Today's episode features a transformative meditation known as "Exchanging Self." Originally shared with the Train a Happy Mind community, this practice has deep roots in Tibetan Buddhism. For nearly a thousand years, it remained a closely guarded tradition, recently made accessible to all. If this meditation resonates with you, consider joining the Train a Happy Mind community, which gathers on Sunday mornings. Participation is open to everyone, either for free or by donation. Episode 177: Excha...
Dec 17, 2024•41 min•Ep. 177
Compassion is starting to rival mindfulness as the next most popular up-and-coming form of secular meditation. But what is compassion? Compassion, from the Buddhist perspective, is not just empathizing with others’ suffering, but actively wishing to take it away. Episode 28. What Is Compassion? 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 mi...
Dec 10, 2024•27 min
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 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...
Dec 03, 2024•23 min
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 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...
Nov 26, 2024•54 min•Ep. 176
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? 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...
Nov 19, 2024•23 min
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 deeper motivations that drive us all, and how you can still recognize the fundamental goodness in everyone,...
Nov 12, 2024•55 min•Ep. 175
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. ...
Nov 05, 2024•18 min•Ep. 174
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, respect, and interdependence with all beings. Kazu graciously took time off from raising his five-month-old chil...
Oct 29, 2024•56 min•Ep. 173
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 & Buddhism with Greg Hillis From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation...
Oct 22, 2024•44 min•Ep. 108
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 From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxi...
Oct 15, 2024•20 min
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 “ spiritual democracy ” for developing healthy feelings of connection to others — even those we most...
Oct 08, 2024•30 min
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, & Letting Go—Paula Chichester From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat...
Oct 01, 2024•23 min•Ep. 172
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 about her life’s journey. In our conversation, Paula talks about balancing the inner development fost...
Sep 24, 2024•47 min•Ep. 171
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 artists. Her work includes spoken word and performance, top charting albums, music videos, digital art, film, ...
Sep 17, 2024•59 min•Ep. 170
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 liberation, a the true source of refuge that we can find within our own mind. Episode 18. Guided Meditation - Renunciat...
Sep 10, 2024•25 min
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 topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and...
Sep 03, 2024•28 min
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 independent candidate in this year's U.S. Presidential Election. Scott spoke with Dr. West a couple of wee...
Aug 27, 2024•45 min•Ep. 169
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: DJ Spooky + Snibbe at the Rubin Museum From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditat...
Aug 20, 2024•51 min•Ep. 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 Important Person in the Universe? In this talk and its meditation, Scott touches on how our own delusions of anger and att...
Aug 13, 2024•54 min•Ep. 167
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 exactly what we want. It’s a retelling of the Buddha’s very first teaching, The Four Noble Truths: on suf...
Aug 06, 2024•40 min
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 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 California, wh...
Jul 30, 2024•23 min•Ep. 166
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 most challenging situations, like gender bias and war protests, and how we can deal with these situations courageo...
Jul 23, 2024•39 min•Ep. 165
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 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 wor...
Jul 09, 2024•51 min•Ep. 164
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 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...
Jul 02, 2024•32 min
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 it. Episode 14: What do You do When You're Alone? [re-record] From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is ...
Jun 25, 2024•29 min
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 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 California, whi...
Jun 18, 2024•14 min•Ep. 163
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 an editorial director of wisdom, publications, editor of Mandala magazine, executive director of Liberation Pri...
Jun 11, 2024•48 min•Ep. 162
In New York City, a couple months ago, I had the honor of sharing a public conversation with one of my Buddhist heroes, the renowned author and scholar Robert Thurman. In this episode's conversation, we share an edited recording from that evening, talking about everything from overcoming self-hatred, enjoying pleasure without attachment, getting ghosted by the Dalai Lama, and how one might come to have compassion for someone as dangerous and deadly as Vladimir Putin. Episode 161: Robert Thurman ...
Jun 04, 2024•42 min•Ep. 161
A meditation practice of self reflection, taking control of the mental cause and effect that's normally unconscious: the habits and activities conditioned by evolution, our upbringing, society and the media. This is a practice you can do at the end of each day: reviewing your day, rejoicing in the positive, and finding ways to sincerely forgive yourself for anything that you regret, so you can sleep better and be your best self the next day. Episode 12: Guided Meditation—Mental Cause And Effect ...
May 28, 2024•25 min
Science has greater and greater mastery in understanding and controlling physical cause and effect, from planets to particles, but we are only starting to understand cause and effect in our minds. Evolution, habits, and society all affect our behavior. How do we gain conscious control of our behavior, much less our thoughts? One method is a daily practice of self-appreciation and self-forgiveness that lets us release regret and pain to face each day with renewed presence and joy. Episode 11: Men...
May 21, 2024•34 min
