How to Train a Happy Mind

Venerable Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald), renowned author of How to Meditate and fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist nun, talks about the natural goodness of our mind, karma, and powerful analytical meditation mind training techniques for living a compassionate, meaningful life.Episode 35. Venerable Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald) on The Natural Goodness of our MindSupport the show

Sympathetic joy is an easy-to-understand meditation practice that expands our love and compassion by rejoicing in all the good things that others did today. It counteracts greed, jealousy, and envy, and can be done kicking back on the couch at the end of a hard day.Episode 34. Sympathetic Joy: Opening Your Heart to the Happiness of OthersSupport the show

Dr. Jan Willis, renowned scholar and teacher of Buddhism, talks about race and racism through a Buddhist lens. She shares stories about growing up with racism in Birmingham, Alabama; marching with Dr. Martin Luther King there in 1963; brushes with the Black Panthers; her experience as one of the first Westerners to dive deeply into Tibetan Buddhism; and how we can compassionately combat systemic racism and Anti-Blackness today.Dr. Willis has a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of Buddhism that spans fifty years. She first met Tibetan Buddhists in India and Nepal when she was nineteen and went on to earn degrees in Philosophy and Indic and Buddhist Studies from Cornell and Columbia Universities. Dr. Willis has taught Buddhist Studies and Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Virginia and Wesleyan University. Now in retirement, she teaches part-time at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia and leads workshops exploring Race and Racism through a Buddhist Lens. In her academic and popular books and essays, Dr. Willis writes with moving precision on Tibetan Buddhism, the lives of Buddhist saints, Women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and Race. Her latest book is the compelling essay collection Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra. Dr. Willis’ unique personal story is captured in her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist—One Woman’s Spiritual Journey. In crisp, moving words, Dreaming Me shares Dr. Willis’ experience as a Black woman raised in Birmingham, Alabama who suffered regular neighborhood raids by the Ku Klux Klan and who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King there in 1963. Her story takes incredible turns in brushes with the Black Panthers and as one of the first westerners to dive deeply into Tibetan Buddhist study and practice.  Dr. Willis’ work has been praised by TIME Magazine as one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium,” and by Ebony Magazine, who named her one of its “Power 150” most influential African Americans. We spoke with Dr. Willis by video conference from Georgia last month.Episode 33. Be Willing to Get Woke - Interview with Dr. Jan WillisSupport the show

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 PleasuresSupport the show

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” transform our everyday experiences of pleasure and pain into engines of love and compassion.Episode 31. Universalizing: Transforming Pain and Pleasure into Love and CompassionSupport the show

Tonglen is a meditation practice that combines meditating on loving-kindness with meditating on compassion to release our own pain, suffering, and loneliness. In translation, tonglen practice can be called “taking and giving” or “exchanging self with other." Tonglen is one of the “mind training” techniques from Tibetan Buddhism that reverses our ordinary state of mind of selfishly seeking happiness and pleasure for ourselves and those close to us. Instead, we willingly open ourselves to the suffering of others.Episode 30. Guided Tonglen Meditation: Exchanging Yourself with OthersSupport the show

A 15-minute guided meditation on compassion: the wish to take away others’ suffering.Episode 29. Guided Compassion MeditationSupport the show

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?Support the show

Khen Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering shares his profound insights on a secular understanding of karma, the importance of analytical meditation, and a warning that the popularity of meditation today might just kill it.Episode 27. Khen Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering on Karma, Analytical Meditation, and MindfulnessSupport the show

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.Episode 26. Guided Meditation on LoveSupport the show