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

Support the show

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.

Episode 16: Guided Meditation - Letting Go of Suffering

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

Do each of us believe deep down that we’re just a little bit more important than everyone else? My happiness, my goals, my relationships? The root cause of our suffering from the Buddhist perspective is this belief, a delusion called ignorance, seen as the true source of all our suffering: from disappointment in the face of life’s setbacks, to the dissatisfaction we can feel even when we get exactly what we want. It’s a retelling of the Buddha’s very first teaching, The Four Noble Truths: on suffering, its causes and antidotes, with a modern twist.

Episode 15: Am I More Important Than Everyone Else in the Universe?

Support the show

What do you do when you’re alone? When you’re 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?

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

The How to Train a Happy Mind podcast brings Buddhist meditation to modern people hungry for happy, meaningful lives. Each week on the podcast, I and my guests share powerful mind training techniques that go beyond mindfulness to harness our intelligence, emotions, and imagination. Our approach to meditation is secular, based on science and psychology, yet grounded in the authentic thousand-year old tradition of analytical mediation I learned directly from great Tibetan Buddhist masters including His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Come check it out!

Support the show

Millions are now faced with enforced solitude, while others, in the crush of families together all day, realize how much we needed that time alone we took for granted. 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

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

A meditation practice of self reflection, taking control of the mental cause and effect that's normally unconscious: the habits and activities conditioned by evolution, our upbringing, society and the media. This is a practice you can do 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, so you can sleep better and be your best self the next day.

Episode 12. Guided Meditation: Mental Cause and Effect

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

Science has greater and greater mastery in understanding and controlling physical cause and effect, from planets to particles, but we are only starting to understand cause and effect in our minds. 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

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

A guided meditation on impermanence that helps us release fear and anxiety to embrace the constant change at every scale of reality: from particles, possessions, homes, and the environment, to our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, and relationships. When we embrace impermanence, we more easily take on challenges like today’s Coronavirus crisis. We become more fully present to those around us and we can even more deeply appreciate life’s impermanent pleasures.

Episode 10. Guided Meditation: Embracing Impermanence

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show

We cling to things as if they won’t change, but change is the nature of reality. When we embrace impermanence, we prepare ourselves for big changes, and are able to let go of our fear and anxiety to become more fully present to those around us, to make the most meaningful choices day-to-day, and to more deeply appreciate life’s fleeting pleasures.

Episode 9. Embracing Impermanence

If you're enjoying our podcast, please leave us a rating or review in the iTunes App Store

Support the show