How to Train a Happy Mind

The How to Train a Happy Mind podcast brings Buddhist meditation to modern people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. Each week on the podcast, I and my guests share powerful mind training techniques that go beyond mindfulness to harness our intelligence, emotions, and imagination. Our approach to meditation is secular, based on science and psychology, yet grounded in the authentic thousand-year old tradition of analytical mediation I learned directly from great Tibetan Buddhist masters including His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Come check it out!Support the show

Millions are now faced with enforced solitude, while others, in the crush of families together all day, realize how much we needed that time alone we took for granted. The essence of meditation is getting to know yourself alone, without social stimulus, entertainment, or reputation—what we truly are deep inside ourselves. There, we can find in our mind a place of satisfaction that’s equally at ease when we’re alone or when we’re with others.Episode 13: Guided Meditation — Alone TogetherIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

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 EffectIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

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: Mental Cause and EffectIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

A guided meditation on impermanence that helps us release fear and anxiety to embrace the constant change at every scale of reality: from particles, possessions, homes, and the environment, to our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, and relationships. When we embrace impermanence, we more easily take on challenges like today’s Coronavirus crisis. We become more fully present to those around us and we can even more deeply appreciate life’s impermanent pleasures.Episode 10. Guided Meditation: Embracing ImpermanenceIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

We cling to things as if they won’t change, but change is the nature of reality. When we embrace impermanence, we prepare ourselves for big changes, and are able to let go of our fear and anxiety to become more fully present to those around us, to make the most meaningful choices day-to-day, and to more deeply appreciate life’s fleeting pleasures.Episode 9. Embracing ImpermanenceIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

A guided meditation combatting fear of the Coronavirus through compassion using the technique of Taking and Giving (in Tibetan, Tonglen). We soothe our own fear and anxiety by imagining how others are suffering now, just as we are. And we sincerely wish to help, to take away their pain, through a powerful guided visualization.Episode 8. Guided Meditation: Combatting Coronavirus Fear With CompassionIf you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App StoreSupport the show

This guided meditation takes us through different ways of observing the mind, first examining its ever-present parts: perception, feeling, will, and awareness. Then we explore the nature of subjective reality itself by asking what is the mind without thoughts? Where is the space of our consciousness? And, how finely can we slice moments of consciousness? Do we ever arrive at a quantum of consciousness?Episode 7. Guided Meditation: What Is the Mind?Support the show

Scott Snibbe, a meditation leader in an online community, dives into the intricate nature of the mind. He explores profound questions like what truly observes our thoughts and the elusive definition of consciousness. The discussion compares Buddhist and Western psychological views, revealing how our perceptions shape reality. Snibbe highlights the fleeting nature of awareness and the importance of living in the present. Through guided meditation techniques, he illustrates how to cultivate emotional fulfillment and community connection.

A guided meditation on the preciousness of our next 24 hours alive and our unique place in the universe as science understands it: intelligent, self-aware beings at the end of 14 billion years’ cosmic and biological evolution.Episode 5. Guided Meditation: The Preciousness of LifeIf you are enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating and reviewSupport the show