How to Train a Happy Mind

A guided meditation on love, or loving-kindness, the expansive form of love wishing happiness not only to friends and family but to all beings everywhere including our enemies. In the language of Buddhism, metta or maitri. Episode 26. Guided Meditation on Love 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...

NPR's Laura Sydell talks with Scott Snibbe about his book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at The Battery in San Francisco. They discuss interdependence (or emptiness) at length and also how great movies and comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld, can capture Buddhism's insights into how to live happy lives. Episode 176: NPR's Laura Sydell Talks with Scott Snibbe Join our third annual How to Tra...

Love is complex in our culture, tied up with finding a single person to satisfy our huge list of needs and dreams who we then grant the exclusive gift of our affection. But love—loving-kindness from the Buddhist perspective—is simpler, free from attachment. It's wishing others to be happy. Episode 25: What Is Love? Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in...

The recent U.S. election has left our country more divided than ever, with Donald Trump elected as the next president. Whether this news fills you with hope or despair, today's episode offers a fresh perspective on how we can respond with curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to finding common ground even when it feels impossible. Scott shares his personal reflections on nonviolence, the de...

Kazu Haga leads a powerful guided meditation for letting go of anger and other negative emotions based on the principles of nonviolence. Haga, a renowned nonviolence and restorative justice trainer, combines analytical meditation, visualization, breathwork, and mindfulness meditation to cultivate loving-kindness, inner peace, and compassion. Episode 174: Meditation on Nonviolence with Kazu Haga  ...

Kazu Haga's book, Healing Resistance , explains that nonviolence isn't just refraining from harm, but a sophisticated six-step strategy that begins with research and dialogue and ends, most importantly, with reconciliation. He explains that the purpose of nonviolence is not just to create a change we desire in the world, but to heal relationships and enrich our sense of connectedness, re...

This episode is in honor and celebration of the life of Greg Hillis. Christian Scholar Greg Hillis speaks of the parallels between Christianity and Buddhism, the possibility of universal love, mystical experiences that break through to the beauty and interconnectedness of reality, and social activism that respects—and even loves—those we disagree with. Episode 108: Universal Love in Christianity &...

The Buddhist meditation on equanimity teaches a technique to eliminate bias and expand our love and concern from family and friends to strangers and even enemies. It tames our fierce attachment to loved ones and our anger toward enemies for a stabler, happier mind and a more just and equitable world. Episode 23: Guided Meditation: Transforming Bias with Equanimity Join our third annual How to Trai...

In everyday life we ’ re torn between fierce attachment to our loved ones and anger at those that give us trouble. But Buddhism, democracy, and social justice tell us that all people deserve the same rights and freedoms: we ’ re all equal and we all deserve happiness. The Buddhist meditation on equanimity, applied to our everyday relationships and the painful daily news, teaches us a technique of...

This powerful guided meditation for letting go of negative emotions with Paula Chichester helps cultivate love, mindfulness, and inner peace. Whether you're a beginner or deepening an existing meditation practice, this session invites you to take deep breaths, visualize love, and be fully present, embracing the flow of life with mindfulness. Episode 172: Loving Yourself, Loving Others, &...

The ancient word yogi, or yogini in its female form, refers to someone who has dedicated their life to inner transformation through meditation. They often spend years or even decades in solitary retreat. My teacher and friend Paula Chichester is one of the vanishingly few modern people who has chosen to live such a life of isolation and inner adventure. It was my honor recently to speak with her a...

Scott speaks with artist and musician Laurie Anderson at New York's Tibet House about Scott's new book, How to Train a Happy Mind. They discuss how the tools of analytical meditation have helped them cultivate lives of meaning and satisfaction, and foster transformation and even joy through tragedy. For those of you unfamiliar with her work, Laurie Anderson is one of our greatest living...

Dostoevsky once said, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.” This is the point of meditating on renunciation: to gain a clear-eyed sense of our state of mind right now, with many moments of frustration and anger and impatience and craving: feelings that we'd rather be free from. And turning away from these delusions toward liberatio...

What do The Matrix and Jerry Seinfeld have to do with renouncing suffering? Episode 17. The Red Pill of Renunciation: Embracing Reality As It Is Four years ago, we created this podcast 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 t...

Dr. Cornel West combines a formidable intellect with an enormous heart and an unceasing drive for social justice that transcends his multiple identities as an academic, author, philosopher, theologian, political activist, social critic, and public intellectual. Many of you even know him as an actor for his brief, but memorable appearances, in The Matrix films. Of course, Dr. West is also an indepe...

A couple of months ago, Scott Snibbe was in New York City for a conversation with Paul Miller at The Rubin Museum for the release of his recent book, How to Train a Happy Mind . Paul is an old friend who'd be famous enough for his incredible pioneering work with collage hip hop music as DJ Spooky, but he has so many other identities as an author, public intellectual, and artist. Episode 168:...

For this week's episode, we're sharing a recent meditation Scott Snibbe led for our new Train a Happy Mind community on letting go of suffering. Every Sunday morning, he leads a meditation on one of the topics from How to Train a Happy Mind. Sometimes he also expands into other topics or leads practices relating to current events. This topic's chapter is called Am I the Most Importa...

Do each of us believe deep down that we’re just a little bit more important than everyone else? My happiness, my goals, my relationships? The root cause of our suffering from the Buddhist perspective is this belief, a delusion called ignorance, seen as the true source of all our suffering: from disappointment in the face of life’s setbacks, to the dissatisfaction we can feel even when we get exact...

Venerable Thubten Chodron offers a Buddhist meditation to help work through anger in a compassionate and loving manner. Episode 166: Ven. Thubten Chodren Meditation on Anger 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, join our weekly med...

Several years ago, I read Venerable Thubten Chodron's book, Working with Anger, and I found it quite inspiring. A couple of months ago, her schedule finally allowed time to speak with me. We talked exclusively about anger, what it is, why it's harmful, and how we can work with anger in ways that heal relationships, rather than destroy them. She touches on anger's role in some of the...

Tenzin Chogkyi talks to Scott Snibbe about his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at the Medicine for Nightmares bookstore in San Francisco. Episode 164: Tenzin Chogkyi & Scott Snibbe Medicine for Nightmares SF How to Train a Happy Mind 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...

What do you do when you’re alone? When you’re scared, anxious, lonely, afraid, or feeling strong craving? In our guided meditation, we explore the Buddhist view on refuge and how to find a deep source of strength and peace within our own minds. Episode 112: Finding Refuge in the Mind—A Guided Meditation Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California'...

What do you do when you’re alone? When you’re scared, anxious, lonely, or afraid, when you feel strong craving? What do you turn to? In this episode, we look at where our mind runs when we feel pain, when we don’t feel balanced or whole. We’ll examine the Buddhist view on this subject that reveals a deep source of strength and support within our own minds accessible to each of us any time we need...

Venerable Robina Courtin guides a beautiful Tara meditation on hope that uses visualization and Buddhist teachings. Episode 163: Tara Meditation on Hope—Ven. Robina Courtin 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, join our weekly medi...

Our very first podcast guest, Venerable Robina Courtin is back in today's timely episode on how to deal with the despair and hopelessness many people feel today about war, injustice, inequity, and the environment.  Venerable Robina was ordained as a Buddhist nun in the late 1970s. She's worked closely with her teachers Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, to help spread Buddhist wisdom as...