The How to Train a Happy Mind podcast brings meditation to modern people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. Each week, host Scott Snibbe and his guests share powerful mind training techniques that go beyond mindfulness to harness our intelligence, emotions, and imagination. Learn how to build a happy mind, fulfilling relationships, and a better world through a secular approach to meditation that is based on modern science and psychology, yet grounded in the authentic thousand-year old Tibetan Buddhist tradition of analytical meditation. How to Train a Happy Mind is a project of the nonprofit Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment. Our host, Scott Snibbe, is a twenty-five-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Snibbe is the author of the popular How to Train a Happy Mind book, and leads meditation classes and retreats worldwide infused with science, humor, and the realities of the modern world.
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 Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
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 Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
When uncertainty and bad news pull the mind toward pessimism, how can we cultivate genuine hope without ignoring reality? In this guided meditation, Geshe Legtsok leads a reflection on gratitude, good fortune, impermanence, and intentional action. By recognizing the blessings in our own lives, appreciating the positive contributions of others, and remembering that change is always possible, we develop a more balanced and hopeful outlook. Episode 226: Meditation to Cultivate Hope for the Future | Geshe Legtsok Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
What if we've been looking at the modern world all wrong? Despite the headlines, extreme poverty has plummeted, knowledge is more accessible than ever, and ancient meditation practices are spreading across the globe. In this conversation, Geshe Tenzin Legtsok suggests that humanity may not be living in the worst of times, but on the edge of an unprecedented opportunity for wisdom, compassion, and human flourishing. Episode 225: Is This Actually the Best Time to Be Alive? — Geshe Legtsok Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
Dostoevsky is often credited with saying, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.” The practice of renunciation begins by recognizing the ways we're already trapped—by anger, craving, impatience, and the endless search for satisfaction outside ourselves. This meditation helps us see these patterns clearly and turn toward a deeper source of freedom, discovering a refuge within our own mind that no external circumstance can provide. Episode 18. Guided Meditation - Renunciation Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
What do The Matrix and Jerry Seinfeld have in common with Buddhist wisdom? In this episode, Scott explores the practice of renunciation—not giving up life's pleasures, but letting go of the mistaken belief that lasting happiness comes from external circumstances. Through insights from The Matrix , comedy, and Buddhist psychology, discover how true freedom begins when we stop blaming the world for our suffering and start transforming our own minds. Episode 17: The Red Pill of Renunciation: Embracing Reality As It Is Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
Following the passing of Robert Thurman, we wanted to revisit one of our favorite conversations with the beloved scholar, teacher, and pioneer who helped bring Tibetan Buddhist wisdom to the modern world. A former monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Columbia University professor, bestselling author, and co-founder of Tibet House US, Thurman devoted his life to sharing profound insights on compassion, interconnectedness, and human flourishing. His books, teachings, and joyful spirit inspired generations of students and seekers around the world. In this memorable conversation, we explore the illusion of separateness, the nature of reality, and the possibility that our deepest nature is joy itself. Thurman once said this was one of his favorite interviews, and we’re grateful to share it again in celebration of his extraordinary life and enduring legacy. Episode 224: Remembering Robert Thurman: Psychonaut, Scholar, and Friend Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
So many of us get lost in terror about humanity’s future, but how often do we ask, “What’s our best possible future?” Bestselling author and climate activist Kim Stanley Robinson joined Scott on Earth Day this year for an urgent and hopeful conversation at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism. This is the third time we've been fortunate enough to have Stan on the podcast, and this time we traced a through line across humanity’s past, present, and future through three of Scott's favorite books of Stan's: The Ministry for the Future, High Sierra: A Love Story, and Shaman. Where do we find hope in the face of the climate crisis? How can we reconnect with the extraordinary nature that, for many of us, is right outside our door? And what can our ancestors from 30,000 years ago teach us about living in balance with the planet and one another today? Find out in today's episode. Episode 223: Our Best Possible Future—Kim Stanley Robinson Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
This is 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 Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
Do we each secretly believe we matter just a little more than everyone else? That my happiness, my ambitions, my relationships carry greater weight? From a Buddhist perspective, this deeply ingrained belief is the root of our suffering: a delusion known as ignorance, considered the true source of everything from heartbreak and disappointment to the quiet dissatisfaction that lingers even when we get exactly what we want. This is a modern retelling of the Buddha’s first teaching, The Four Noble Truths, exploring the nature of suffering, its causes, and the path beyond it through a contemporary lens. Episode 15. Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe? Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
In this guided meditation, Lodro Rinzler leads you through a gentle practice of mindfulness, emotional awareness, and reconnecting with your basic goodness. Beginning with simple breath awareness, this meditation helps you return to the present moment with kindness and without judgment. In the second half of the practice, you’ll explore your emotional landscape using a powerful “yes, and” approach: acknowledging difficult feelings while also noticing the goodness that exists alongside them. This practice is a reminder that you are more than your emotions, and that peace, beauty, and connection can still be present even in hard moments. Episode #222: You Are Enough Meditation with Lodro Rinzler Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
What if that voice telling you you’re broken or fundamentally flawed is wrong? That’s the radical message of today’s guest, Buddhist teacher and best-selling author Lodro Rinzler. His new book is called Your Good, You Are Enough. Lodro teaches a powerful idea from Tibetan Buddhism called basic goodness, that beneath all our self-doubt, anger, and anxiety, there’s something awake and whole already present in us. It sounds like a self-help slogan, but in fact, it’s something we can directly experience ourselves in meditation and in everyday life. In this conversation, Lodro talks about how to trust your own goodness without using this powerful idea as an excuse to avoid growth. And how to see goodness in difficult people without excusing harm. Episode #221: You Are Good, You Are Enough with Lodro Rinzler Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
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 Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
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] Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
This guided meditation by Tibetan teacher Dr. Robert Thurman invites you to explore one of the most profound ideas in contemplative practice: the rarity and potential of being human. Through breath, visualization, and focused awareness, you’ll gently shift your attention inward to the center of your being, connecting with a deeper level of consciousness often overlooked in daily life. From this still point, the meditation expands your perspective, helping you reflect on the nature of awareness, your connection to other living beings, and the unique capacity you have for insight, empathy, and growth. Episode 220: Preciousness of Human Life Form: A Guided Meditation with Robert Thurman Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
Can an AI really teach us how to have a happy life? Robert Thurman, one of the most respected Buddhist scholars, thinks it's possible—and he's testing out the idea with an AI avatar of himself called Dharma Bob that was just released. Scott got a chance to sit down with both of them last week to have a chat about enlightenment, the benefits of AI, compassion, and Buddhism. Episode 219: Can AI Teach Happiness? Meet Dharma Bob: Robert Thurman’s AI Avatar Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
This is a guided meditation for self-reflection, so you can take control of the mental cause and effect that's normally unconscious: the habits and activities conditioned by evolution, our upbringing, society, and the media. You can do this 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. This way, you can sleep better and be your best self the next day. Episode 12: Guided Meditation—Mental Cause And Effect Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
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 Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
In this guided meditation, mindfulness teacher Margaret Cullen leads us into the practice of equanimity: the steady, balanced heart that can remain open in the midst of life’s constant change. Through gentle breath awareness and reflective phrases, this practice explores how we can care deeply for others while also recognizing the limits of our control over their happiness and suffering. Episode 218: Equanimity Meditation for Balance and Rest Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
Meditation teacher and licensed psychotherapist Margaret Cullen recently published her book, Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly Through the Power of Equanimity. In this book she reveals scientific breakthroughs and spiritual intersections that demonstrate how the power of equanimity allows us to live more fully, with balance and wisdom. In her interview with Scott, they discuss how equanimity can help in personal relationships, taking refuge, healthy activism, struggles with mental health, personal integrity, suffering, and how to develop equanimity. Episode 217: Feel More, React Less with Margaret Cullen Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott. 🙏 Help us stay ad-free 📲 Follow us on socials
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Observed July 30, 2026.
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