How to Train a Happy Mind

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.

From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of California, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals and meeting thoughtful new friends.

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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

From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of California, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals and meeting thoughtful new friends.

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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

From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of California, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals and meeting thoughtful new friends.

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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

From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of California, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals and meeting thoughtful new friends.

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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

From August 28 to 31, Scott Snibbe is leading an in-person meditation retreat at Vajrapani Institute. We’ll explore antidotes to anxiety, fear, and loneliness—and cultivate the deeper causes of a happy mind; connected, loving relationships; and a better world. It all happens in the beautiful redwood forests of California, while enjoying delicious vegetarian meals and meeting thoughtful new friends.

SIGN UP NOW

Support the show