...

Susan Piver leads a short breath awareness meditation in this week's podcast episode. If you were to go down the Buddhist path, you would start with this practice before starting with visualizations, guru yogas, mantras, mandala practices. It's a simple practice that is suitable for all. Episode 189: Mindfulness Awareness Meditation with Susan Piver Join our third annual How to Train a H...

This year, we're using the framework of Buddhism's Six Perfections to guide most of our episodes. Our last one with returning guest and activist Kazu Haga, focused on patience or not returning harm. This week, another favorite of the podcast is back, Susan Piver. She and I talk and riff on her new book, Inexplicable Joy , which explores one of Buddhism's most famous and mysterious t...

The Buddhist understanding of how things exist, called emptiness, breaks objects down into parts, causes, and a mind that bundles them into the illusion of a solid, singular, unchanging entity. When we apply this analysis to an iPhone, we see that it is made up of almost all the elements in the periodic table, and is connected to thousands of hours of hard labor and the entire history of our civil...

When the world feels like it’s unraveling, how do we come back to ourselves? In this gentle, grounding guided meditation, activist and educator Kazu Haga invites us to sit beside our fear—not to fix or push it away, but to witness it with compassion. Through breath, body, and the ground beneath us, we rediscover a quiet strength that endures even in chaos. This episode is more than a meditation. I...

This week, Scott is joined by transformative activist and restorative justice advocate Kazu Haga to discuss his new book, Fierce Vulnerability , which rethinks nonviolence as a path to healing and connection. In a world fueled by division, Kazu challenges the idea of winning against an enemy and asks: What if resistance wasn’t about force, but about vulnerability? If you’ve ever questioned whether...

Objects around us ordinarily appear as if they are solid, singular, and separate from us. However, both science and the Buddhist understanding of reality show us that as we examine things more closely, they exist far more subtly and richly than they appear. This meditation focuses on an object most of us have strong feelings toward—our smartphone—breaking it apart into its myriad parts, and giving...

The Buddhist view on reality, called emptiness, combines the awe of scientific knowledge with the inner, experiential knowledge that comes from meditation and critical reasoning to arrive at a feeling of interconnectedness. The first in a seven-art series on Buddhism's view of dependent origination looks at how objects exist using the example of that most modern wonder and addiction, our smar...

Settle into a mindful state and engage with your phone in this conscious exercise with digital wellness expert Jay Vidyarthi. Use this guided meditation to deeply and mindfully investigate your phone with clarity. Episode 185: How to Use Your Phone Mindfully: A Guided Meditation for Digital Wellness—Jay Vidyarthi Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in Califo...

Are you in control of your technology, or is it controlling you? In this episode of How to Train a Happy Mind, we sit down with Jay Vidyarthi, author of Reclaim Your Mind, a powerful new book released today that offers a radical yet deeply practical approach to reshaping our relationship with technology. Jay's insights go beyond the usual advice to put your phone away. He helps us uncover the...

What can Buddhism teach us about how Bitcoin works & why it’s so valuable? What can Bitcoin teach us about emptiness, the interdependent nature of reality? Find out in this episode with Scott Snibbe! Episode 70: Bitcoin and Buddhism 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 o...

Meditate on the four types of generosity according to Buddhism, giving material objects, providing protection, teaching the Dharma, and spreading love. It has an emphasis on the generosity that we may or may not show to homeless people.  It's part of a year-long series on what we call the Six Perfections, six practices of Mahayana Buddhism that lead one to, they say, a state of limitless happ...

In this episode, I share lesson's I've learned about generosity from my Buddhist teachers, my college girlfriend, and, to start off, my mother on the generosity we choose to share (or not to share) with homeless people. This year, most of our episodes are centered around what Buddhism calls the "six perfections": generosity, morality, patience, joyful effort, calm abiding, and...

A guided meditation on “universalizing,” a Tibetan Buddhist mind training technique for transforming our everyday problems and pleasures through love and compassion. Episode 32. Guided Meditation: Universalizing our Problems and Pleasures 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...