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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper ca...
Jul 22, 2025•13 min•Ep. 199
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's invitations to appear on this podcast. But last year he gave a public talk at Tse Chen Ling Center in San F...
Jul 15, 2025•50 min•Ep. 198
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 loneliness to states of satisfaction, connection, and meaning. Scott leads live meditations like this every...
Jul 08, 2025•25 min•Ep. 197
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; a...
Jul 01, 2025•18 min•Ep. 196
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 in Iran. In response, Scott reflects on the roots of violence, both in our world and in our minds, and to offe...
Jun 24, 2025•54 min•Ep. 195
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 too much of a good thing. Episode 194: Joy and Enthusiasm—Even When Life's Hard—with Tenzin Chogkyi From August 28 ...
Jun 17, 2025•56 min•Ep. 194
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 interdependence. Episode 193: 10-Minute Path to a Happy Mind Guided Meditation From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibb...
Jun 10, 2025•12 min•Ep. 193
"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. It’s the whole path. And it might just shift how you see the world. Episode 192: The Complete Path to a Happy Mind From Augus...
Jun 03, 2025•46 min
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of Cal...
May 27, 2025•7 min•Ep. 191
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 thoughts, our speech, and our nervous systems. Episode 190: Healing America's Racial Karma with Larry Ward...
May 20, 2025•53 min•Ep. 190
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 Interdependent Self From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Ins...
May 13, 2025•44 min•Ep. 43
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's far richer and interconnected with reality and with others. Episode 42: Who am I? From August 28 to 31, Scott...
May 06, 2025•37 min•Ep. 42
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and ...
Apr 22, 2025•13 min•Ep. 189
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 texts, the heart sutra. This profound text is all about the perfection of wisdom, emptiness, and the ultimate interd...
Apr 15, 2025•59 min•Ep. 188
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 civilization, planet, and universe. Episode 39. The Interdependent Nature of Reality From August 28 to 31...
Apr 08, 2025•28 min
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. It’s a refuge. A place to reconnect with your essential self, to hold space for the parts of you that...
Apr 01, 2025•17 min•Ep. 187
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 conflict itself is keeping us stuck, this conversation is for you. Episode 186: Beyond Us vs Them: ...
Mar 25, 2025•58 min•Ep. 186
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 us a meditative glimpse of how it truly exists. This episode is the second in a series exploring th...
Mar 18, 2025•32 min
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 smartphone. Episode 37: How Things Exist From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditatio...
Mar 11, 2025•30 min
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper c...
Mar 04, 2025•14 min•Ep. 185
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 emotional needs beneath our compulsive tech habits and shows us how to reclaim our focus, relationships,...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 184
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It...
Feb 18, 2025•43 min•Ep. 70
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 happiness. The meditation is done in a way that you don't need to be a Buddhist or have any Buddhist beliefs, ...
Feb 11, 2025•34 min•Ep. 183
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 special insight into the ultimate nature of reality, also known as emptiness. These six practices are centuries-old altr...
Feb 04, 2025•44 min•Ep. 182
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. ...
Jan 28, 2025•16 min•Ep. 32
One of the most powerful Tibetan Buddhist mind training techniques is universalizing, a practice that transforms everyday pains and pleasures into profound meditations. From arguing with the family to stuffing yourself with a delicious meal, life’s problems and pleasures can bring anger, guilt, and sadness. The meditation technique of “universalization” transforms our everyday experiences of pleasure and pain into engines of love and compassion. Episode 31: Universalizing: Transforming Pain and ...
Jan 21, 2025•25 min•Ep. 31
Esteemed Buddhist teacher and scholar Dr. Jan Willis leads two meditations on emptiness in this episode. One focuses on the emptiness of the I, this pronoun, this belief that we have that we exist, that there is an I who is Jan Willis. And the other meditation is about the nature of the mind itself. She shares the analogy that the mind and the nature of the mind is like the sky. And this "I" is an adventitious, delusional, negative and harmful cloud in that sky. But we need to be able to notice ...
Jan 14, 2025•23 min•Ep. 181
To kick off the new year we're thrilled to welcome back one of our most beloved guests, Dr. Jan Willis, a trailblazing scholar, inspiring practitioner and powerful storyteller. Dr. Willis guides us through the six perfections: generosity, morality, patients, joyful effort, concentration and wisdom. Profound practices that were once closely guarded, secret teachings. In this episode, Dr. Willis offers a heartfelt introduction to these transformative ideas, weaving in stories from her own remarkab...
Jan 07, 2025•50 min•Ep. 180
Today’s meditation focuses on self-compassion, inspired by the teachings of Dr. Kristin Neff. Known as the "self-compassion break," this practice is designed to be quick, accessible, and deeply grounding—perfect for those moments when life feels overwhelming. By bringing mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness into focus, this meditation offers a practical way to navigate challenges with grace and care. Episode 179: Meditation on Self-Compassion with Tenzin Chogkyi From August 28 to 31, ...
Dec 31, 2024•18 min•Ep. 179
We are closing out the year with a special guest, Tenzin Chogkyi—a longtime Buddhist practitioner, teacher, and former nun ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. With decades of experience in both inner growth and social justice, Tenzin brings profound wisdom and a unique perspective. This episode explores self-compassion and how building a loving relationship with oneself creates the foundation for a meaningful, joyful life. Episode 178: Self-Compassion with Tenzin Chogkyi From August 28 to 3...
Dec 24, 2024•35 min•Ep. 178
