

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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 2, 2021 • 35min
Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 2) #51
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)This Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Jan 26, 2021 • 34min
Ten Questions for Dr. Robert Thurman (Part 1) #50
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)This Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Jan 19, 2021 • 12min
Dr. Rick Hanson's Five Breaths Meditation
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 MeditationThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Jan 12, 2021 • 1h 7min
Dr. Rick Hanson, Author of Neurodharma and Buddha’s Brain #48
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 BrainThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Jan 5, 2021 • 38min
Beginning the New Year with a Purification Meditation #47
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 MeditationThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Dec 29, 2020 • 51min
Dr. Jay Garfield on Healthy Realities #46
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 RealitiesThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Dec 22, 2020 • 25min
Meditation on Gratitude, Dedication, and Determination #45
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 DeterminationThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Dec 8, 2020 • 50min
Secular Guided Meditation on the Buddhist Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim) #44
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)This Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Nov 24, 2020 • 44min
Guided Meditation: The Interdependent Self #43
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 SelfThis Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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

Nov 17, 2020 • 37min
Who Am I? #42
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?This Earth Day, I’ll be sitting down with one of the most inspiring voices on climate and the future—author Kim Stanley Robinson—for a live online conversation hosted by UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.We’ll explore how his work offers real hope in the face of the climate crisis—a chance to imagine not just what could go wrong—but what could go right.It’s free, April 22nd at 5:30pm Pacific. Sign up here to watch on Zoom.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


