How to Train a Happy Mind

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Join our third annual How to Train a Happy Mind three-day in-person retreat in California's redwoods August 13–16. LEARN MORE If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...