How to Train a Happy Mind

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 PiverSupport the show

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 interdependent nature of reality. Fully realizing this is said to lead to the inexplicable joy that gives Susan's book its name. Join us to hear her unique take on a text she's been reciting for 30 years and discover her fresh, modern, and sometimes surprising ways of understanding words written nearly 2,000 years ago. Episode 188: Inexplicable Joy—On the Heart Sutra & Buddhism Without Belief with Susan PiverSupport the show

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 RealitySupport the show

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 feel overwhelmed, and to find peace not by escaping the world, but by grounding more deeply within it.Episode 187: From Panic to Peace: A Guided Meditation with Kazu Haga Support the show

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: Transforming Society Through Fierce Vulnerability with Kazu Haga Support the show

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 the Buddhist topic of “emptiness,” or how things exist through parts, causes, and the minds that perceive them.Episode 38: Meditation on How Things ExistSupport the show

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 ExistSupport the show

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 VidyarthiSupport the show

Join Jay Vidyarthi, author of 'Reclaim Your Mind', as he shares his radical approach to reshaping our relationship with technology. He dives into the emotional needs behind our compulsive tech habits and offers transformative meditation practices to reset our digital instincts. Explore the detrimental effects of excessive screen time and the importance of mindful interactions, especially for children. Jay also emphasizes authentic communication in the digital age and the balance between profit and personal well-being in the tech industry.

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 BuddhismSupport the show