How to Train a Happy Mind

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 CompassionThis 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 

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 OthersThis 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 

A 15-minute guided meditation on compassion: the wish to take away others’ suffering.Episode 29. Guided Compassion 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 

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?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 

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 MindfulnessThis 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 

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 LoveThis 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 

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?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 

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"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 

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 EquanimityThis 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 

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 DemocracyThis 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