How to Train a Happy Mind

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 child to speak about why nonviolence works and how to counter the common objections to nonviolence. Scott and Kazu also talk about healing from the violence in their own families, and strategies for ending the seemingly intractable wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Episode 173: Does Nonviolent Protest Work? Kazu Haga

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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

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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

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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 despise.

Episode 22. Spiritual Democracy

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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

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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 fostered by meditation with the outer transformation of social action, the joys and challenges of long-term retreat and the practicalities of how to pay for it, how to find support, and how to cheer yourself up with a “one person party” when things get tough.

Episode 171: Diary of a Yogini with Paula Chichester

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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, virtual reality, and the invention of ingenious instruments like the tape bow violin and the talking stick. Laurie has won the Grammy Award and many other honors, and her artwork is regularly shown in major museums and galleries worldwide.

Episode 170: Stories We Tell Ourselves—Laurie Anderson & Scott Snibbe at Tibet House

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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 - Renunciation

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 weeks ago about compassionate leadership, nonviolence, social and economic justice, and the balance between inner and outer transformation that he believes is required to truly steer the world toward the thriving of all human beings and all life on earth.

Episode 169: Dr. Cornel West: Truth, Justice, and Love

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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

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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 attachment connect to the bigger problems in the world, like war and the activists working to stop it. He also shares some thoughts on what he's learned about how to be an effective activist from the book America's Racial Karma; and how racism, sexism, and colonialism connect to what Buddhists understand as the core delusion of pride.

Episode 167: Freeing Ourselves from Suffering Anger, Craving, Pride, and War

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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 suffering, its causes and antidotes, with a modern twist.

Episode 15. Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe?

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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

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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 courageously and skillfully. 

Venerable Thubten Chodron is an author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, one of the first Tibetan Buddhist training monasteries for Western monks and nuns in the U.S. She teaches worldwide and is known for her practical and entertaining explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life. She's the author of many excellent books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Venerable Chodron is currently co-authoring, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, an extraordinary multi-volume series of teachings on the Buddhist path, The Library of Wisdom and Compassion. 

Episode 165: Venerable Thubten Chodron on Working with Anger

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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

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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

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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]

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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

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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 Prison Project,  and the lively, charismatic touring-teacher of Buddhism.

Episode 162:  How to Heal Despair with Venerable Robina Courtin

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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 & Scott Snibbe at Tibet House: How to Train a Happy Mind

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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

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 Effect

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Yangsi Rinpoche's gave a beautiful talk a couple of months ago with the intriguing title "Contentment Plus Ambition." He was generous enough to sit down with me afterwards for an interview about the same topic in which he talks about how to practice real self-compassion and even how we can create the causes for world peace.
 
Yangsi Rinpoche studied at Sera Jey Monastery in south India until 1995 when he graduated with the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa. Rinpoche now lives in Portland, Oregon where he's president and professor of Buddhist studies at Maitripa College, a Buddhist Institute of higher education, striving to integrate modern academics with ancient wisdom.

Episode 160: Contentment and Ambition with Yangsi Rinpoche

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Restorative justice practitioner sujatha baliga talks to Scott Snibbe about his new meditation book, How to Train a Happy Mind.

Episode 159: sujatha baliga & Scott Snibbe in conversation: How to Train a Happy Mind

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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 Impermanence

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 Impermanence

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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In this guided meditation, Stephen Batchelor invites you to unconditionally embrace your experience of the moment, to simply watch all thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and notice the ground of nonreactive awareness. This guides you toward a path rooted in freedom, openness, and love.

Episode 158: Meditation on Embracing Life with Stephen Batchelor

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 Nearly 30 years ago, Stephen Batchelor wrote a book called Buddhism Without Beliefs that's become a foundational work for those seeking to adopt Buddhism into a non-religious form while still maintaining the power and authenticity of its time tested practices. I had a chance to speak with Stephen Batchelor recently from his home in France, where he shared his own creative struggle with Buddhism: from his origins as an ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk to becoming a skeptical agnostic who admits that he simply doesn't know the answers to life's biggest questions.

Episode 157: Buddhism Without Beliefs with Stephen Batchelor

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Derek Fagerstrom interviews Scott Snibbe about his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at San Francisco’s Book Passage. Derek is the co-founder of Pop-up Magazine, and has worked at Esquire, Interview, and Francis Ford Coppola's literary journal Zoetrope: All-Story. How to Train a Happy Mind is out now in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. You can find it anywhere you buy books.

Episode 156: Book Passage Talk with Derek Fagerstrom

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Scott Snibbe leads a meditation from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, on how to make the most of our precious lives.

Episode 155: Precious Life Meditation

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Scott Snibbe shares a chapter from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind: The Precious Life. If you enjoy this episode, check out the whole audiobook on Audible, which includes guided meditations!

Episode 154: The Precious Life—Chapter Reading from How to Train a Happy Mind

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This is an exciting episode for the podcast because my book, How to Train a Happy Mind, comes out today. To celebrate its release, we're sharing a conversation I had with best-selling author Vicki McKenzie a couple of weeks ago at a book preview event in London, in front of a live audience.

This podcast is where I developed most of the ideas for the book, based on more than a decade leading meditations that eventually formed many of our episodes. I want to thank all our listeners for your feedback and support over these four years. You've helped me develop the book's simple eight-step program that combines Tibetan Buddhism with modern science and psychology. I'm excited to hear what you think about it.

If you'd like to buy How to Train a Happy Mind, you can find it anywhere you buy books. I've donated all my proceeds from the book to the Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment nonprofit. So your purchase helps support this podcast. If you end up enjoying the book, please consider reviewing it on Amazon or Goodreads, which will help other people discover it.

Episode 153: How to Train a Happy Mind book launch conversation with Scott Snibbe and Vicki Mackenzi

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Meenadchi guides a meditation on discovering, playing with, and feeling the good things in your body through a light visualization.

Episode 152: Meditation on Feeling Good with Meenadchi

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A couple of decades ago, a friend introduced me to a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Over the years, I've tried imperfectly to use its gentler forms of communication. At various points in life the techniques of NVC, as it's known for short, have saved me from losing a lawsuit, losing a job, and losing a partner. Still, these techniques didn't always work for me. When our producer Annie Nguyen recently introduced me to a book called Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, it put words to those challenges. 

The book's author, Meenadchi, a somatic healing practitioner, spoke with me recently about the ways that she's updated nonviolent communication to account for the power structures in our society that exacerbate conflicts, and the interdependence between people and our environments that may have been missing from nonviolent communication's original formulation. 

I find her approach, distinctly Buddhist as a "middle way" that helps us draw strong boundaries and fight the injustices in the world, while still holding love and compassion, even for our enemies. Meenadchi's therapeutic work centers on social change and embodied transformation. She specializes in healing members of communities impacted by gender-based violence, complex trauma, and serious mental illness. 

Episode 151: Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication with Meenadchi

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Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is the author of The Inclusive Language Field Guide. An academic for many years, she now specializes in analyzing and addressing bias at work, helping companies like Google and Reddit promote speech that's more inclusive and more connecting. After I read Suzanne's book, I was struck by the parallels between her work and the Buddhist ethical foundation of right speech. 

In our interview, we talk about embarrassing mistakes we both made in our speech, how to both forcefully and compassionately confront harmful speech, and how to recognize and transform the bias in our own language. Suzanne and I spoke for so long that it far outran our normal episode length. So, if you'd like to hear the full unedited hour and a half of our great conversation, including many specific examples of ways to speak inclusively and compassionately, check out the Skeptic's Path YouTube channel.

Episode 150: Compassionate Speech with Dr. Suzanne Wertheim

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A complete guided meditation session expanding your compassion, stabilizing concentration on the breath, and observing your thoughts.

Episode 3: Guided Meditation: Stabilizing the Mind and Watching Thoughts

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

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Over the past few years meditation has become popular as a way to help reduce stress, be focused at work, sleep better, or simply relax. Yet meditation isn’t just a tool to improve focus or relax, but a way to strengthen the positive qualities we all naturally possess: compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humor, and finding joy in everyday life. This episode explores this higher purpose of meditation through the less familiar technique of analytic meditationthat uses stories, thoughts, and emotions to steer our minds toward happiness, meaning, and benefiting others.

Episode 2: What Is Meditation?

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

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Scott Tusa leads an equanimity meditation—based on the Mahayana Buddhist tradition—that works with three kinds of relationships in our life. The purpose is to cultivate compassion, loving-kindness, and understanding.

Episode 149: Equanimity Meditation with Scott Tusa

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After ordination by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Scott Tusa spent nine years as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Today, he's an irreverent meditation teacher and a brand-new father. In this episode, Scott and I talk about some hard decisions we've faced in life, and that the world faces today, asking ourselves, What is the right thing to do? Is there a right and wrong from a Buddhist perspective? How did Scott and I deal with the painful decisions we faced in our lives to get divorced and to give up a monastic life? We also grapple with one of the biggest ethical dilemmas facing the world today, the violent conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Episode 148: What Is the Right Thing to Do? with Scott Tusa

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Even a short 10-minute meditation has the power to calm your body and mind. Here’s a helpful guided meditation that in just 10 minutes a day can improve your well-being. Even though it's short, this is a complete meditation session including establishing proper meditation posture, motivating our meditation to be a force for good, stabilizing the mind on the breath, letting go of thoughts, cultivating beneficial thoughts, and a dedication to seal your meditation practice.

A Guided 10 Minute Meditation to Calm the Mind

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations.

Support the show

Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations.

Episode 1: What Is A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment?

Introducing A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment, bringing the inner science of Buddhist meditation to twenty-first century people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. We take a secular approach to meditation that requires no belief beyond our current understanding of science and psychology, based on powerful Buddhist mind training techniques that use imagination, intelligence, and emotions to probe our inner and outer realities, and expand our compassion.

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Scott Snibbe shares a gentle Buddhist approach to self-forgiveness, letting go, establishing good habits, and rejoicing in all the good we've done. Move into the new year with your best intentions and best self.

Episode 147: Letting Go and Looking Forward in the New Year

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Grammy Award winning artist Laurie Anderson, a longtime student of Buddhism and meditation, shares her personal path with Buddhism, approaching art with a beginner’s mind, staying present with suffering without letting it overwhelm you, and making our lives meaningful.

Laurie Anderson is one of our greatest living artists. Her work includes spoken word and performance, top-charting albums and music videos, digital art, film, virtual reality, and the invention of ingenious instruments like the tape bow violin and the talking stick. She’s won the Grammy Award and many other honors, and is currently the subject of a fantastic solo show at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Episode 106: Laurie Anderson's Buddhism: Art, Meditation, and Death as Adventure 

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Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor and host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, talks with Scott Snibbe about love, skepticism, Buddhism, and the "cheesy upward spiral."

Episode 134: Dan Harris: Love, Skepticism, and the "Cheesy Upward Spiral"

This is a rebroadcast of one of the year's most popular episodes.

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Dr. Katherine MacLean leads a meditation practice called RAFT: Remembering to be Aware of Feelings in your body and Trust your experience. Katherine says that mushrooms shared this practice with her as a way to help others access the space of psychedelics from a sober standpoint.

Episode 146: RAFT Meditation with Dr. Katherine MacLean

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Ten years ago Dr. Katherine MacLean conducted the first scientific study of the combined effects of psychedelics with meditation. The encouraging results of the study showed the long-term beneficial effects these substances can have on our concentration, emotion regulation, openness, wellbeing, and happiness. 

In our conversation I learned what psychedelics have in common with meditation and how they can compliment one another. Katherine also shared when psychedelics aren't useful or even when they can be harmful. She offers careful advice as to when these substances might be of benefit and when they aren't.

Episode 145: Psychedelics, Meditation, and Buddhism with Dr. Katherine MacLean

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Psychedelic psychotherapist Dr. Michael Sapiro leads a guided meditation on mindful awareness that connects you with the present moment and your senses.

Episode 144: Mindful Awareness Meditation with Michael Sapiro 

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Psychedelics have been in the news a lot lately as a new way to help people work through otherwise intractable issues of grief depression and PTSD. Dr. Michael Sapiro is a psychedelic psychotherapist and researcher who has worked successfully with psychedelics in his practice for years. 

He focuses on helping combat vets and first responders overcome PTSD and other trauma; in his words, transforming worldly warriors into spiritual warriors. Listen to this episode to hear how psychedelic substances, meditation, and Buddhism have helped his patients overcome huge problems and open up to themselves and to the people around them.

Episode 143: Psychedelic Psychotherapy with Michael Sapiro 

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On several occasions I’ve heard people ask the Dalai Lama how to end war, and he’s always answered the same way: begin by trying to resolve the conflicts in your own life. But how do we do that? This meditation goes through some of the Buddhist approaches to understanding the causes of war, both in ourselves and others, and how we might eventually be free of them.

Episode 142. War Meditation

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Take an expansive tour through the four foundations of mindfulness in this sweeping guided meditation with Dr. David Kittay: mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and mental objects.

Guided Meditation: Four Foundations of Mindfulness with Dr. David Kittay

Listen to our previous interviews with Dr. David Kittay here:
Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology (Part 1)
Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology (Part 2)

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Professor David Kittay talks with Scott Snibbe about whether we should treat AIs with compassion, whether we are living in a simulation, and whether technologically assisted enlightenment might be possible.

Dr. David Kittay teaches philosophy, religion, and technology at Columbia University, where his students call his courses life changing. Dr. Kittay is also an author, a translator, and a Tibet House board member. His latest publication is the Vajra Rosary Tantra, available from Wisdom Publications.

Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay
Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay (Part 2)

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A guided meditation by Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald) on the natural goodness of our mind, or Buddha nature. In this meditation we let go of all our negative, disturbing states of mind like anger, anxiety, or fear; and cultivate our positive mental qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage.

36. Guided Meditation on the Natural Goodness of our Mind — Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald)

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In this episode, I have one of my heroes back for a third time. Dr. Jan Willis is an extraordinary Buddhist scholar and practitioner and today she's talking with me about the question, Are we fundamentally good? 

Buddhism sometimes seems quite depressing with its focus on suffering and death. But at the core of Buddhism is the idea that in fact, our nature is fundamentally good. Is there any evidence for this? And if so, how do we come to see it? 

Listen to my interview with Dr. Willis to hear the answers to these questions, and whether we might even come to see the good in someone as destructive as Vladimir Putin.

Episode 140: Are We Fundamentally Good? with Dr. Jan Willis

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How can we use pleasure in our meditation practice? Buddhism offers specific techniques for meditating on pleasure as a way to deepen our qualities of concentration, fearlessness, loving-kindness, and even our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 85: Guided Meditation on Pleasure
Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Pleasure is often viewed as a hindrance to the spiritual path, a hotbed of craving and attachment, but what if we told you that pleasure can actually be a positive part of the spiritual path, a portal to love and happiness?

Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Tenzin Chogkyi leads a guided meditation to cultivate compassion for yourself and others.

Episode 139: Guided Meditation on Compassion with Tenzin Chogkyi

 

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In this episode Tenzin Chogkyi dives head on into the challenging topics of hierarchy, patriarchy, gender, and sexism in Buddhism. As a practicing Buddhist since the 1970s who spent 20 years as a nun ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, she has deep, hard-won insights into these topics. 

Tenzin Chogkyi is one of the most thoughtful, independent thinkers I know, and a person of extraordinary integrity who has dedicated her life to both inner development and advancing fairness and equality in the outer world. I think you'll enjoy listening to our conversation just as much as I enjoyed being a part of it.

Episode 138: Patriarchy, Gender, and Sexism in Buddhism with Tenzin Chogkyi

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Artificial intelligence expert Kristian Simsarian joins host Scott Snibbe to discuss how we can create ethical, unbiased and compassionate AI, whether we should be scared of AI, and the implications of AI on the future of work and spirituality.

Kristian Simsarian has a Ph.D. in human-robot collaboration and worked as a Robotics and AI computer scientist before holding leadership positions at IDEO, the California College of the Arts, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and many other organizations. He helped found Humans for AI and helped grow the Center for Humane Technology in its early years. His work has appeared in NYT, Business Week, Huffington Post, along with several best-selling business books on innovation. He's also a board member for A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment.

Episode 80: Compassionate AI with Kristian Simsarian

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Host Scott Snibbe offers touching personal stories and a meditation on how to best love our parents and our children using powerful Buddhist teachings and techniques on understanding, listening, and compassion.

Episode 76: Loving Our Parents, Loving Our Children

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Sujatha baliga leads a guided meditation to work through past traumas in a gentle, loving, and healing manner.

137. Guided Meditation on Healing Trauma with sujatha baliga

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Macarthur Award winner sujatha baliga discusses healing trauma, restorative justice, and the power of love and meditation to build a better world.

sujatha baliga is a restorative justice educator and advocate and a 2019 winner of the MacArthur fellowship. She has served as the director of the restorative justice project at Impact Justice, a co-founder of Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, and a Soros Justice Fellow at Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth.

Sujatha earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and went on to earn her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her life's work in restorative justice was born of the personal advice she received when she was 24 years old from His Holiness the Dalai Lama on forgiving seemingly unforgivable acts.

136. sujatha baliga on Healing Trauma and Restorative Justice

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A 20-minute guided analytical meditation on how money exists through parts, causes, and the mind in our interdependent reality, seen through the Buddhist lens of emptiness.

Episode 71. Guided Meditation: How Money Exists

Previous Episode: Bitcoin and Buddhism

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What can Buddhism teach us about how Bitcoin works and why it's so valuable? What can Bitcoin teach us about emptiness, the interdependent nature of reality?

Episode 70. Bitcoin and Buddhism

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Dan Harris, host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, leads a loving-kindness meditation for skeptics. Recent research has shown that this practice positively impacts mental and physical health.

Episode 135: Dan Harris Loving-Kindness Guided Meditation

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Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor and host of the hit podcast Ten Percent Happier, talks with Scott Snibbe about love, skepticism, Buddhism, and the "cheesy upward spiral."

Episode 134: Dan Harris: Love, Skepticism, and the "Cheesy Upward Spiral"

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A 10 minute guided meditation on the body, relaxing into the open connection between body and mind through mindful awareness.

Episode 63. 10 Minute Body Meditation

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Could the true cause of happiness be simply thinking about whatever we are doing at the moment, what scientists and meditators call mindfulness?

Episode 60. Why Mindfulness?

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Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the greatest living science fiction writers, and one of the few people ever to have developed a credible solution to the climate crisis, which he describes in his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future. 

In this interview, we talk about climate change solutions, Buddhism in his life and work, sci-fi and cli-fi (climate fiction), colonizing Mars, the outdoors as meditation, and how to stay optimistic.

Episode 102. Kim Stanley Robinson on Solving the Climate Crisis, Buddhism, and the Power of Science Fiction

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Rob Hopkins, climate activist, co-founder of the Transition Network and host of the podcast series From What If to What Next talks about an engaged, passionate form of Buddhism that actively works for positive change in our communities and in the world.

Episode 103. From What If to What Next — Rob Hopkins' Climate Optimism

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What happens when you die? No one knows for sure. But the Tibetan Buddhist system describes a precise series of steps that our consciousness may experience as we die, which we can explore in a meditation to probe the boundary of life and death with curiosity and wonder.

Episode 58: What Happens When You Die?

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The idea of past lives may not make make sense, and isn’t scientifically verifiable. But still, the question of what we might have been before our conception is one worth asking. Where did I come from?

Episode 57: Where Did I Come From?

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I want to tell you a story about birth and death and infinity. We’re all born and we’re all going to die, but I don’t know how many of you have ever felt a connection to infinity. I want to tell you about the time in my life when I felt this connection to infinity every day. And I also want to tell you about how I lost it, and whether it’s possible to get it back again.

Episode 56: Birth, Death, and Infinity

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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is one of the very first Westerners to become ordained into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She is best known for having lived in a remote cave in the Himalayas for 12 years. In this 10-minute  meditation, she offers us the invitation to cultivate moment-to-moment inner awareness - the essence of meditation practice.

Episode 93: Cultivating Our Inner Awareness with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo - 10 Minute Meditation

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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is one of the world’s most revered Buddhist teachers and one of the very first Westerners to become ordained into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She is best known for having lived in a remote cave in the Himalayas for 12 years. She spoke with us about the role of women in Buddhism from a historical and contemporary lens, the nature of mind and simple, powerful ways to meditate in the modern world.

Episode 92: Wisdom and the Path for Women with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is a fully ordained tibetan buddhist nun in the Drukpa Lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. She is an author, teacher and founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India. She is best known for being one of the very few Western yoginis trained in the East, having spent twelve years living in a remote cave in the Himalayas, three of those years in strict meditation retreat and for having made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form - no matter how many lifetimes it takes.

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A 10-Minute guided meditation on love shows us how to expand our love for our partner and family to a loving-kindness, or metta, that embraces all beings.

10 Minute Meditation on Love (Loving-kindness)

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If you want to know what love is, search beyond eighties songs to the wisdom of Buddhist loving-kindness that expands our love to all beings while also deepening our connection to our partner and family. This special  episode on love asks great Buddhist teachers the question of what love is, including Dr. Jan Willis, Ven. Kathleen McDonald, Dr. Rick Hanson, Geshe Tenzin Namdak, and Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Episode 52: I Want to Know What Love Is

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Buddhist teacher and author Wendy Haylett discusses the practice of Naikan and leads an analytical meditation that uses compassion to reflect on our more difficult relationships without judgement.

Episode 133: Guided Meditation: Compassion through Looking Inside

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Wendy Shinyo Haylett is an author, Buddhist teacher, and lay minister with the Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism. She's the host of the popular Everyday Buddhism podcast where she kindly had me on as a guest last year. Wendy has more than 30 years of experience as a Buddhist practitioner and coach helping people live their personal and professional lives with more mindfulness and resilience. In our conversation, she talks about how Buddhism can help us in our everyday life, from workplace conflicts and intimate relationships to overcoming trauma.

Episode 132: Everyday Buddhism: Compassion, Trauma, and Self-Acceptance with Wendy Haylett

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From the Buddhist, as well as the psychological and scientific perspectives, gratitude and dedication aren’t just polite bookends. The process of feeling gratitude and resolve creates the mental and neurological causes to actually become better people and to better serve the world.

Episode 45: Meditation on Gratitude, Dedication, and Determination

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We’ve spent the better part of a year going step-by-step through a modern secular version of the major topics from Tibetan Buddhism’s Stages of the Path, what we call A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment. In Tibetan this sequence is called the lamrim. It’s a series of meditations that progressively move our mind to better understand itself, bring out our best qualities, and create the causes for a happy meaningful life. 

People who practice the Stages of the Path in the Tibetan style normally review the whole path every day as part of a meditation practice to gradually make its steps second nature. This episode offers a compact summation of the stages of the path as a complete meditation that you can practice every day.

Episode 44. Secular Guided Meditation on the Tibetan Buddhist Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim)

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This guided meditation explores consciousness through a Tibetan Buddhist lens. What does it mean to be aware? Is your mind limited to your physical body? And who is it that observes your thoughts?

Episode 131: Guided Meditation on Consciousness

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Dr. Anil Seth has written an extraordinary book called Being You — A New Science of Consciousness. I had a chance to talk to him recently in an event sponsored by Science & Wisdom Live. Dr. Seth is one of the world's foremost researchers on consciousness, and in our interview he touches on defining consciousness from a scientific perspective, whether we have free will, and the notion of reality as a controlled hallucination. He also talks about an art installation called the Dreamachine that he helped create, which can induce profound direct experiences of consciousness.

Episode 130: Free Will, Consciousness, & Reality with Dr. Anil Seth

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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

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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?

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Last year I had the privilege to participate in a dialogue on compassion with my teacher, Venerable Sangye Khadro who is also well known by her Western name Venerable Kathleen McDonald. Venerable Sangye Khadro is the author of How to Meditate and Awakening the Kind Heart. She's a very active Buddhist teacher and a fully ordained nun, which is the highest level of ordination for a Buddhist monastic.

It was wonderful to hear her share wisdom on this topic, touching on many practical ways to deal with everyday pain and conflict in our lives using this universal antidote of compassion. This talk was organized by the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom, which shares similar goals to A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment in offering non-religious ways for anyone to benefit from Buddhist wisdom.

Make sure to stay tuned until the end of the episode for a short but moving meditation on compassion led by Venerable Sangye Khadro.

Episode 129: Compassion with Ven. Sangye Khadro and Scott Snibbe

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This is a very special episode in which I had the chance to introduce two of my heroes: Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. They shared a lively conversation together that you now have the chance to eavesdrop on (with their permission).

In their dialogue, they talk about when violence is legitimate in situations like the Tibetan or Ukrainian invasions, their personal relationships to the Dalai Lama, and how we might make Kim Stanley Robinson's fictional climate solutions from his latest novel The Ministry for the Future start working in real life.

In this intimate conversation between two people who have wanted to meet each other for a long time, Robert Thurman and Kim Stanley Robinson also speak frankly about their politics and their ideas, both for saving the planet and for simple mental health in a world that's filled with climate and social emergencies. As Kim Stanley Robinson put it, "spiritual and political advice."

I hope you enjoy their conversation.

Episode 128: Kim Stanley Robinson and Robert Thurman: Climate, Politics, and the Dalai Lama

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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

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Buddhist teacher Emily Hsu leads an analytical meditation that explores the inner landscape—texture—of the mind and the differences between constructive and unconstructive mental states.

Episode 127: Guided Meditation: Exploring the Texture of the Mind 

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I've known Emily Hsu since she first started teaching Buddhist philosophy and meditation at the Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhism 15 years ago in San Francisco. She's a lucid, humble, and kind teacher who speaks from both deep education and rich personal experience.

Emily Hsu completed the seven year FPMT Masters Program at Institute Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy in 2004—a condensed version of the Tibetan Buddhist Geshe studies curriculum—which qualifies her to teach subjects normally taught only by Tibetan Buddhist Lamas. She served as the resident teacher at California's Ocean of Compassion Buddhist Center and has spent long stretches of time in solitary retreat deepening her practice.

Emily and I got together in person recently to talk about the Buddhist view of the mind, navigating disturbing emotions, and how to understand reality.

Episode 126: The Buddhist Understanding of the Mind with Emily Hsu

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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 Exist

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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

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Buddhist counselor Richard Prinz leads an analytical meditation on equanimity to develop compassion, introspection, love, and non-attachment for teenagers and their parents.

Episode 125: Meditation on Equanimity for Parents and Teens with Richard Prinz

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Teenagers face a unique and overwhelming set of problems today, from climate change to social media to isolation induced by the pandemic. Richard Prinz is a marriage, child, and family counselor who has worked as a teen counselor in the Cupertino, California public schools for over 20 years. He's also a longtime Buddhist practitioner and a good friend of mine who served as the director of the Vajrapani Institute Buddhist retreat center in Boulder Creek when His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, came to visit in 1989.

In our interview, Rich and I talk about some of the powerful ways parents can transform their own minds to better help their teens, as well as helping teens to transform themselves. Even if you're not a parent or a teen, I think you'll find Rich's wisdom inspiring and offering practical ways to deal with difficult emotions and the world's problems.

Episode 124: Parenting Teens with Buddhist Counselor Richard Prinz

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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

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 Compassion

Three years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Francesca Hampton leads a loving-kindness meditation suitable for both children and adults alike that helps the mind become calm, loving, and clear.

Episode 123: Guided Meditation for Kids

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Francesca Hampton is a writer and lifelong Tibetan Buddhist practitioner who's written a wonderful new children's book on meditation for kids called Leo Learns to Meditate. As a parent myself, I've found it hard to find resources like these, so if you are a parent, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode.

Even if you're not, I think you'll find Francesca's advice on meditation—that comes from a lifetime of experience—useful in your own practice, as she talks about how to cultivate concentration and loving-kindness, why meditation can sometimes feel boring, and how to keep our meditation light, joyful, and fun.

Episode 122: How to Teach Children Meditation — Francesca Hampton

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A 15-minute guided meditation on compassion: the wish to take away others’ suffering.

Episode 29. Guided Compassion Meditation

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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As we enjoy the pleasures of our Thanksgiving meals in the U.S., this guided meditations shows how can we use pleasure in our meditation practice. Buddhism offers specific techniques for meditating on pleasure as a way to deepen our qualities of concentration, fearlessness, loving-kindness, and even our understanding of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 85: Guided Meditation on Pleasure
Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Professor Robert Thurman, who the New York Times calls “the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism” is back in this week's episode to talk about his wonderful new book Wisdom Is Bliss. Learn why the Buddha was an educator and scientist, not a religious prophet; and why Buddhism isn't a belief system, but a direct experience that reveals the pure beauty and joy of reality itself.

Episode 121: Robert Thurman: Wisdom Is Bliss

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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

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Rob Preece leads a Buddhist tantra meditation on Green Tara. This powerful feminine figure is an emanation of our own potential for compassionate, wisdom energy.

Episode 120: Tantric Meditation on Compassion and Wisdom

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Author and pyschotherapist Rob Preece shares his extensive knowledge on the sensitive topic of Buddhist tantra, the importance of the body in Buddhist practice, how exercise and nature relate to tantric practices, the role of sex in Vajrayana Buddhism, and how we embrace our different dimensions of gender in meditation and  everyday life.

Rob Preece is the author of many books bridging the Tibetan Buddhist tradition with Western psychology, including The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra, The Wisdom of Imperfection, The Courage to Feel, Preparing for Tantra, Feeling Wisdom, and Tasting the Essence of Tantra.

As a working psychotherapist, Rob merges Jungian and Buddhist approaches to the mind with his patients. For the past 40 years, Rob has also led many meditation retreats in Europe and the United States. As a father of two sons, experienced thangka painter, and a keen gardener, he tries to ground Buddhist practice in a creative, practical lifestyle

Episode 119: The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra with Rob Preece

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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

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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 despise.

Episode 22. Spiritual Democracy

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Susan Piver leads a breath-awareness meditation on being your authentic self, connecting with yourself through watching your breath and thoughts to open up and discover who you are. This meditation is part two of our interview with her on her new book The Buddhist Enneagram.

Episode 118: Being Yourself with Susan Piver

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Bestselling author Susan Piver is a powerful Buddhist teacher who shares her wisdom and guided meditations weekly through her Open Heart Project and community. Her new book is The Buddhist Enneagram in which she helps us understand how differently each of us sees and understands the world. Through her unique Buddhist take on the Enneagram's nine different personality types, Susan shares how understanding our differences can lead to deeper and more compassionate connections with our partners, colleagues, and everyone we encounter, transforming our difficult emotions into pure expressions of our basic goodness.

Episode 117: Understanding Our Differences with the Buddhist Enneagram

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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 - Renunciation

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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What do The Matrix and Jerry Seinfeld have to do with renouncing suffering? Renunciation, the determination to be free, self-compassion, letting go of suffering—in Buddhism these are all the same thing.

Episode 17. The Red Pill of Renunciation - Embracing Reality As It Is

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Venerable Amy Miller leads a Buddhist meditation for healing anxiety. This practice helps you create a safe mental space, reconnect to the positive, and relax your body through breathwork and thought-replacement.

Episode 116: Healing Anxiety with Buddhist Mind Training

Venerable Amy Miller is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher who's managed several Buddhist retreat centers, including the Vajrapani Institute in California and Vermont's Milarepa Center. She's the co-author of Buddhism in a Nutshell, and currently a resident teacher and board member at Land of Medicine Buddha in Santa Cruz. 

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Buddhist nun and teacher Venerable Amy shares how we can practically manage anxiety, depression, and other difficult emotions with Buddhist meditation and mind training techniques.

Venerable Amy Miller is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher who's managed several Buddhist retreat centers, including the Vajrapani Institute in California and Vermont's Milarepa Center. She's the co-author of Buddhism in a Nutshell, and currently a resident teacher and board member at Land of Medicine Buddha in Santa Cruz. 

Episode 115: Transforming Anxiety, Depression, and other Difficult Emotions with Ven. Amy Miller

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A clear-eyed meditation on suffering: both what suffering is, and the mental source of suffering in our delusions of attachment, anger, and self-centered ignorance. We practice the antidotes to these delusions, giving us tools for a more balanced, less self-centered view of our experience that offers sustained stability and happiness through life’s challenges and desires.

16. Guided Meditation: Letting Go of Suffering

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 suffering, its causes and antidotes, with a modern twist.

Episode 15. Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Dr. Mark Westmoquette leads a Zen Buddhist meditation to help navigate conflict in your daily life. He uses the story "Cutting the Cat in Two"—a famous Zen koan—to lead the practice and illustrate the importance of embodiment and shifting one's perspective.

Episode 114: “Cutting the Cat in Two”: A Guided Meditation for Dealing with Conflict

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Dr. Mark Westmoquette is an astrophysicist who became a student of Zen Buddhism and yoga. Now an author and meditation and yoga instructor, Mark has written a new book called Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People.

In this podcast episode, we talk about this meaty topic of how to deal with difficult people who Mark calls 'troublesome Buddhas,' from our boss to our partner to world leaders and that person who takes your parking space.

Episode 113: Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People with Dr. Mark Westmoquette

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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.

112. Guided Meditation on Finding Refuge in the Mind

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What do you do when you’re alone? When you’re 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.

14. What Do You Do When You're Alone?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Buddhist psychologist Lorne Ladner leads a meditation on giving and receiving love, a loving-kindness meditation with themes of connection, gratitude, and warmth.

Episode 111: Guided Meditation on Giving and Receiving Love with Buddhist Psychologist Lorne Ladner

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We talk with clinical psychologist and Buddhist practitioner Lorne Ladner about his patients' top questions, the difference between selfishness and self-compassion, setting healthy boundaries, and treating depression with Buddhist psychology.

Episode 110: Buddhist Psychologist Lorne Ladner

Read more in Dr. Lorne Ladner's wonderful book, The Lost Art of Compassion. 

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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 on Mental Cause and Effect

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 Effect

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Catholic priest and Benedictine monk Father Laurence Freeman discusses the role of community, meditation, contemplation, and science in his life and his dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He emphasizes his trust in humanity and the importance of wonder in our daily lives.

Episode 109: https://www.skepticspath.org/podcast/meditation-science-and-christianity-with-father-laurence-freeman/

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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 and Buddhism with Dr. Greg Hillis

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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 Impermanence

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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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 Impermanence

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Laurie Anderson leads a meditation on death and rebirth, guiding you through the Buddhist understanding of death, the bardo, and a joyous rebirth. These tracks come from Songs from the Bardo, an album inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Meditating on death is a powerful Buddhist practice that enhances gratitude, helps you embrace impermanence, and increases mindfulness.

Laurie Anderson is one of our greatest living artists. Her work includes spoken word and performance, top-charting albums and music videos, digital art, film, virtual reality, and the invention of ingenious instruments like the tape bow violin and the talking stick. She’s won the Grammy Award and many other honors, and is currently the subject of a fantastic solo show at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Episode 107: Guided Death and Rebirth Meditation with Laurie Anderson

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Grammy Award winning artist Laurie Anderson, a longtime student of Buddhism and meditation, shares her personal path with Buddhism, approaching art with a beginner’s mind, staying present with suffering without letting it overwhelm you, and making our lives meaningful.

Laurie Anderson is one of our greatest living artists. Her work includes spoken word and performance, top-charting albums and music videos, digital art, film, virtual reality, and the invention of ingenious instruments like the tape bow violin and the talking stick. She’s won the Grammy Award and many other honors, and is currently the subject of a fantastic solo show at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Episode 106: Laurie Anderson's Buddhism: Art, Meditation, and Death as Adventure 

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Scott Snibbe becomes the interviewee in this week's episode as Ven. Fabienne Pradelle speaks with him about finding meaning and spirituality through art and creativity, love without attachment, misconceptions about Buddhism, the afterlife, and our infinite potential.

Ep. 105: Ten Million Percent Happier - Interview with Scott Snibbe

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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?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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If the mind is our thoughts, then what is it that observes those thoughts? What are we without thoughts? Do we ever truly see an object, or only its mental reconstruction? Though we are all convinced that we have one, science has no agreed definition for consciousness or mind. Even subjectively, the mind is elusive, difficult to pin to any specific mental experience.

Episode 6. What Is the Mind?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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Dr. Thupten Jinpa on the intersection of science, Buddhism, and critical thinking; how Buddhist principles can help us solve the climate crisis; and how to lead fulfilling lives at home with our families and relationships.

Dr. Thupten Jinpa is one of the most renowned living Buddhist scholars and practitioners. He has served for decades as the Dalai Lama's principal translator and was a Buddhist monk for the first decades of his life in addition to his PhD in religious studies from Cambridge University. Thupten Jinpa is the chair of the Mind and Life Institute that conducts dialogues between scientists and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And he's the co-founder of Compassion Institute.

Episode 104: Dr. Thupten Jinpa on Buddhism, Science, Compassion, and Climate

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Rob Hopkins, climate activist, co-founder of the Transition Network and host of the podcast series From What If to What Next talks about an engaged, passionate form of Buddhism that actively works for positive change in our communities and in the world.

103. From What If to What Next — Rob Hopkins' Climate Optimism

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Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the greatest living science fiction writers, and one of the few people ever to have developed a credible solution to the climate crisis, which he describes in his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future. 

In this interview, we talk about climate change solutions, Buddhism in his life and work, sci-fi and cli-fi (climate fiction), colonizing Mars, the outdoors as meditation, and how to stay optimistic.

102. Kim Stanley Robinson on Solving the Climate Crisis, Buddhism, and the Power of Science Fiction

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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.

5. Guided Meditation: The Preciousness of Life

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these topics.

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“It is not more surprising to be born twice than once,” Voltaire once said. In this episode we contemplate the miracle of existing at all, from our place at the end of our universe’s 14 billion years’ evolution, to the simple joy of another 24 hours alive that Thich Nhat Hanh describes in Peace Is Every Step.

4. The Preciousness of Life from Cosmos to the Kardashians

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations every few weeks.

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Ayya Dhammadipa leads a 12-minute meditation on empathetic joy, also known as mudita. In this practice, we use joy that is sparked by the joy of other beings to radiate this state of mind, allowing the opportunity to go beyond ourselves and into a much vaster space of joyously relating to the world.

This practice is one of the four brahmaviharas, also known as the heavenly dwellings or four immeasurables.

Ayya Dhammadīpā is a Buddhist nun and teacher with a unique background: Before becoming a nun, she got an MBA, worked in investment banking, and was a devoted mother. For twenty years, Ayya Dhammadipa studied in the Zen Buddhist tradition, but now practices the earlier Buddhist lineage of Theravada. In the last episode, she talked with me about these interesting turns in her life, where mindfulness fits into a complete path of self-development, how to balance motherhood with practice, and about the joys of giving and receiving which she writes about in her recent book Gifts Greater Than the Oceans, which is available now freely on her website. You can also learn more about her online community and offerings at Dassanaya.org.

Episode Webpage - Guided Meditation: Empathetic Joy with Ayya Dhammadipa

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Ayya Dhammadipa is a Buddhist nun and teacher with a unique background: Before becoming a nun, she got an MBA, worked in investment banking, and was a devoted mother. For twenty years, she studied in the Zen Buddhist tradition, but now practices the earlier Buddhist lineage of Theravada. In this episode, she talks about these interesting turns in her life, where mindfulness fits into a complete path of self-development, how to balance motherhood with practice, and the misunderstood benefits of giving and receiving.

Episode 100: Gifts Greater Than the Oceans with Ayya Dhammadipa

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A complete guided meditation session expanding your compassion, stabilizing concentration on the breath, and observing your thoughts.

Episode 3: Guided Meditation: Stabilizing the Mind and Watching Thoughts

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations every few weeks.

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Over the past few years meditation has become popular as a way to help reduce stress, be focused at work, sleep better, or simply relax. Yet meditation isn’t just a tool to improve focus or relax, but a way to strengthen the positive qualities we all naturally possess: compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humor, and finding joy in everyday life. This episode explores this higher purpose of meditation through the less familiar technique of analytic meditation that uses stories, thoughts, and emotions to steer our minds toward happiness, meaning, and benefiting others.

Episode 2: What Is Meditation?

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these topics every few weeks, alternating an introduction to each topic on Tuesday with a meditation on Friday.

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Author, mother and meditation teacher Jenna Hollenstein joins us to challenge the stereotype of Buddhist practice as solitary and silent, offering instead an engaged, active form of mindfulness and compassion that mothers can practice in everyday life as a Mommysattva: a warrior of compassion, wisdom, and lovingkindness.

Find her latest book here: Mommysattva: Contemplations for Mothers Who Meditate (Or Wish They Could).

Learn more about Jenna and her other books on her website and find out about her Mommy Sangha community with the Open Heart Project.

Episode 99. Mommysattva: Meditation and Motherhood with Jenna Hollenstein

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Even a short 10-minute meditation has the power to calm your body and mind. Here’s a helpful guided meditation that in just 10 minutes a day can improve your well-being. Even though it's short, this is a complete meditation session including establishing proper meditation posture, motivating our meditation to be a force for good, stabilizing the mind on the breath, letting go of thoughts, cultivating beneficial thoughts, and a dedication to seal your meditation practice.

A Guided 10 Minute Meditation to Calm the Mind

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations every few weeks.

Support the show

Two years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment 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 gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing updated versions of these talks and meditations every few weeks.

Episode 1: What Is A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment?

Introducing A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment, bringing the inner science of Buddhist meditation to twenty-first century people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. We take a secular approach to meditation that requires no belief beyond our current understanding of science and psychology, based on powerful Buddhist mind training techniques that use imagination, intelligence, and emotions to probe our inner and outer realities, and expand our compassion.

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Soto Zen Teacher Ben Connelly leads a guided meditation integrating two ways of meditating in the spirit of the Yogacara tradition of Buddhism.

Episode 98: Guided Meditation: Turning Towards with Ben Connelly

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Soto Zen Teacher Ben Connelly joins us to explore the relationship between science and reality, whether karma really exists, and how to be a Buddhist activist while remaining unattached to "winning." In the process, Ben teaches us about the ancient Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu and what the Yogacara school of Buddhism teaches us about taming our minds.

Episode 97: Esoteric and Everyday Buddhism with Ben Connelly 

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Dr. Rick Hanson shares powerful insights from neuroscience on how to practically embrace the positive in our lives and grow our extraordinary potential for inner happiness without denying any of our pain. 

While speaking authoritatively on contemplative neuroscience, Dr. Hanson also humbly compares our current knowledge of the brain to physics as it was 300 years ago, and shares tantalizing thoughts on where neuroscience might go in the coming years. 

Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and the New York Times best-selling author of Buddha’s Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, and his latest book, Neurodharma.

Episode 48. Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Neurodharma and Buddha's Brain 

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Dr. Robert Thurman touches on some of his most profound points in this special interview rebroadcast: from the nature of time, to what is enlightenment, to why there’s no evidence for “nothing.” He talked about what a psychonaut is and the importance of skepticism in Buddhism and in science. Please enjoy this wonderful conversation with one of the world’s greatest minds.

The New York times calls Dr. Robert Thurman “the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.” Professor Thurman is an intimate student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and was one of the first Westerners to become an ordained Tibetan monk in India in 1962, before returning to the United States to relinquish his monk’s robes and become the Buddhist scholar and author that he’s known as today.

[Episode 50] Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 1)
[Episode 51] Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 2)

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Lifelong human rights activist, writer, and Buddhist practitioner Kiri Westby guides us through a 10-minute guided meditation for fear, drawing upon her days working in war zones and her harrowing imprisonment in China.

Whether you're dealing with overwhelming negative thoughts, phobias, fight or flight symptoms, a general feeling of fear, or just want to improve your well-being and relax your nervous system, this guided mindfulness meditation can help you let go of fear's grasp and find a sense of inner peace.

Kiri started working professionally in human rights advocacy at age twenty-two, transporting money and information across borders for a global feminist network. At age twenty-nine, Kiri was arrested and disappeared by the Chinese government, making international headlines for reminding the world—in front of Olympic cameras—of the ongoing human rights abuses in Tibet.

Episode 96: Guided Meditation for Fear with Kiri Westby

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"In that moment, I literally let go of my life. I was sure that that was the end of my life. There was not a part of me that didn't think I was going to die in that moment."

Lifelong human rights activist, writer, and Buddhist practitioner Kiri Westby spoke to us about how her Buddhist practice helped her through imprisonment in China and the role of Buddhism in her humanitarian mission. Hear how her Buddhist upbringing led to her making international headlines as an imprisoned activist in China protesting human rights abuses in Tibet.

Episode 95: Finding Fearlessness with Kiri Westby

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How does the Buddhist view on compassion help us think about COVID vaccine controversies? What do the Dalai Lama and the Pope have to say about vaccination? Without arguing for any one position, host Scott Snibbe and Producer Tara Anderson talk about how to stay loving and connected to people we disagree with, how to avoid "compassion fatigue," and how to (not) convince somebody to see things our way. Scott and Tara also share personal stories about growing up in an anti-vax household and deciding whether to vaccinate their young children.

Episode 94: Vaccines and Compassion

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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is one of the world’s most revered Buddhist teachers and one of the very first Westerners to become ordained into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She is best known for having lived in a remote cave in the Himalayas for 12 years. In this 10-minute  meditation, she offers us the invitation to cultivate moment-to-moment inner awareness - the essence of meditation practice.

Episode 93: Instructions on the Essence of Meditation Practice with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo - 10 Minute Meditation

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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is one of the world’s most revered Buddhist teachers and one of the very first Westerners to become ordained into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She is best known for having lived alone in a remote cave in the Himalayas for 12 years. She spoke with us about the role of women in Buddhism from a historical and contemporary lens, the nature of mind and simple, powerful ways to meditate in the modern world.

Episode 92: Wisdom and the Path for Women with Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is a fully ordained tibetan buddhist nun in the Drukpa Lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. She is an author, teacher and founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India. She is best known for being one of the very few Western yoginis trained in the East, having spent twelve years living in a remote cave in the Himalayas, three of those years in strict meditation retreat and for having made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form - no matter how many lifetimes it takes.

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In today's meditation, we explore the idea of enlightenment: whether it’s possible, whether its seed is already within us, whether its an end or a beginning, and even whether it’s any fun. If enlightenment is transcending a narrow, separate sense of self, what might a taste of that expansive self feel like?

Episode 91: Guided Meditation | The Possibility of Enlightenment

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Is enlightenment really possible for people like you and me? Do we lose ourselves when we become enlightened? Are there people on earth who are enlightened right now? Buddhist scholar Dr. Jan Willis answers these questions and more as we explore what enlightenment (or awakening) really means.

Episode 90: What is Enlightenment with Dr. Jan Willis

Dr. Jan 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 at age 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, Buddhist saints’ lives, Women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and Race. Her latest book is the compelling essay collection Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra. And her unique personal story is captured in her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist—One Woman’s Spiritual Journey.

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A 10-minute mindful awareness meditation led by NYT bestselling author and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver. Encompassing mindfulness of breath, body, and mind, this meditation helps us relax into a peaceful present moment awareness.

Episode 89: 10-Minute Mindful Awareness Meditation with Susan Piver

Listen to our previous interview with Susan - Episode 88: Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver. In this interview, shares her Four Noble Truths of Love, a framework for anybody to have deeper, more fulfilling, and more loving intimate relationships.

Buy Susan's latest book, The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships (available in hard copy or audiobook). 

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NYT bestselling author and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver shares her Four Noble Truths of Love, a framework anybody can use for deeper, more fulfilling, and more connected intimate relationships.

Susan Piver is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do", the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation. Her new book is The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships, which we talk about in our interview. She is a founder of Lionheart Press and a renowned meditation teacher who leads the Open Heart Project, the world's largest online only meditation center. Learn more about her at susanpiver.com.

Episode 88: Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver

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Elaine Jackson guides a heart-warming Buddhist loving-kindness meditation (metta meditation). This meditation uses visualization to bring about our natural state of loving awareness for ourselves and all beings.

In addition to today's meditation, Elaine joined us for an interview last week to talk about how to integrate the wisdom of Buddhism into our relationships.

Ep. 86 - Buddhist Relationship Advice with Elaine Jackson.
Ep. 87 - Buddhist Loving-Kindness Meditation with Elaine Jackson

Elaine Jackson is the co-founder of the Vajrapani Institute, teaches at Buddhist meditation centers throughout the world, and completed a 3-year meditation retreat in 2014. She has studied with many masters and has been a student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche since 1977. Read more about Elaine and the Vajrapani Institute here.

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How do we integrate the wisdom of Buddhism into our intimate relationships? Elaine Jackson shares Buddhist relationship advice for navigating arguments selflessly, knowing when a relationship is over, dealing with divorce, how to meditate while parenting, and relating to a partner who's on a different spiritual path. 

Episode 86: Buddhist Relationship Advice with Elaine Jackson

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How can we use pleasure in our meditation practice? Buddhism offers specific techniques for meditating on pleasure as a way to deepen our qualities of concentration, fearlessness, loving-kindness, and even our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 85: Guided Meditation on Pleasure
Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Pleasure is often viewed as a hindrance to the spiritual path, a hotbed of craving and attachment, but what if we told you that pleasure can actually be a positive part of the spiritual path, a portal to love and happiness?

Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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A daily meditation on the four levels of happiness in Buddhism. Investigate the varying depths of happiness you get from sensory pleasures, positive states of mind, meditation, and the very nature of reality.

Episode 73: Guided Meditation: Four Levels of Happiness in Buddhism
Episode 72: Four Kinds of Happiness with Sangye Khadro

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Explore the four kinds of happiness in Buddhism with Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald). This episode offers an opportunity to reflect on where we derive our happiness from and how we can live happier lives by understanding how each kind of happiness relates to desire, attachment, compassion, and our own meditation practice.

Episode 82: Four Kinds of Happiness with Sangye Khadro

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A biologist and a Buddhist monk have a conversation on how science can make sense of rebirth, emptiness, and karma, the origins of consciousness and creativity, and how modern science's understanding of the nature of reality benefits from the wisdom of contemplative traditions.

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge.

Geshe Tenzin Namdak is a Buddhist monk, scholar and teacher whose education and life experience bridges both East and West. Born in the Netherlands, he graduated with a degree in hydrology and initially worked as an environmental researcher. He encountered Buddhism at Maitreya Institute in 1993 and took ordination from HH Dalai Lama before engaging in his formal studies in Buddhist philosophy and psychology at Sera Jey Monastic university, South India. In May 2017 he was awarded the Geshe degree (equivalent to Ph.D), the first Westerner to complete the entire twenty-year Geshe programme.

Episode 81: A Biologist and a Buddhist Monk on the Nature of Reality with Geshe Namdak and Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

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Artificial intelligence expert Kristian Simsarian joins host Scott Snibbe to discuss how we can create ethical, unbiased and compassionate AI, whether we should be scared of AI, and the implications of AI on the future of work and spirituality.

Kristian Simsarian has a Ph.D. in human-robot collaboration and worked as a Robotics and AI computer scientist before holding leadership positions at IDEO, the California College of the Arts, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center and many other organizations. He helped found Humans for AI and helped grow the Center for Humane Technology in its early years. His work has appeared in NYT, Business Week, Huffington Post, along with several best-selling business books on innovation. He's also a board member for A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment.

Episode 80: Compassionate AI with Kristian Simsarian

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Take an expansive tour through the four foundations of mindfulness in this sweeping guided meditation with Dr. David Kittay: mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and mental objects.

Guided Meditation: Four Foundations of Mindfulness with Dr. David Kittay

Listen to our previous interviews with Dr. David Kittay here:
Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology (Part 1)
Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology (Part 2)

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Dr. David Kittay discusses science fiction, emptiness, whether life is a simulation, whether we should treat AI robots with compassion, and whether the singularity might be another term for enlightenment.

Part 2 - Episode 78: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay (Part 2)
Part 1 - Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay (Part 1)

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Dr. David Kittay joins the show to talk about whether technologically assisted enlightenment is possible, the nature of time, whether our phones and our social media accounts have become part of ourselves, and how to deal with tech addiction.

Dr. Kittay teaches philosophy, religion and technology at Columbia University, where his students call his courses "life-changing." Dr. Kittay is also an author, a translator and a Tibet House board member. His latest publication is the Vajra Rosary Tantra, available from Wisdom Publications.

Episode 77: Buddhism and Technology with Dr. David Kittay 

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Host Scott Snibbe offers a touching personal talk and meditation on how to best love our parents and our children using powerful Buddhist teachings and techniques on understanding, listening, and compassion.

Episode 76: Loving Our Parents, Loving Our Children

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Tibetan Buddhist Lama Dza Kilung Rinpoche leads a 10 minute meditation to relax into the vast spaciousness of heart and mind.

Episode 75: 10-Minute Meditation to Relax the Mind with Dza Kilung Rinpoche

The extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist Lama and teacher Dza Kilung Rinpoche talked to us in Episode 74 about his short yet profound book, The Relaxed Mind. In this episode, he leads us in a guided meditation to open the mind. 

Dza Kilung Rinpoche was born in 1970 and is head of Tibet's Kilung Monastery, which he has been working to reestablish as a center of learning and practice since he was a teenager. Since 1998, Rinpoche has taught all over the world and we spoke with him from his home on Whidbey Island near Seattle, Washington. 

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Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dza Kilung Rinpoche shares seven meditation practices for a relaxed mind, heart, and body.

The extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist Lama and teacher Dza Kilung Rinpoche talks to us in this episode about his short yet profound book, The Relaxed Mind. This book is the culmination of his decades teaching in the west, where Rinpoche has condensed the vast array of topics in Tibetan Buddhist meditation into seven brief meditations we can easily practice. In our interview, he explains the sequence in depth and why it's so appropriate for the Western mind. 

Dza Kilung Rinpoche was born in 1970 and is head of Tibet's Kilung Monastery, which he has been working to reestablish as a center of learning and practice since he was a teenager. Since 1998, Rinpoche has taught all over the world and we spoke with him from his home on Whidbey Island near Seattle, Washington. 

Episode 74. The Relaxed Mind with Dza Kilung Rinpoche

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Buddhist monk Ven. Gyalten Lekden guides a Seven-Fold Cause and Effect Meditation to develop compassion and Bodhicitta (the mind of awakening)

Episode 73. Guided Meditation: 7 Steps to Compassion with Ven. Gyalten Lekden

Listen to the interview with Ven. Gyalten here: Engaged Buddhism with Ven. Gyalten Lekden

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Buddhist monk Ven. Gyalten on engaged Buddhism that actively grapples with social injustice, gender inequality, climate change, and racism.

Episode 72. Engaged Buddhism with Ven. Gyalten Lekden

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A 20-minute guided analytical meditation on how money exists through parts, causes, and the mind in our interdependent, empty reality.

Episode 71. Guided Meditation: How Money Exists

Previous Episode: Bitcoin and Buddhism

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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?

Episode 70. Bitcoin and Buddhism

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A 10 minute guided meditation on mindful, nonjudgmental acceptance of change by Theo Koffler, founder of Mindfulness without Borders.

Just Like a Mountain 10 Minute Meditation on Accepting Change

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Theo Koffler, founder of Mindfulness Without Borders, talks about meditation techniques for mindfulness and self-awareness at work.

Episode 69. Mindfulness at Work with Theo Koffler

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A 10 minute guided meditation on mindful listening with Theo Koffler, founder of Mindfulness Without Borders

10 Minute Mindful Listening Meditation

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Theo Koffler, founder of Mindfulness Without Borders talks about mindfulness programs for teens and young adults and tips for parents on being mindfully present to make our lives joyful and meaningful.

Episode 68. Theo Koffler on Mindfulness for Teens & Young Adults

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Four meditations for the workplace including mindful work-life balance, turning every moment into a meditation, dealing with ethical challenges, and an angry boss.

Episode 67. Four Ways to Meditate at Work

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Ruchika Sikri, who lead mindfulness, meditation, leadership and wellbeing programs at Google for 15 years, talks about the role of meditation at work, and what she would say to leaders like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg on how to build more a compassionate, supportive workplace.

Episode 66. Ruchika Sikri on Mindfulness at Google & Compassionate Corporations

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Lily Meyersohn is a talented young author newly out of college that I met recently who’s written eloquently about grief, family, youth, and relationships. She’s our guest this week sharing her journey experiencing grief first hand with her family and friends, and the hesitance she’s feeling as spring blooms not to jump out and re-engage with the beautiful sensual world, but to pause, and use meditation to stay present and process her own grief and her sense of shared grief.

I think you’ll enjoy Lily’s short story in this episode, in which she talks about getting immunized, the pain of being cut off from family and friends, her grandparents’ aging and dying process, and how mindfulness meditation has helped her stay with grief in ways that are productive and healing. In the second part of Lily’s episode, she guides on a personalized mindfulness meditation based on the Mindfulness and Grief meditations of Roshi Joan Halifax that help accept and process grief.

Episode 65. Mindfulness and Grief

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A 10 minute guided meditation on the breath with mindfulness and open awareness.

Episode 64. 10 Minute Breath Meditation

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A 10 minute guided meditation on the body, relaxing into the open connection between body and mind through mindful awareness.

Episode 63. 10 Minute Body Meditation

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Scott Tusa leads a guided meditation on open awareness, allowing feelings and thoughts to arise in our body and mind without fixation or judgment.

Episode 62. Scott Tusa's Guided Meditation on Open Awareness

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Scott Tusa, mindfulness and Buddhist meditation teacher, talks with us on balancing a committed life of a Buddhist practitioner with the everyday life of work, friends, and family. He also shares some of the common challenges people face in meditation, and constructive, compassionate ways that we can work with these challenges.

Episode 61. Scott Tusa on Meditation and Mindfulness in Everyday Life

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Could the true cause of happiness be simply thinking about whatever we are doing at the moment, what scientists and meditators call mindfulness?

Episode 60. Why Mindfulness?

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Acclaimed author Vicki Mackenzie on the extraordinary lives of pioneering Buddhist nuns Tenzin Palmo and Freda Bedi, and the bias and prejudice they faced in a system that for thousands of years excluded women from the full path to enlightenment.

Episode 59. Vicki Mackenzie on Groundbreaking Buddhist Nuns Tenzin Palmo and Freda Bedi

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What happens when you die? No one knows for sure. But the Tibetan Buddhist system describes a precise series of steps that our consciousness may experience as we die, which we can explore in a meditation to probe the boundary of life and death with curiosity and wonder.

Episode 58. What Happens When You Die?

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The idea of past lives may not make make sense, and isn’t scientifically verifiable. But still, the question of what we might have been before our conception is one worth asking. Where did I come from?

Episode 57. Where Did I Come From?

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I want to tell you a story about birth and death and infinity. We’re all born and we’re all going to die, but I don’t know how many of you have ever felt a connection to infinity. I want to tell you about the time in my life when I felt this connection to infinity every day. And I also want to tell you about how I lost it, and whether it’s possible to get it back again.

Episode 56: Birth, Death, and Infinity

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A short guided meditation on loving-kindness and compassion by Tibetan Buddhist lama, author, and abstract painter Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Episode 55. Meditation on Loving-Kindness and Compassion with Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

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Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, renowned Tibetan Buddhist lama, author, and abstract expressionist painter talks about the mind, compassion, patience, and art.

Episode 54. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche on Patience, Compassion, and Art

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Our podcast producer finally steps in front of the mic! Stephen Butler, producer of Grammy-nominated Indigenous and Native American music on gentleness, openness, and the Buddhism of Mr. Rogers.

Episode 53. Stephen Butler on Openness, Gentleness, and Mr. Rogers' Buddhism

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A 10-Minute guided meditation on love shows us how to expand our love for our partner and family to a loving-kindness that embraces all beings.

10 Minute Meditation on Love

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If you want to know what love is, search beyond eighties songs to the wisdom of Buddhist loving-kindness that expands our love to all beings while also deepening our connection to our partner and family. This special Valentine's Day episode on love asks great Buddhist teachers the question of what love is, including Dr. Jan Willis, Ven. Kathleen McDonald, Dr. Rick Hanson, Geshe Tenzin Namdak, and Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Episode 52: I Want to Know What Love Is

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Part two of our mind expanding interview with Buddhist scholar and author Dr. Robert Thurman, who shares what is a healthy kind of ego, how to be a Buddhist without belief, and a powerful vision of enlightenment and Nirvana.

Episode 51. Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 2)

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Buddhist scholar Dr. Robert Thurman answers 10 profound questions: What is the nature of time? What is enlightenment? Why is there no evidence for "nothing?" What is a psychonaut? And why is it important to be skeptical of both Buddhism and science? Join us for this first half of a wonderful conversation with one of the world's greatest minds.

Episode 50. Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 1)

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Dr. Rick Hanson, best-selling author of Buddha’s Brain and Neurodharma, shares his "Five Breaths" neuroscience-based guided meditation.

Dr. Rick Hanson's Five Breaths Meditation

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Dr. Rick Hanson, best-selling author of Buddha’s Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, and Neurodharma, shares insights from neuroscience on how to grow our extraordinary potential for inner happiness without denying any of our pain.

Episode 48. Interview with Dr. Rick Hanson, Author of Neurodharma and Buddha’s Brain

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Our first episode of 2021 is a guided meditation on "purification": a healthy way to let go of regrets from the last year and make a realistic path to being our best self this year through forgiveness and self-acceptance.

Episode 47: Beginning the New Year with a Purification Meditation

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In this deep and fascinating interview with Dr. Jay Garfield on the connection between compassion and emptiness, he shows how, when we realize our interdependence on other beings, ideas, and the world around us, it helps us to dissolve our self-centered view and embrace the needs of all beings and the reality around us.

Episode 46. Dr. Jay Garfield on Healthy Realities

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From the Buddhist, as well as the psychological and scientific perspectives, gratitude and dedication aren’t just polite bookends. The process of feeling gratitude and resolve creates the mental and neurological causes to actually become better people and to better serve the world.

Episode 45: Meditation on Gratitude, Dedication, and Determination

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We’ve spent the better part of a year going step-by-step through a modern secular version of the major topics from Tibetan Buddhism’s Stages of the Path, what we call A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment. In Tibetan this sequence is called the lamrim. It’s a series of meditations that progressively move our mind to better understand itself, bring out our best qualities, and create the causes for a happy meaningful life. 

People who practice the Stages of the Path in the Tibetan style normally review the whole path every day as part of a meditation practice to gradually make its steps second nature. This episode offers a compact summation of the stages of the path as a complete meditation that you can practice every day.

Episode 44. Secular Guided Meditation on the Tibetan Buddhist Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim)

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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

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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?

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"Buddhism is not meant to make people Buddhist … but to generate happy minds." Western Tibetan Buddhist master Geshe Tenzin Namdak on the mind, disturbing emotions, and emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 41. Geshe Tenzin Namdak on the Mind, Disturbing Emotions, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

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Meditating on the interdependent nature of reality, or emptiness, breaks down the illusion of independent, partless, and unchanging objects; instead we observe their parts, causes, and our mind that wraps these with a label like phone, home, or our delicious dinner.

Episode 40. 20-Minute Guided Meditation on the Interdependent Nature of Reality

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The Buddhist understanding of how things exist 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

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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. Guided Meditation: How Things Exist

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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

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A guided meditation by Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald) on the natural goodness of our mind, or Buddha nature. In this meditation we let go of all our negative, disturbing states of mind like anger, anxiety, or fear; and cultivate our positive mental qualities of compassion, wisdom, and courage.

Episode 36. Guided Meditation on the Natural Goodness of our Mind — Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald)

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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 Mind

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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 Others

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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 Willis

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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

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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 Compassion

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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 Others

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A 15-minute guided meditation on compassion: the wish to take away others’ suffering.

Episode 29. Guided Compassion Meditation

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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?

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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 Mindfulness

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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 Love

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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?

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On Ten Percent Happier a few weeks ago, The Dalai Lama described to Dan Harris a “simple meditation” for these times. This guided meditation is an interpretation of the two meditations His Holiness recommends in the morning: meditating on the mind and meditating on the kindness of others.

Episode 24. The Dalai Lama's "Simple Meditation"

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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

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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 despise.

Episode 22. Spiritual Democracy

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Venerable Robina Courtin, Buddhist nun and advocate for prisoner’s rights, on how activists can leverage meditation and mind training, how Buddhism functions as a science of the mind, and how being a Buddhist doesn’t mean being a pushover.

Episode 21. Venerable Robina Courtin — Buddha's Science of Mind

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A guided meditation on fighting the systemic racism against Black Americans through compassionate action.

Episode 20. Guided Meditation: Fighting Systemic Racism through Compassionate Action #BlackLivesMatter

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A guided analytical meditation through Skeptic’s Path meditations, based on Tibetan Buddhism’s Lamrim Stages of the Path. Each meditation is part of an adventure for the mind to bring about inner joy and purpose considering Life’s Preciousness, Impermanence, Cause & Effect, Refuge, Suffering, and Renunciation.

Episode 19. The Adventure So Far: Analytic Meditation on the Stages of the Path

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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: Renunciation

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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

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A clear-eyed meditation on suffering: both what suffering is, and the mental source of suffering in our delusions of attachment, anger, and self-centered ignorance. We practice the antidotes to these delusions, giving us tools for a more balanced, less self-centered view of our experience that offers sustained stability and happiness through life’s challenges and desires.

Episode 16: Guided Meditation - Letting Go of Suffering

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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 suffering, its causes and antidotes, with a modern twist.

Episode 15: Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe?

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What do you do when you’re alone? When you’re 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?

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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!

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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 Together

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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

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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 Effect

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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 Impermanence

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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 Impermanence

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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 Compassion

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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?

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If the mind is our thoughts, then what is it that observes those thoughts? What are we without thoughts? Do we ever truly see an object, or only its mental reconstruction? Though we are all convinced that we have one, science has no agreed definition for consciousness or mind. Even subjectively, the mind is elusive, difficult to pin to any specific mental experience.

Episode 6. What Is the Mind?

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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 Life

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