Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. All right,
so quick take on meditation. Meditation is becoming the most widely used and accepted
complementary practice. It's not new, it's thousands of years old, but we
have good research. Neuroimaging does show changes in the brain when we meditate.
Research shows that are telemres those little caps, those little legs on the DNA,
and actually get healthier when we meditate, when we do longer term meditation.
So there's a lot of benefits that are measurable, which I think is
helping make it acceptable to the medical profession. But it's also transformative. I
meditate almost every day and I'm a better person for it. Years ago,
I had a friend who was a horrible person. He was hard to be
around. After his midday meditation, he was a much nicer person. So
meditation is powerful. That's a neurobiologist from the say Brook Institute here in California
who studies people who have been meditating for short, medium, and long periods
of time and suggests different types of meditations to consider. Hey, how you
doing this is Cliff. We're talking about tools for transformation. One of the
themes that we concentrate on with Desk to Need the podcast. And today we
have a expert who teaches form of meditation in the Buddhist tradition, very very
ancient, very easy to learn, and he has written a new book called
How to Train a Happy Mind, A Skeptics Path to Enlightenment, And I'll
tell you it's a real easy book to read and to work with. We'll
talk a little bit later when we get him on the program exactly how to
go about thinking about meditation if you want to try it. And he has
an audible book where he actually takes people through guided meditations, and that's really
the way to go because if you have not done any form of meditation,
when you have somebody guiding you, leading you along, it really makes it
a lot easier. Now, why bother with meditation? Why even consider it
with our fast paid society. Well, meditation goes back thousands and thousands of
years. It's very likely that the earlier epoch was working with it to stabilize
this frustrations. The challenges of the day. Also to link and be in
harmony with nature, with the universe, with body, mind and spirit,
which is one of the big access points when you meditate. And remember I've
been meditating for about thirty years, and I remember my teacher was and this
is years ago. He was talking about the importance of quieting the mind,
kind of leaving entity of our fast paced society, the stresses and the strains,
the conditioning, closing the eyes. And in my form of meditation,
which is transcendental Meditation Team, it was brought over from India by Maharishi Mahyogi,
who actually downstepped the long process, which can be up to an hour
or more, into twenty minute segments, so you can do it in the
morning when you wake up, and you do it in the evening, right
after dinner or before dinner to prepare and have a more harmonious evening. Some
people even do it just before they go to bed. So we meditate to
link the left and right hemisphere because remember your brain, although it's one mass,
it's divided into left and right. And when you when you synchronize the
two hemispheres, you have better cognition, you have better processing data information,
what people are saying to you, whatever, and you're more creative. But
that's a tip of the ice. They're now finding that when you have a
brain that is harmonized. It also links to better physical physiological changes, physiological
wellness, and you're just you're just better off physically, mentally, and of
course spiritually so and when I say spiritually, it's not it's not a casual
like oh yeah, it's spiritual like religion. No. Remember, in the
metaphysics of spirituality, we can be connected to our muse. If you're a
creative person that's tapping into the Akashik records, tapping into these other dimensional areas
where there's information. Uh, if you're a scientist, you're you're tapping in
You're you're feeling better, you're more positive, even in the face of adversity.
And that can be you know, stress of the job, stress of
relationships, stress of just doing things. It can be stressful, you know,
getting prepared to go somewhere on vacation to visit somebody, that can be
stressed inducing. So when you have this harmonized brain. And I believe the
ancestors knew about this, I believe they. I think they've found some passages
in some of the dynastic hieroglyphs that describe meditative states. We do know that
there is some basic descriptions in the Sumerian cuneiforms on the techniques of meditation and
the benefits. But and tell modern science to tell our science began studying people
who do meditate on a regular basis, It was all hearsay. We do
now know and we've had people on Destiny talking about it that scientifically we know
that the brain is much more balanced when it is in harmony with the two
hemispheres. We know that again, wellness is easier to maintain. Also,
very of great interest is the fact that you're not as sick as often.
You don't get colds, you don't get flus. So there's something that's we
don't quite know. Because the brain is very, very complex, we only
know a percentage of what is going on. But when you have a harmonized
brain, it actually helps the body and it helps the mind and the spirit
obviously, so it's a body minded spirit harmonization that is that is going on.
So today we're going to learn about probably one of the oldest forms of
meditation, which is Tibetan Buddhist techniques. And my guest today is Scott snib
and the program is how to Train a Happy Mind A skeptics Path to Enlightenment
the Earth Ancient's Grand Egyptian Tour. I thought it was fantastic. I think
it was one of the best traveling experience I've ever had, not just from
being in Egypt and get into see all these sites and they Certainly going on
a tour made it easy, you know, because I didn't have to plan
anything. It was all taken care of for me. But even more so,
I think traveling with a group of people, having that opportunity to make
a bunch of new friends, I think I think that was pretty pretty special
part of it as well. That was a recent guest to our Earth Ancients
Grand Egyptian Tour last year. This year, our tour is April twenty eighth
through May ninth, twenty twenty four. We all meet in Cairo. This
is a fabulous tour, twelve days of intimate interactions with some of the most
iconic sites in Egypt, including pyramids, temples, museums, and course,
the last day of the tour, we have a private visit to the Cufu
Pyramid and we actually go inside without the general public. Hi, this is
Cliff and we are at a halfway point. We're almost full. This is
your chance to join a private tour at half the normal price charge for similar
types of itinerary. For more information, go to Earthancients dot com forward slash
tours, see the entire itinerary and get your registration in. We're just about
at our limit. If you have any questions whatsoever, go to Earth Ancients
for you the number four the letter you at gmail dot com and I'll get
right back to you. The Earth Ancients Grand Egyptian Tour hosted by Mohammad Imbrahem
and Yours truly April twenty eighth through May ninth, twenty twenty four. For
more information, Earth Ancients dot com forward slash to I'm always looking for people
who are talking about meditation and the roots of their practice. As most of
you know, I believe, as a meditator for over thirty years, I
believe that meditation, if you can understand it, if you can include it
in your life, is a huge benefit, not only physiologically, which is
the function of your body. There's reports and and evidence scientifically that it helps
body, mind, and spirit, but also simply because I feel amazing after
I meditate, and I've gotten to the point now if I may, if
I miss a meditative session. It really affects me. So my guest today
is Scott snib who is a Buddhist who has just released a new book,
or I should say he's going to be releasing a new book called How to
Train a Happy Mind, a skeptics Path to Enlightenment. And Scott's a Buddhist
and he has been a longtime Buddhist. He's also a new media artist.
He's an entrepreneur, and he's here in northern California, which I find fascinating
and it's so rare that I talk to people who are in my area.
So we're going to talk about this book, and I'm going to ask Scott
a lot of fundamental questions because I want you to hear how his life life
unfolds as a Buddhist, but also this new book which is coming out soon,
which is all about meditating in a specific style with specific techniques. So
Scott, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you, Thanks, Cliff,
I'm really happy to be here. I have to mention and I want you
to talk a little bit about getting the Dalai Lama his holiness to write the
forward of your book, because I as a past producer, we had the
Dali Lama like twenty five years ago. He came to the Bay Area to
do the new At that time, it was the Whole Life Expo in San
Francisco, and the challenge of even contacting him then was huge because he's just
very much in demand. So how did you do it? Got so?
I? First of all, I was shocked to an amazed when it came
through. But this entire project in the book is inspired by his holiness,
the Di Lama. You know, I'm a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and the Dialama
is one of my teachers, obviously the main teacher in my lineage, and
he wrote a book called Beyond Religion in particular, also one called Ethics for
a New Millennium. Both of them talked about the urgency and importance of adapting
these ancient Tibetan Buddhist practices, meditative practices to make people, allow people to
have happy minds, live meaningful lives, and even build a better world.
You know, there's a very big impact of these meditations. So I began
this program a long time ago. But you know, as we finished the
book, it was actually my brother who suggested reaching out to the dial Lama.
My brother's also Tibetan Buddhist, which is a very long story how we
both became Buddhists. But yeah, I got the instructions from some people.
Even if you have inside connections, you have to go through a formal channel.
Soeh, the editor sends the book and we waited and waited and didn't
hear anything back, didn't respond. The book was about to go to press.
It was going to come out last year actually, and then all of
a sudden we got an email two days before it the book was supposed to
go to press that said, oh, we think this book is very beneficial.
His Holiness would like to write the forward and we have a few corrections
for you. Oh my god, that is so amazing. So you must
have been shocked. Yeah, I was very happy because I'm a bit of
an outlier in my life. I'm usually I've had some wonderful success, but
i always feel like it never quite reached, you know, the highest echelong,
because I'm a little too weird and I've a little bit of an outlier.
So to get his Holiness, you know, his translator is a person
who read it very closely and gave me feedback and then you know, the
letter was prepared that his holiness ended up, you know, changing a little
and signing. But yes, it was really overwhelming. I asked my wife,
like, how did this happen? And she said, Guru devotion,
you know, our in our tradition, there's a very powerful part of the
path that's I don't talk about in the book because it's not relevant to a
non Buddhist. Is your devotion to your teacher and your wish to you know,
critically look at anything that seems odd that they say, but everything,
everything that resonates with you to really follow it as authentically as you can.
So that was our explanation, is that I was a good student. I'm
not sure how great of a student I was, but it came together and
we made the corrections too, which is good. So I feel like now
a Buddhist can also Tibetan Buddhist, even a scholar can read this book and
see that even though it doesn't acknowledge, it doesn't it doesn't require people to
take on some of the beliefs that you know, these things that can't be
proven through science about Buddhism, like karma, rebirth, other realms but still
practice as authentically as possible and be authentic to the tradition. Do you think
that His Holiness recognized you from a past life? And I kind of joke
a little bit, but I'm kind of serious too, because this is something
that very little, very few people talk about, is which incarnation are you
dealing with? Over the multiple can incarnations. You know, we deal with
karma. You come into a physical body and you're dealing with specific karma from
previous lives and what you're generating and so forth and so on. Would you
say that as he was looking at your material you felt, oh, he
liked me, he liked what I had to write, or what did he
Do you think he recognized something? Obviously I can't speak to the mind of
His Holiness the Dialamma, but many many people see him as a Buddha,
as a highly realized being. Recently he said he's not. Though he said
he reached a certain stage of the past. It's very technical in Tibetan Buddhism,
all the different stages, and he said he reached the stage where he
has unconditional content, newest love and compassion for all beings. But he said
he hasn't reached the stage of like full enlightenment or even complete mastery of concentration.
So I don't know about the dialama's mind. From a traditional Buddhist worldview,
they would say, all of us have Everyone has known everybody like you,
Cliff, have been my wife, my child, you know, my
enemy, my friend, like all of us. So from the Tibetan Buddhist
worldview, everybody has known everybody through limitless time. It's actually something one of
my teachers said, once you know about attachment to relationships and you know,
sex and things like that, He's like, you've already had sex with everyone
in the world already. But yeah, I don't you know, this book
isn't really about it's for people who don't believe in reincarnation and so on.
So I don't really know. I don't remember any past lives, and his
Holiness hasn't mentioned anything about our prior lives together. No, I you know,
it's funny because you said that he his trans later is the one who
you were communicating with, and so it's funny if you had like a note
that said something like the Dalai Lama really liked what you had to say,
and it's in line with this year's theme or something like that, you know
what I mean. So, yeah, well you'll see if you read the
forward. I mean, what the forward in a book is is someone recommending
that you're reading exactly the book is worthwhile. So what his Holiness says in
the forward is that Tibetan culture isn't just about religion. It also has a
scientific aspect to it, and it has these mental tools that can be applied
without belief, analytical meditation, what's called analytical meditation. And so that's what
his Holiness writes in the forward, is that this book makes a contribution towards
sharing these aspects of Tibetan culture for people who don't share the worldview that Tibetan's
developed over the years. Real quickly, how long have you been a Buddhist?
Twenty five years. I've been practicing Tibetan Buddhism and that's a long time.
Would you say that you were inspired to look into it. Was it
a sudden lifestyle change that you wanted to make or talk a little bit about
your Uh So what happened was my brother became a Buddhist. My brother married
a Chinese woman and they went to China and Tibet for their honeymoon. And
when he was in Tibet he got very sick. He had some bad yak
butter tea. Some people might say, all yak butter tea is bad if
you aren't used to it. It's kind of like ocean water with milk,
you know. But he came back, he became a Buddhist. And my
brother was a skate punk, like a punk rocker, skate punk. He's
a photojournalist. And I was really worried when he became a Buddhist that he
was going to lose his personality. But what I saw over years was that
he didn't. It actually just it kind of brought out a color, like
a warmth and a color and a kindness, and he still had his punk
rock and his skateboarding and you know, all his personality I learned later.
You know, the Dialama once said people, you don't lose your personality when
you become enlightened. It's possible to become a have a huge personality and no
ego, which the dial Lama demonstrates. So the way I became Buddhists was
after four years I saw that my brother. I invited my brother to come
and see his holiness in Los Angeles because I couldn't get into Buddhism. He
sent me all kinds of books, and I found it very complicated and difficult
to understand. To be honest, and it is complicated and diff which is
part of why I wanted to write this book to share some aspects of it
in a simpler way. But I wasn't planning to become a Buddhist. I
actually just thought, it's a nice week for my brother and I to hang
out in Los Angeles. We can have fun and I can sit through anything.
But the instant I saw his only Sa Dali Lama, I said,
I want what he's having because I knew what he went through in life.
They went through a genocide, you know, in Tibet. His people are
a million out of six killed through the Chinese invasion, and yet is so
compassionate. He'd say, like, we don't want to kill even one Chinese
person that will create one hundred enemies. And so when I compared that to
some of the other responses to violence and oppression in the world, I was
just so moved and also just moved by his presence, like his sincere the
energy you know, honestly that came out of him of like pure love,
pure kindness, pure compassionate and so much intelligence, wisdom, insights. So
I said, I want what he's having. I don't care how long it
takes. I don't get these things about reincarnation, other lives, other realms,
but I want exactly what he's studied to get like that. I want
to study that myself and get as far as I can in this life.
So when you adopted Buddhism twenty five years ago, you wanted to learn more
about it. You wanted to learn the philosophy. Obviously, When did you
begin integrating meditative technique? Because that's when for me, I've been meditating over
thirty years. It was life changing for me simply because I could calm the
mind. I came out of meditation and saw things much much differently, And
not only was I more calm, less aggressive, you know what I'm talking
about. So I'm curious because you've written this interesting book about your meditative history,
and also you teach meditation correct, so talk a little bit about that.
So I started meditating immediately. And there's a saying in Tibetan Buddhism they
say that you can study Buddhism your whole life, you can become like an
academic master. But if you don't meditate, is very little benefit. So
it's very very strong guidance. And so my teacher I started with Tibetan teacher
Geshe Nawang Dakpa in San Francisco, and he is very compassionate kind. He
said, start with like five minutes a day, you know, and he
gave me very simple like it kind of outline analytical meditation though which we'll talk
about, you know a little bit further meditations where you cultivate certain constructive thoughts,
you know, not just breathing meditation, which is important to stabilize your
mind, but this other form of meditation that I focus on in the book,
which is analytical meditation, where you deliberately cultivate certain thoughts, feelings,
emotions. It also look critically at your mind and other ideas. And so
I started with five minutes, and really there were some quick benefits after like
three six months, especially the things people talk about with meditation, Like I
used to have a kind of anxiety, you know, like why do I
feel a just for no reason feeling anxiety? You used to feel a bit
I think judgmental about people when I'd see them like immediately see personally, like,
oh, what's their problem? You know. So some of those surface
things happened immediately, just a greater sense of openness to people, less anxiety,
and then much deeper things happen later. But it's very slow, like
in our tradition. They say it's good to make very slow progress. I
meditated like five minutes today for I think a couple of years. Then my
teacher said go up to fifteen minutes, and it's not the time. They
actually say quit while you're ahead with meditation, because you don't want to hate
meditation or develop some aversion to it. So it's way better to stop while
it still feels great doing your meditation and develop, you know, a good
habit you keep for your whole life. I want to get into more specifics
that you list in your book, but talk a little bit about the previous
epoch. We have another podcast most of my listeners follow, which is Earth
Ancients, and we have been focusing on some of the latest research in the
discovery that the pre obvious civilizations, and we're talking prior to the dynastic Egyptians
and the Sumerians and people like that. Perhaps even the ancient Mahaya seemed to
be a different kind of Homo sapien sapient and they we don't know if they
meditated, but there's a lot of belief that they had a level of consciousness
that was much more calm, much more collective, very sophisticated. And we're
The question I'm asking is, do as meditators, do we look for that
earlier consciousness, that higher level of being that we suppose the previous civilization had,
or does it matter? Wow, there's a lot to say there,
and it's really I know you can break it up. I just want to
do that. Let me say, there's a wonderful book called Humankind, a
Hopeful History by Rutger Braman's and in that I learned a lot about like pre
agricultural civilizations. And I wouldn't say like an ancient civilization has something we don't
have. It's just like something we have repressed in our current society. Like
there's a lot of evidence that pre agricultural civilizations, you know, hunting gather
civilizations, were likely yes, more at peace, more in harmony with nature,
just like indigenous cultures today you know, still are and that they didn't
allow some of the problems we see in our current society where people get people
with very negative psychological traits like you know, sociopathy, narcissism and so on.
That wouldn't allow people like that to rise to power. They would There's
there's some good stories about it, Like at first they would just talk to
the person because there wasn't a strong hierarchy. You just kind of you have
kind of shifting hierarchies based on you know, the needs of the hunter gallery
group. But if someone did start to act like that kind of mean,
power hungry leader, they talk to the If that didn't work after a while,
they go kill them in the middle of the night. So yeah,
and there is this actually comes from you know, anthropological scientific studies. So
but I do think like the sense of separateness is the problem. Like this,
this is the fundamental delusion from like a Buddhist perspective, is a sense
of separateness that I'm separate from you, that a leader separate from the people
that they follow them, or that he's responded he or she is responsible for,
and that were separate from nature, which is the total nightmare. You
know that we're in with climate change the sense that so it's that sense of
separateness. It does seem quite likely that pre agriculture there was much and again
still an indigenous cultures. Today there's much more of a sense of interconnectedness and
that lack of a boundary, which is in Buddhism, the fundamental delusion you
call it, you know, selfishness, separateness. I use the term in
the book selfness. Sometimes just that illusion that you're you're separate from other peop
people is awfully harmful to ourselves, our happiness, and to society. In
your learning the Buddhist technique, and we'll get into your book in a minute.
Here, is there any books that talk about the origins of meditative technique?
And I asked that because for me and I am was taught by a
teacher of Maharishi mesh Yogi, which is the translittle meditation technique, and it
served me well. But is there writings Buddhist writings that say, perhaps the
Buddha so Dartha was the one who originated this technique for humankind or does it
gold for him? And he adopted it because of how it transforms biology and
the troubles that a physical being deals with as being a physical being and allows
him to have more harmony in his life or her life. Yeah, so
it's quite you know, humans have humans have been around for I don't know,
two hundred thousand years something like that, so it's quite likely like before
the history that we have recorded, that other people discovered and mastered meditation.
So let's and we can talk about that more if you want to. In
terms of recorded history, like you're talking about at the time of the Buddha,
the Buddha was building on an Indian tradition of meditation like what today I
guess we call like the Veda Vedic tradition, and it was very it was
very very advanced, like and this is from a Buddhist perspective. Other other
like the Indian perspective might be different, but from the Buddhist perspective, it
went very very far. And the Buddha, you know, gave up his
life, like he left his family, he realized he went out for a
walk and finally saw like sickness, aging and death and he's like, oh
my goodness, I didn't know about these things. And then see he quit
the householder life, and he went and studied with the advanced meditators of his
time, which came from the Indian ancient Indian tradition. So they actually were
very very advanced already in his meditation techniques, and we even can name them
in Tibetan booze like what the techniques are. But they did have a couple
of shortcomings that he realized and eventually abandoned. One of them was asceticism.
You know that he was with a group of meditators yogis, and they were
eating. He was eating like one grain of rice a day. You know,
it was very he was getting very emaciated and sick, and all of
a sudden he had this realization, you know, he had actually a woman
came by with some milk and he's like, wait a minute, this is
a really bad idea. I need to take care of my body in order
to attain enlightenment, in order to advance. And so he left that group
and they were really thought he was misguided. And so so that's one way
that you know, Buddhist Buddhism has a number of other innovations in meditation,
but that was one of the most straightforward ones. Was was that that abandoning
asceticism and realizing you need like what they call a middle way, that it's
like a way between extremes. But it's likely that there were others, I
can you know, I know some of the things you're interested in. So
there are some things like they don't say this was not the first Buddha,
Like there's there were supposed to be other Buddhas from others in the way that
Buddhism talks about, you know, the evolution of the universe and societies.
There's one thing I heard about recently that you know, you and your listeners
may be interested in, is that in the Bond tradition in Tibet, there's
another tradition related to Buddhism called Bond, which is more the like indigenous religion,
and they talk about a Buddha that existed sixteen thousand years ago and that
that is like the founder of their lineage. Now, in terms of the
geological record, there were things that happened on Earth about twelve thousand years ago
that basically just erased any possible yeah, that erased any possible evidence of other
of human activities. So I was fascinated though because I heard this from a
teacher I really respect, and a course that I was taken and made me
think, Oh, because I've heard some of these things like that you talk
about on your podcast, I haven't seen, you know, the like really
strong scientific evidence. But it is absolutely possible that there were other kind of
Greek level civilizations, certainly groups of yogis and meditators for you know, a
couple hundred thousand years. Discovering the same you have to assume like people's intelligence.
In fact, the Neanderthals were more intelligent than humans, yes, in
general, but they say that they had they didn't have that social aspect,
that they lacked the ability to communicate socially as well as Homo sapiens, and
that was our advantage. So talk a little bit about the technique of meditation
and the goals and in a minute here I want to get your impression of
self realization, which is the ultimate goal at least for the Hindu type of
meditation that I do. But what is the purpose of a meditative technique?
And without getting into too much detail, because we're going to get into that
with your book the Benefits. Yeah, this is a very good question.
It's one of the reasons I wrote the book because most people think meditation is
to relax, to distress, to deal with anxiety, like that, meditation
is a kind of therapy that it's used a therapy used to treat problems,
and that does work. But that's kind of a very early side effect of
meditation. So in the Buddhist tradition, the purpose of meditation is to bring
out your best qualities. That's what it is. It's to bring out your
kindness, your love, your generosity, your contentment, and your understanding of
the interdependence with all other beings and you know, the world in the universe
around you. So it's big and you could call it character like bringing out
bringing out great character traits. That's why I wanted to write this book is
to share that very clearly, that that's the It's kind of like there's some
yoga classes where they don't do like chanting or meditation. It's just like exercise,
and I start out with yoga like that. It's similar to that,
like and there's nothing wrong with that, But my book is kind of for
that step for somebody who has tried meditation and it worked to help them therapeutically,
like to sleep better, to be a little less stressed, less reactive,
and then realize, oh, there's an ancient tradition to this, isn't
there? What is that all about? What is You can use the word
spiritual, you know, which is a little scary for people. I use
spiritual to just the immaterial things in life, like love and kindness and maybe
even math. So when we meditate, let's get into some metaphysics. I
believe that we are opening ourselves and connecting with source. And depending on what
your teachings are of a meditator, sometimes it's opening to the wisdom of ourselves,
to the wisdom, the universal wisdom, all kinds of different languages,
depending on what part of the world you're from. But you said it succinctly.
But when you said that, you know, opening to our better selves.
So if we're having problems, but this is prior to meditating, if
we've had depression, if we've had a problem madic lifestyle, describe what eventually
happens as a person continues to meditate. Yeah, so, I mean that's
and I'm glad you bring up problematic lifestyle because there's the perspective of meditation is
that everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to suffer. Sianti Davo,
one of my heroes, you know, he said, if suffering came about
by choice, then nobody would suffer. So so we're just mistaken. We're
totally confused about the causes of happiness and the cause of suffering, and basically
almost all of us we were pursuing things that aren't actually the cause of happening,
like material accumulation is a good example, reputation, personal gain, things
like that. You get some of them in life and then you see,
oh, you know I actually didn't didn't make me happy, or you know,
being competitive. So it's these type of things that meditation helps you with.
There's something extraordinary, you know. I use the word enlightenment in the
in the book in the subtitle A Skeptics Path to Enlightenment. What's enlightenment?
Right? So this sounds really crazy, but enlightenment is like the baseline,
like what you called universal consciousness. You can call that enlightenment. There's a
word called dharmakaya in Tibetan Buddhism. But it sounds crazy, but that's like
the baseline, like that is said to be our fundamental nature is fundamentally kind,
loving, generous, open, compassionate, and free from unhealthy ways of
living anger, craving, jealousy, pride, selfishness, self centeredness. And
so it's very, very beautiful because a lot of people think Buddhism is quite
negative because we're always thinking about suffering death, things like that, but actually
it's so extraordinarily optimistic because it says, at the root of every single person's
mind is absolute perfection, just a absolute kindness, love, generosity, patience,
contentment, and it's a total misunderstanding at a shallow upper level of our
consciousness that's just keeping us from that. So a lot of meditation just about
getting letting those things go, finding ways to let go of those things and
just let those natural good qualities of ourselves emerge. They call it Buddha nature
in Buddhism, where you could say fundamental goodness, and it's it's quite a
different concept also than other religions. You know, Yeah, I like that
description, just kind of allowing the pure self to unfold. When a non
meditator, here's the technique and the whole theme of meditation. What's the difference
between a meditator and someone who uses prayer as a form of perhaps not self
realization, but relief from the human condition. I mean it would just me.
You know, I was actually raised, you know, in a Christian
tradition, I form a Jewish background. I was raised Christian, Jewish ethnically
raised Christian and then became Buddhists. I think it would depend what a person
meant by prayer. I certainly know a lot of Christians and I was,
you know, a Christian. So certain types of prayer I think are the
same as meditation, like but it's different, you know in a Christian perspective,
Like the thing we talk about like a fundamental goodness would be your connection
to God, you know, when you believe in a creator or a higher
power than I think that people who feel that sincere respect and also like I
don't know what sort of supplication or giving yourself entirely to like God's will,
if you're a Christian or Jewish, I think that if you really, if
you do that in your prayer, I think it's it's a similar experience for
sure, but it's different. You know, there's there's I do think you
can have the same experience. The problem is that meditation got shoved out of
Christianity in certain there were certain like meetings, big meetings they had in the
history of Christianity, and they eliminated, like the mystical aspect of Christianity was
eliminated from like say the Catholic strain of Christianity, although it still exists in
like the Eastern Orthodox strain. So Christians who want to meditate often go back
go to the Buddhist tradition to add that, because Buddhism is just very generous.
It's just like try this, you know, you don't you don't need
to become Buddhist. When the dialogua talks, he always says he's even says,
don't become a Buddhist, which was totally amazing to me. It made
me want to become a Buddhist. So, but he's talked. There's a
there's a book he called I Think a Good Heart where the dialogic gave a
talk. They was invited to a Franciscan Uh what a friar order, what
do they call it? And he was supposed to talk about God, you
know, your relationship to God, and he did. He gave an amazing
talk about God. And afterwards all of the monks came and said, wow,
You've greatly increased our faith in God after your talk. So if you
see the parallels, if you can see the parallels in language, even between
Buddhism, which does not believe in an omnipotent God like that, and Christianity
that does, if you use the right language and communicate well, both can
enhance each other's faith without you know, poaching. Yeah, exactly. So
would you say that a Buddhist life style is a religious lifestyle, I don't
think that can be. They're not the same, I don't think. But
I'm curious about you. Yeah, there's different ways. There's different ways that
people talk about it. The Buddhist himself didn't call his religion Buddhism, like
that would have been kind of egotistic. So he called it the dharma,
which is like the truth. It's like the truth about reality. So it's
quite it's quite radical, and also it doesn't really force you to follow any
any anyone's instructions. The Buddha even said, don't even listen to what I
say. He said, test it. Test everything I said, like gold,
like you test a piece of gold before you accept it from somebody.
And if it doesn't seem to work for you then you know, set it
aside. So I think that is it a religion. There's there's different ways
of talking about that, because there there are aspects of Buddhism that seem for
a Westerner to move into the area of belief, like believing in karma that
everything you do is going to cause something else to happen later to you,
or other realms like in Buddhism they believe in hells and into met Buddism,
at least we believe in hells and upper realms like god realms and things like
that, and pasting future lives. So there's not scientific evidence for those things
right now, like from a West turned scientific views. So I think when
you practice without those things, it's it's more like it's not a religion.
It's like a it's like a philosophy and a set of psychological tools. It's
an in Some people say Buddhism is like an invitation. You know, it
offers you these tools. Try them for yourself and see if it works.
Take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we
will be back shortly with my guest today, Scott snib discussing his latest book
How to Train a Happy Mind. We'll be right back. My guest today
is Scott snib He has written a new book called How to Train a Happy
Mind, A skeptics Path to Enlightenment. This is some very basic Buddhist techniques
of meditation that start at five minutes can extend beyond one hour, depending on
what you want to focus on. I love the title, how to Train
a Happy Mind. It's simple. You have a really simple but very cool
looking cover, which I liked. I don't know if you had anything to
do with your came I have one. Okay, So you know, my
main job in life has generally been to be an artist. So the book
company was very kind in allowing me to provide input on the cover, and
the designer is amazing. I hope they applied for some book cover awards because
it's a really good cover. But the first designs that came through were more
traditional kind of brushstrokes, people, yeah, you know, things like that.
I said, no, we want a book that feels like enlightenment.
I said, make a cover that feels like what you would feel like if
the meditation worked. And then the designer was so happy and she came up
with many great ideas and this was like the one. But you can see
there's certain sum symbolism, like oh maybe that's like the skeptic and that's enlightenment.
I don't know. Yeah, I like it because the book is helping
people understand Buddhism but also breaking down it's very, very complex. The whole
Buddhist tradition is deep and goes on and on and on. And you I
want you to talk a little bit about why you wrote this book. Number
one and number two get into and we're going to talk about the fundamentals of
the book here in a second, but why you felt the need to break
it down to its essence, which I really like and that's really the beauty
of the work. Yeah, well, it's similar to reasons you said.
I've been studying this for a long you know, I don't know, like
tens of thousands of hours, you know, and a lot of retreat and
which is not that much compared to my master's actually, but I got so
much benefit out of it. And also my friends saw that I got a
lot of benefit out of it, and they kept asking me, you know,
how do I get started with Buddhism? But you know, I'm never
going to believe anything like karma, and I never had a good book to
point them to. And then a bigger reason was that I was invited to
teach meditation starting about eighteen years ago, and they asked me to teach the
sequence that the book is based on is called the lamb Rim, which means
the stages of the Path. It's a thousand year old condensation of the Buddhast
teachings into a specific order that is particularly effective and powerful. And so I
was invited to teach these analytical meditations at my Buddhist center, se chen Ling.
But I got really felt really uncomfortable because we'd advertise the classes as open
to anybody. You don't have to be a Buddhist, everyone welcome. And
then in the first topic of the lom Rim, which is how precious life
is, in the first sentence of the meditation, you know, it would
say life is so precious because you had infinite past lives. Finally you're born
human and you have great karma, but it could be exhausted. So you
really want to use this life as much as possible to attain enlightenment, because
otherwise you might come back as a turtle or a ghost or something, so
like, these are the things. And by the way, I actually personally
believe a lot of those things. It took me a long time, but
I don't think that's the right way to teach it for a newcomer, especially
a non Buddhist. And so then I, you know, based on His
Holiness's books and talking to my teachers, they said, yes, you know,
it's beneficial to try to adapt these meditations so that it doesn't require belief.
And now, you know, like at my Buddhist center, both of
us, you know, they specifically invite us try to find a way to
be as authentic as possible to these teachings without requiring people to believe things that
aren't part of their culture that science hasn't established to be true yet. That's
the motivation. And you know, it was a long journey, and I
tried to be very careful, you know, because they don't want to like
pollute or distort such authentic teachings. But now that I've had so many different
people read it and go over this and you know, great advice, and
also His Holiness and other of my teachers like Lama Yeshi, who is a
great founded organization I'm I've studied Buddhism most. He also said, you know,
put this, put this teachings into scientific language that everyone can understand and
practice. That's the motivation. Okay, wonderful. You mentioned a long rim.
You you talk about it in the beginning of the book, and of
course the book has uh uses that fundamental as a guidance. I guess,
uh you give us a highlight of the lomrim. How is it integrated into
your teachings? Is it Is it like the foundation for the teachings in the
book? Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Each Each of the chapters is
basically one of the lom room. We'reund long room stages. So like at
first you learn about the mind, like if you're going to make your mind
happier, you need to know what your mind is. And that's we don't
know. We can go there if you want. That's that is a deep
topic on its own, but that the mind is fundamentally good is one of
the best key points. Then how precious life is To do that without thinking
about karma and turtles and all these things. Life's precious because I woke up
and I'm still alive, you know, Like that's that's one of the most
basic analytical meditations in Buddhism. A lot of people you wake up, You're
like, oh God, I don't want to get out of bed? What's
this? Let me get my phone? Where are the stocks? What's what?
Does my boss want? Who liked my post? This is the way
a lot of people wake up. I know, I definitely know, and
every once in a while I do that too. So this is the first
lesson, is like, what to think when you first wake up in the
morning that will make your life, your day good, and your life meaningful?
Is Wow, I'm still alive. Like a lot of people died.
You and I both know lots of people in our lives that died at every
stage, as teenagers, as twenty year olds, as thirty year olds,
forty, et cetera. So to remind yourself that's a healthy way to think
about death. It's like, I'm still alive. What do I want to
do with this day? Am I gonna? You know? Binge? Watch
eight episodes of you know this show? Am I gonna make meaningful? Go
listen to somebody who really needs to be heard? Do you know? Make
It makes you think meaningfully about your life. We also think about but another
way of thinking about it. That's a little bit more of a kind of
innovation in this book because Buddhists do believe in this vast cosmic scale of infinite
passing future life. So I thought, how do you reproduce that? And
that I do through science actually the awe of science. Some of the things
you talk about, you know with your work in like there's been four billion
years of life on Earth and two hundred thousand years of humans. Like what
if we are really the only life capable of understanding itself? Like Carl Sagan
says, we are the way for the cosmos to know itself, you know,
like what if we are kind of like the universe's mind that we are
the most highly evolved civilization and one of the most What responsibility do you have
waking up in the morning as this extraordinary pinnacle of evolution? What do you
want to do with your day? That's just the first topic. So we
could go on and on, but these are but I have to tell the
listener you don't get into heaviness. It's very you explain it very well,
You give a few examples, and then you get into some of the techniques.
Let's talk about the meditative the fundamentals, and I want to get into
the analytical meditation. In my meditative technique, I use a mantra, and
for me, the mantra is a tool that I focus on so that I
can relieve myself of the daily activities, the daily thoughts and move into this
deep state. Not always and not every meditation is the same, and that's
kind of the beauty of meditating. But in that state, I get as
deep as I can until there's a certain plateau, and in that plateau,
I am calm, collective, aware of my environment, but still in this
state which has been shown to be the benefit of beneficial state. And I
don't want to we don't have time to get into the science of that.
But talk about the technique, the Buddhist meditation and specifically analytical meditation and why
it's important in the fundamentals of your technique. Yeah, well, there's a
couple of things. So one thing that can happen, as in meditation,
is you can have like cool experiences, you know, like you can feel
your your sense of self dissolve, or you can see like cool lights,
or or maybe even have like a vision like almost like like you're talking to
wherever. That comes from a sense like you're getting answers. In our tradition,
whenever I've asked my teachers about things like that, a teacher always said,
like, Okay, that's good, but like how are you getting along
with your wife? You know, how's how's your relationships at work? So
this is this, and this is kind of a distinguishing factor of like Mahayana
Buddhism, you know, which is the strain of Buddhism, is like this
undercurrent of love, compassion, respect for others. Lama yeshe who founded our
organization. I actually heard this from Venerable Sangay Cadro, who's one of my
teachers, extraordinary nun author teacher, and you know, she was the one
I heard this from first. She said, the sign of your meditation working
is that your relationships get better. Really, and so I really like that,
Like it's not the measure of meditation success is not like athletic, like
my concentration stronger, or I'm having cool visions or whatever, which you definitely
can have those things, but it's that effect on your personality. And so
I think it's very important to hear because as as Westerners like we can be
kind of achievement oriented like that, even like we are with you know,
running a marathon or but yeah, even with meditation is like I meditated for
an hour, or I had a I was in stable concentration for five minutes.
None of that really matters. If you aren't getting along with your wife
and your partner, being nice to the people around you, that's really important.
So there's a in Buddhism, there's there's they call us the three higher
training. This is recommended for lay people. Is this the stacked the stack
of ethics, concentration, and wisdom. So they say you cannot concentrate if
you don't have ethical behavior. And I talk about this at the very beginning
of the book. What is Buddhist ethics. Ethics is fundamentally non violence,
you know, not harming, and then kindness, you know, being kind
and then understanding your mind. So believe it's kind of an odd combination when
ordinary people think, like, wow, that's that's Buddhist ethics. Non violence,
kindness, and understanding your mind. That's the foundation of like what would
say, being a good person. As a teacher. You just described how
you began, you started five minutes, and then fifteen minutes, and then
I don't know what's what's a typical length of as a longtime meditator. What's
the length of meditation that you will participate in on a daily routine for me
personally, Yeah, I mean I meditated for a couple hours a day now,
but it took a long time to get there. Like it's I mean,
the thing is, you want to go slowly and you want to do
what's right for your mind and your body. When you can get to that
point, see, then it becomes a big part of your life. Because
that's if you're awake for sixteen hours, that's like one eighth of your day.
Yeah, too hot, So that's a really good impact on your life.
I'm not saying I recommend that. I'm just answering your question. I'm
not saying I recommend that for anybody. But I'll, you know, always
answer a sincerely asked question. Yeah, so I meditate for a couple hours,
and but the thing is you have to enjoy it, Like like I
actually end up a lot of time. I would meditate for more, but
I need to get on and go have breakfast and see my daughter and things.
But you start to you start to really it's so nice to know yourself.
It's like becoming your own best friend, you know, and being really
satisfied just its being alive, like with nothing, just being satisfied to be
alive and aware and present, and you feel the presence of other people.
You know, you can imagine other people, and that's what you do in
meditation a lot. You think about all the people suffering and also all the
good that everybody does every day and the fundamental goods, and you just start
to feel really really good in a way that kind of transcends concepts, and
then that carries into your day. Like you do that so that you meet
people with a smile. It's such a big deal that you can have a
huge impact on someone just by smiling at them. Or like when I call
tech support, you know, I always before anything, I say what are
you doing? And like often the person's in shock, they're like, WHOA,
thanks for asking, Yeah, I'm doing okay. You know. I
really like that relational focus that you're presenting, and you've been talking about it
since we started this interview, which is harmony, harmony in your relationships and
really working on that. That's a big it's a big part of being a
human. I guess is that what you're suggestingsolutely it's fundamental is how you treat
others. And that's the interesting thing about the Dialoma actually says this is like
he says, oh, you know, if you want to be selfish,
go ahead, but the selfish way to be happy. If you just want
your own happiness, it turns out the way to do that is to care
for others and be kind, to be kind to others. So he says,
if you want to be happy, cherish others. Like it's logic,
and you can test test it. See how good you feel after being a
jerk all day, and then make your absolute greatest effort to be totally kind
actually the people close to you in life, because sometimes people are like,
oh, I'm such a good person, But then when it comes to like
the people really close to them, obviously, that's where we have the most
friction because we can't hide. So just try your best, even just for
one day, to be totally kind and patient and give everyone the benefit of
the doubt. See how good you feel about yourself at the end of the
day. You'll also see your meditation goes better because it's hard to meditate with
without a good ethical fund. You can't really medicate that effectively if you haven't
been nice during the day. You need a way to process those things.
There I talk about in the book, there's ways to actually let go of
you know, the ways that we cause conflict frustration. But yeah, go
on, so talk about how how to As I'm reading the book, somebody
who has never meditated before, what is your suggestion for length and process?
So I would say I start out, I have this right at the beginning
of the book, is to just start out with something that's quite close to
mindfulness meditation. But and there's parts of a meditation session, right, So
this is what transforms meditation from something just relaxing into something that transforms your mind
is at the beginning to have a motivation, so to think, I'm meditating
so that I can be kinder and happier and have better relationships and even make
a better world. And then whatever you do after that is going to have
that effect. So like the motivation in Buddhism, motivation is actually even more
important than action because of course we're confused and you try to do something good
and ends up causing problems. But if you do it with a good motivation,
then like your heart is good and the way that you interact with people
will be good. So that's like number one with meditation, to start with
that positive motivation and do a little bit of stabilizing meditation that is essential,
focus on the breath, you know, even for a minute. And then
one way to do analytical meditation is just to look at your thoughts. But
in mindfulness meditation you just kind of uncritically let them go pass by and try
not to react. So let me stop you real quickly on that gone mindfulness
is something that I meant to ask you before the student is closing their eyes.
Are you asking them to clear their mind of thinking, thoughts, whatever
and allow whatever comes through to come through? Or are you saying you need
to be more intentional in your meditative practice. Yeah, so there's two ways.
So one form of analytical meditation you would just watch and that's the one
I teach first, is just watching your thoughts and thinking how does that one
make me feel? You know, like, obviously anger doesn't feel good,
so you have an angry thought like, Okay, that doesn't feel good.
Next, then the next one is like oh, like I really want to,
you know, go on and and date with that person, or something
like does that feel good? Like no, actually, because now you're not
satisfied with where you are right now. That doesn't feel good either. Then
you think, oh, you know, I would like my daughter to have
a good life for something like, oh, that's nice. That's a nice
thought actually kind of. So that's one form. But the other form of
analytical meditation that's most of the book is deliberately cultivated thoughts and feelings. And
the one meditation I would usually use for a beginner is this meditation on impermanence,
which somehow really really lands with people, and that is one you can
just explain conversation. I was with a friend, a very sophisticated professor,
and he asked me about my book. So he's like, what's an example,
And I said, well, here's an example. We're out, we're
looking out over some house. I said, you see that house there?
That house, to our mind, it seems like it's always been there,
but it was conceived by somebody. Somebody cleared the land, raised the money.
They were designers and so on, like one hundred years ago, and
it's going to be destroyed one day, it's going it might be tomorrow in
an earthquake, it might be in like the last house standing in two hundred
years. And we're like that too, Like this is impermanence. I look
at you, you look at me. It's like we've always been that way.
But I was born, you were born, right, Like I can
look at you now and think of the moment you were born out of your
mother. You know, like, wow, the most probably the most powerful
moment in her life, and you're the person she loves most in the world.
And I know people have challenges with their mother, including myself, but
just just think about that in general, like that's a big deal that someone
gave birth to you. And then also that that person's going to die,
and it could be soon, it could be a long time. So when
you look at life like that through the lens of impermanence, it really changes
how you interact with things you have, and it's realistic. Like that's the
thing about analytical meditation is they say it's just getting in touch with reality the
way things really are, rather than the illusion that a lot of evolution has
imposed of us, these illusions of permanence. It's very very painful, these
illusions of permanence because they're not aligned with reality, and they cause us to
have a great suffering of anger and attachment and so on. So are we
looking at our life and our surroundings in our environment as an observer, as
a consciousness, or are we saying this has influenced me, This is a
person I love, I'm having trouble with this person. I'm trying to get
the sense of the basics of this analytical meditation. Well, let's talk about
that. So there's kind of two things, because some people say like,
oh, don't are you just you know, sitting there accepting everything whatever.
So there's an element to that. So everything up to this at this instant,
it couldn't have happened any other way, right, So that's a level
of acceptance, is just like everything up to this instant, it happened,
and it had to happen that way, there's no way to change it.
But then like the optimistic you know, that's like acceptance and then more optimistically
though from this moment on almost anything is possible, so much good as possible
in the next ten minutes, you know, is a day in my life,
in the world, in my relationships, and I am a very strong
agent. Like you know what it's like when you when a certain person works
in walks into the room. Certain people walk into the room and they just
radiate love and kindness, charisma. You just love being around them. Like
to aspire to be that kind of person, you know, in a way
that's authentic to yourself, a person that walks into a situation and does some
good in a in a gentle introverted way, in an extroverted way, in
whatever unique way your personality manifests. That's what these meditations can do if you
know, practice them effective. So to follow up on that, if as
a teacher, you're you have a room full of new meditators that you're in
you're working to train them to work in this style, what is the goal?
What is what should they do? You say things like okay, you
should be feeling this or open to this, especially somebody who perhaps is having
the life. Yeah, the goal varies depending on your stage, and that's
why the book is also broken into stages. For many people. You know,
at first it's just self acceptance. Just people have a lot of negative,
critical talk about themselves. So starting there of seeing the best in yourself.
You know, there's a technique called rejoicing I write about in the book
that's very very important of like at the end of the day or when you
come home from work or whatever, sit down. You don't have to even
sit on a cushion, kick back on the couch, go through all the
good that you did that day. People just don't tend to do that,
go through all the good that you did. That's one Even if you take
one thing away from this podcast, try that you don't. You can do
it on a walk, you can kick back on the couch. It's easy.
But try that every day for a while and see how your life changes.
You'll see you do so much more good than bad. And your mind
just fixates on the negative. And it's natural. We kind of evolved to
do that. So it takes a conscious effort to start to think about the
positive aspects of yourself. But that's that's one example. The book's called how
to Train Your excuse me, how to Train a Happy Mind. My guest
today has been Scott A. Snib. I want to mention that this book
isn't very very I mean, it's very simple, but it's also very deep
and has some complexity to it. What do we do as we're reading the
book and we want to look at a time frame? Does it matter if
we are meditating, we're using the techniques that you outline, and all of
a sudden we realize we open our eyes and it's been a half an hour
or an hour of meditative practice or is there a time limit that we should
be thinking about. Oh, it's just what works for you. But in
general, you know you can do five minute, ten minutes. I mean
it's not you'll see for yourself. You find a rhythm that work for you,
but you really don't want to you don't want to fall asleep, and
you don't want to feel like I hate being on my meditation cushion. So
you know, with those guidelines like do what's best for you and guided meditations,
that's why like the audiobook, I actually guide the meditations, and I
think in general they're like, I don't know, between ten and twenty five
minutes or something like that. As a tip, I mean, you know,
this is what I do. I run an organization called a Skeptics Path
to Enlightenment and we have meditations in our podcasts. So in general, like
that duration of ten to twenty five minutes can be very effective for people ten
five or ten minutes seems really it's more important to do it frequently. So
if you can meditate three minutes, because I have friends, is that Oh
I stopped meditating? That was so good. I told my friend, I'm
like, meditate for one minute a day. Meditate for see what that does
to you. It's amazing. The power of one minute a day is pretty
phenomenal. So you just you know, this negative talk will creep in on
everything, even your meditation practice. So just chill out, you know,
and meditate for what makes sense to you. But try to do it every
day if you can in a way that's often, even if it's just sitting
on the couch thinking about the good that you did, or when you wake
up, even for ten seconds, just think, oh what can I do
with this day? This is a I'm lucky. I'm lucky to have a
day and to have some amount of privilege and wealth and so on. You
know, people listen to a podcast like this, we all were quite we
have quite a lot of resources, you know, especially for American listeners.
So what do you doing? Glad you mentioned that you had an audible version
of the book because I never have time to read, and many times I'll
get a copy of the book as an audible. In the narration, do
you narrate your own book? Yeah, I narrate the book, and I
did the meditations as meditations to just inderprate it right in there. So at
the end of almost every chapter there's a guided meditation. So they're right,
and I've made them very I stripped everything downs as much as I could.
You know, a lot of some meditations there are just one page, two
pages. Do them quickly if you sit and just try to like read through
it. I do them a little bit more slowly, you know, in
the audiobook to kind of because you need things to sink into your consciousness.
But you do what works for you. You mentioned, and I wanted to
say this in the beginning, that you have on your own podcast a skeptics
Path to enlightenment. If they go to the if people go to the podcast,
can't you're saying that you actually have full meditation. Yeah, yeah,
I have some. That was kind of like the first draft of the book.
They're they're longer and rougher, but that was how I because I wanted
to test this first and see if it was because I was teaching in Buddhist
centers, so I wanted to see how does this work for anybody all over
the world. Do these techniques work? And the podcast was how I got
the answer, Yes, you know, they are working. And then I
greatly refined like they're greatly refined in the book, and they had so many
other eyes look at them, from like young people to monastics to His Holiness's
office, trying to make sure that the content was authentic and accurate as as
far as it could without you know, without taking on these these aspects we
would call belief and as succinct as possible. So just stripping it down.
So I love that really easily practice it every day. Yeah, that's fantastic.
As we're meditating, what should we be looking for? What what what
kind of results, what kind of benefits? What kind of outcome should we
be looking for when we meditate? Yeah, concentration is important, like to
notice that your mind can stay on an object like that. You do need
concentration really to do, to do your job, to do to talk like
we are right now, Like if we were distracted, we can't even have
a conversation. So definitely paying attention to your concentration that you can stay on
an object and be very gentle with yourself. It's totally natural to drift off,
but just gently bring yourself back and realize that things go on their own
if you don't like pull them in in your mind. And then like what
you might call the color of your mind, like the feeling of contentment,
feelings of warmth and openness, patience forgiveness, like all these like qualities universally
regarded as positive, you know, character traits of human beings. You start
to feel those more, but especially just contentment being present, like, that's
the sign. They've studied happiness scientifically now for about twenty five years, and
that's the biggest corel It is that you're focused on what you're doing. That
if you're present with what you're doing, even if it's something difficult, like
you know, an intense conversation, but if you start to notice just being
present and enjoying that presence with whatever you're doing, those are some of the
signs. And like I said, the biggest one is that your relationships get
better. So don't trick yourself that you think you're an amazing meditator. Like
I have with myself sometimes like wow, that was a great session, and
then come down and have an argument with your wife or you know, talk
briefly as we are closing, Scott on the interference that is run in our
society. We have our iPhones that we are constantly being bombarded. I personally
am addicted to TikTok, which I need to get away from because I'm losing
losing critical sleep at night. We have negativity in society and the interactions we
have. Why does meditation help us? Why? Why? Why? How
do we Because I sometimes have trouble when people go, well, why do
you meditate? Why? And if I say to them, it helps me
be a better human. That's very simplistic. But as a teacher, I'm
curious to know what you say to somebody who's perhaps dealing with all the interactions
and all the basically interference. Yeah, I mean, you know, one
of the first things you try to learn in meditation is just to look at
your mind and you will see, like is it making me happy to pull
my phone out for the six now? The iPhone will tell you how many
times you looked at it every day? Right? Yes, it's ours,
Like just for people listening that try like five times today when you pull your
phone out of your pocket, how do you feel? What are you feeling
behind that? When I do that, it's usually like addiction or anxiety.
It's just like or boredom. It's like entertainment. It's just I want to
be distracted or I'm bored, I'm anxious. Like that's not a healthy state
of mind. So leave your phone, go for a walk without your phone,
you know, and don't look at your phone until after you have breakfast,
you know. Things things like that that people talk about a little more
behavioristically mechanistically, like a program meditation is much more holistic because we also talk
about not just what not to do, but then what to do instead,
what thoughts to cultivate. But it's a nightmare. It's preying on our mind's
kind of worst instincts, you know, the ways we evolve to like run
away from threats and to run towards you know, juicy things that things that
seem great like. I think one of the big key insights of Buddhism,
though, is that the things we crave are also a great cause of dissatisfaction
and to find a healthier relationship to food, sex, entertainment. It doesn't
mean you can't do those things, but I'll tell you you actually will enjoy
them all more if you have an understanding of their impermanence. You know that
they will never fully satisfy you, and that true satisfaction comes from somewhere else.
But there's a way to watch Netflix for the benefit of all beings.
There's a way to make love, there's a way to have a meal that
these are things we didn't have time for but they're in the later chapters.
Or how to transform any activity in life into something that evolves your mind towards
its best qualities. Tibetan Buddhen is different than other types of Buddhism because it
doesn't say abandon all sensual experiences. It actually says, understand their limitations and
enjoy them in a healthy way where you don't you're not like neurotic and anxious
and uh. One guy was telling me about, you know, smoking a
cigarette and he went and like lit another one. You know. I think
with dating apps, people like finish their hooked up and they're right back on
the app, like right after. So those are the signs that you're on
the wrong path and you know, there's another way to really find satisfy.
You won't find satisfaction by more and more and more and more in your life
like that. We don't have time to go much deeper. But h I
find what you're saying to be kind of uh instructive in a way, because
it's like when you meditate, there's a natural guidance that evolves you your your
your You're being the best almost safety and sapien that you can be right.
Yeah, And like the thing is, the wisdom is there for you to
discover too, But it just helps to cultivate that voice, like just to
be aware, Like as I'm I was talking to Dan Harris, you know
he's like eating a sleeve of oreos, like was his example. I think
he really likes, you know, snacks and stuff. I have my issues,
I mentioned, But to become aware and think, wait a minute,
what am I feeling right now? What's a healthy thing to do in this
moment? That's extraordinary if you can get to that point and to live an
intentional life. Like people think we have free will, What freedom do you
When were you free to to the last time you get angry? Was that
free will that caused you to be angry or to you know, eat the
third piece of cake or something like that. No, we don't have freedom,
and you have to gradually cultivate better habits in your mind to bring out
its natural best qualities. They're not things that are added to you. They're
actually are there already. They're just pressed down under the layers that our culture,
society, habits, some evolution have kind of imposed on us. But
underneath that's extraordinary goodness, kindness, patients, love, just enjoying life as
life is so beautiful, Like life can be so beautiful even under difficult circumstances
if you, you know, with the right attitude. Yeah, it's almost
like our ancestors are reaching out and going, Okay, this is for you
to use. Please use it no matter what your society says, try it
and work with it. Scott, it's been a pleasure speaking with you How
to Train a Happy Mind. The books coming out mid March. But how
can people get a hold of you? Give us your website and yeah,
yeah, so the book you can pre order everywhere now, all over the
world. It's available for order. And my organization is Skepticspath dot org and
you can go there and find all kinds of free cials to support. And
I think you have a YouTube channel, don't you. Yeah, same things.
Yeah, we're on you know, YouTube, Instagram and so on.
The podcast has me giving you know, lectures and meditations interspersed with interviews with
extraordinary you know, Buddhist masters and other people doing good in the world.
It's really nice to recognize all the because the normal news it mostly focuses on
the worst things happening all over the world, which is very important to call
out and to change and to act against. But we all need some like
positive, positive news and positive influences in our life, and like you yourself
need to be a positive influence and also find good streams of media that bring
out the best in you in addition to keeping up, you know, with
news and politics and you know, being an agent of change in the world.
Scott, congratulations, much success on this book, and I got to
check out your audible version of the book because I like this listening to meditations
and you apparently do all the meditations in there. So much success. Thank
you, Cliff. I really enjoyed talking to you. For the most part
we have been talking about self meditation. In other words, you close your
eyes and you open to the higher realms. You condition yourself through either a
mantra or passive thinking and moving on. There's a whole other dimension of meditation
which is machine driven, and this is a form of sound that has been
of meditation for probably a couple of decades, where they introduce with headphones sound
frequencies or specific kinds of music that have soothing qualities to them that actually drop
your brain down into theta waves or levels of issue or consciousness that are very
relaxing, and in some cases you can get very very good effects. I
was not really into that. I remember years ago, years ago, the
brain tuning phenomenon was introduced and you had different kinds of headphones, and then
they introduced lights that flickered and if you close your eyes, the wholes was
able to take you into very very deep levels of relaxation. And they still
have these. They're not as popular as they were in the late nineteen nineties
into the early two thousands, but they are out there, and we will
have a couple of people come on the program to talk about them and the
new devices. Because the technology is taken over and transformed to the point now
where you don't need the same length of the sound frequency to take you into
the meditative states. It's much quicker. I again, I'm not an expert
on it, but I should at least give you a chance to hear it
because it is around. It is benefiting a lot of people, and it's
immediate. The effects are immediate, so people don't want to wait around.
I have to say this though. When I first learned meditation, you basically
I closed my eyes. I was repeating this mantra which was designed for me.
And when after about five or ten minutes I was repeating this in my
mind, I went into such a deep level of relaxation, aware of my
surroundings, aware of the guide, the teacher sitting next to me. But
I went into such a deep state I'll never forget it. And I read
about people who are introduced to transcendental meditation or other forms of meditation that are
self propelled, and they will many times actually have the same effect, the
same sensation, and ultimately the same benefits. So I'm a big proponent of
meditation for wellness as a way to relax into and connecting with not only the
astral realm, these other levels of consciousness, but also fine tuning and seeing
if you can connect with the Akashak not We've had a lot of people talking
about the Acashak records, the Acachhk fields, connecting the past, the president
of the future, it's all happening at one time. That's kind of far
fetched for a lot of people, and I have to admit it's a challenge
for me because how in the hell do you access this huge cloud database.
I think it's more connected with the unconscious and various techniques. You can access
the the realm cashing records. I haven't gone there yet. I have a
lot of books that I could read about it. I don't know. That's
us. Another story is accessing the Akashak records. It's you know, You've
heard me speak to various authors who are like, yeah, I'm connecting,
I'm in, I'm in, And when they explain it, how do you
get in? What is the access, what is the code? What are
you looking for? It seems to be very imaginary, you know, So
I don't know. I'm really at an odds in on how to connect with
the Acashuk record. So anyhow, I hope you got something out of that
meditation program with Scott snib and if you're really interested in doing get the audio
book because then you can listen to him talk, do the guided meditations.
And by the way, the book will not be out for a couple more
weeks, so get the pre order. Do the pre order and you'll be
fine. And what I mention, we do tours Earth Ancients, Destiny and
Earth Ancients. The special edition the Archives is all part of annual tours.
We're doing a tour in Egypt April twenty eight through May ninth. We do
a Turkey tour which is in August August fourteenth to the twenty fourth, and
then we'll be in Mexico from the eighth through the seventeenth of November. For
more information, go to Earth Ancients dot com, forward slash Tours, download
it, take a look at it. If you have any questions whatsoever,
send me an email. Send it to Earth Ancients the number four of the
letter you at gmail dot com. Earth anchents for you at gmail dot com
and I'll get right back to you. These are fabulous tours and I gotta
say this, this is a great year to do tours because a lot of
people were like I couldn't do it during the pandemic. I didn't want to
get vaccinated because I didn't trust it. On and on, these tours are
made for you, the listener. We have the top of the top guides,
tour itineraries, and best of all, most of the time, if
not all the time, half off fifty percent less than what the general tours
are. And that's a really big consideration because we do these intimate tours where
we are guided with private hosts into temples, into pyramids, into sacred site
without the general public. That by itself is worth the price of admission because
let me tell you, I've been to different parts of the world and some
of the ancient sites, and if they're of great interest to people, they
are crowded. I don't like that, especially when you're in a temple and
you want to take time and just casualty look at things. That's what the
Earth Ancients Tours are all about. For more information, go to Earthancients dot
com forward slash tours. All right, I want to thank my guest today,
Scott snib from Berkeley, California, and as always, the team of
Gail Tour, Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys
rock all right, take care of be well, and we will talk to
you next time. The acts of the acts of the active episode as at
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