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How to Train a Happy Mind

Scott Snibbe

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.

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30 episodes
weekly
Avg 32 min
English

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Yesterday · 16 min
Compassion Meditation #29 [rebroadcast]
A 15-minute guided meditation on compassion: the wish to take away others’ suffering. Episode 29. Guided Compassion Meditation 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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September 29 · 25 min
What is Compassion? #28 [rebroadcast]
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? 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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#231
September 22 · 12 min
A Compassion Meditation for Difficult Moments — Aproteem Choudhury #231
In this episode, Aproteem Choudhury offers a gentle compassion meditation for those moments when something difficult is asking for our attention. Rather than turning away from discomfort or trying to fix it, this practice invites us to acknowledge what’s here and meet it with care. Along the way, Aproteem reminds us that we’re not alone in our struggles and encourages us to listen for the wise and compassionate response that may already be available to us. Episode 231: A Compassion Meditation for Difficult Moments — Aproteem Choudhury 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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#230
September 15 · 40 min
Compassion Means We're Not Alone — Aproteem Choudhury #230
Can compassion make loneliness less convincing? Aproteem Choudhury, Program Director of Health at The Compassion Institute, explores how compassion can transform the way we relate to loneliness, trauma, and suffering. Drawing on his work with communities affected by natural disasters, gun violence, and challenges in healthcare, Apro shares how care and connection can help us meet difficult experiences without becoming overwhelmed by them. Episode 230. Compassion Means We're Not Alone — Aproteem Choudhury 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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#229
September 8 · 43 min
How Compassion Helps Us Through High-Stress Situations—Stephen Butler #229
What does compassion look like when we’re facing intense stress, trauma, or pressure? In this episode, we talk with Stephen Butler, Executive Director of the Compassion Institute, about how we can strengthen our innate capacity for compassion and use it to meet difficult situations with greater courage and resilience. Episode 229: How Compassion Helps Us Through High-Stress Situations 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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September 1 · 22 min
Guided Meditation on Love #26 [rebroadcast]
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, it is metta or maitri. Episode 26. Guided Meditation on Love 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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August 25 · 21 min
What is Love? #25 [rebroadcast]
Love is complex in our culture, tied up with finding a single person to satisfy our huge list of needs and dreams, whom 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? 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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#228
August 18 · 32 min
Healthy Masculinity: A Meditation on Sex, Strength, and Love #228
A guided meditation led by Scott Snibbe on healthy masculinity, exploring sexuality, strength, compassion, self-acceptance, and emotional connection to help men feel more whole, grounded, and deeply connected with themselves and others. Episode 228: Healthy Masculinity: A Meditation on Sex, Strength, and Love 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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#227
August 11 · 53 min
Sex, Strength, and Love: Karen Brody on Modern Masculinity #227
One of the greatest challenges I've faced as a man hasn't been sitting on a meditation cushion—it's been understanding the woman I love most. Karen Brody has a unique perspective on modern masculinity, intimacy, and sexuality. Her insights help us understand why men and women so often misunderstand each other, how sexual confidence differs from neediness, what keeps love alive over decades together, and the surprising parallels between her work and Buddhist practice in transforming desire rather than suppressing it. Episode 227. Sex, Strength, and Love: Karen Brody on Modern Masculinity 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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#227
August 11 · 43 min
Sex, Strength, and Love: Karen Brody on Modern Masculinity #227
Karen Brody has a unique perspective on modern masculinity, intimacy, and sexuality. She explores why men and women can misunderstand each other, how sexual confidence differs from neediness, what keeps love alive over decades together, and the surprising parallels between her work and Buddhist practice in transforming desire rather than suppressing it. Episode 227. Sex, Strength, and Love: Karen Brody on Modern Masculinity 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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August 4 · 20 min
Guided Meditation: Transforming Bias with Equanimity #23 [rebroadcast]
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 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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July 28 · 30 min
Spiritual Democracy #22 [rebroadcast]
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 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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#226
July 21 · 28 min
Meditation to Cultivate Hope for the Future | Geshe Legtsok #226
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 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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#225
July 14 · 40 min
Is This Actually the Best Time to Be Alive? — Geshe Legtsok #225
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 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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July 7 · 24 min
The Determination to Be Free - Guided Meditation on Renunciation #18 [rebroadcast]
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 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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June 30 · 28 min
The Red Pill of Renunciation: Embracing Reality as It Is #17 [rebroadcast]
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 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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#224
June 23 · 1 hr 8 min
Remembering Robert Thurman: Psychonaut, Scholar, and Friend #224
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 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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#223
June 16 · 58 min
Our Best Possible Future—Kim Stanley Robinson #223
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 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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June 9 · 28 min
Letting Go of Suffering - a Guided Meditation #16 [rebroadcast]
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 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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June 2 · 38 min
Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe #15 [rebroadcast]
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? 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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