How to Train a Happy Mind

A guided meditation on “universalizing,” a Tibetan Buddhist mind training technique for transforming our everyday problems and pleasures through love and compassion.

Episode 32. Guided Meditation: Universalizing our Problems and Pleasures

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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” transforms our everyday experiences of pleasure and pain into engines of love and compassion.
Episode 31: Universalizing: Transforming Pain and Pleasure into Love and Compassion

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When we're going through difficult moments, it's easy to feel alone in our struggles or to be hard on ourselves. But compassion is a quality we can cultivate, not only for others, but also for ourselves.

In this gentle guided meditation, Dr. Shireen Mansouri invites us to imagine a source of compassion that embodies wisdom, strength, warmth, and unconditional acceptance. Through visualization and mindful breathing, we'll explore how to connect with these qualities within ourselves, meet our difficulties with greater kindness, and recognize the shared humanity in our suffering.

Episode 233: Awakening Your Inner Source of Compassion Meditation

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What if your doctor could help you feel better just by being more present? Scott Snibbe talks with Dr. Shireen Mansouri, a Canadian physician and teacher with the Compassion Institute, about how meditation and compassion can transform the experience of healthcare for both doctors and patients.

Drawing on her own experience, Shireen shares how a daily meditation practice has helped her become more present, less stressed, and more connected to her patients. She also explains how she quietly practices tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist compassion meditation, during difficult conversations, and why compassion fatigue might actually be something else entirely.

Together, they explore the science behind compassionate care, the role of meditation in healing, and how even a few mindful breaths can change what we say next.

Episode 232: Should I Meditate With My Doctor?

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

Episode 29. Guided Compassion Meditation

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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