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The meditation I’m leading today is a 10-minute version of the sequence I share in the How to Train a Happy Mind podcast and book. Many Tibetan Buddhists, like myself do this meditation every day. When I have a lot of time, it takes about half an hour, but when I’m pressed for time, I can do it in as little as a minute, just listing the subjects to have a quick feeling of their meaning: the precious life, impermanence, cause and effect, suffering, renunciation, love, compassion, and interdependence.

We lead live meditations like this one every Sunday in our Train a Happy Mind community, which you can join for free or by donation at trainahappymind.org. There’s also an archive there of over a hundred meditations I’ve led for the community over the past two years.

Starting the meditation

Scott Snibbe: Sit comfortably. Cross-legged or in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Let your hands rest in your lap, spine upright, shoulders relaxed.

Let your attention settle on the breath. Rising and falling naturally. Let thoughts pass without pulling them close or pushing them away, gently returning to the breath.

Set your motivation to bring out your best qualities, to be a source of happiness for others, to help create a better world.

The precious life

Then reflect on the preciousness of your life. If you have health, shelter, some resources. You’re already more fortunate than most people in the world.

Feel grateful.

Most of us know people who’ve died younger than us already in our teens, twenties, thirties. Is it possible that I have everything I need to be happy?

What meaningful impact can I make in the world today?

Impermanence

Notice how everything within you is changing: your body, your thoughts, your feelings.

Change also means problems will inevitably shift and also offers unlimited possibilities for good in the future.

Wherever you’re feeling stuck right now, whatever seems fixed or hopeless, imagine how it can change and how it is changing already.

Bring to mind one good thing you did recently and rejoice in it.

And now recall one small regret without guilt.

Notice what led to it, how you might act differently next time. Feel your potential to change and grow.

Cause and effect

Feel some understanding for how others act. There are those whose actions you don’t understand or make you angry, hopeless, but to them, their actions make sense.

Think about how they were raised, the influences of their parents’, school, culture, media work. If you were in their place, would you likely do and think the same as them?

Understanding and accepting others doesn’t mean we agree with their actions, and in fact, it can help us more skillfully oppose them or eventually reconcile with them.

Realize that you are not your worst habits, your worst thoughts. If an unpleasant thought, even some horrible urge pops into your mind, you can simply let it pass by because your underlying nature is fundamentally kind, compassionate, and wise. Take refuge in your inner goodness.

Find refuge also in others you admire who embody their virtue more fully.

Renunciation

Steer yourself inward to the deepest part of your mind for a moment. Your mind is clear and knowing. Let those words steer you to some experience of your deepest nature beneath your relationships, job, moods, identity, even your personality. Let your mind look at your mind for a moment to discover what it finds.

Reflect briefly on attachment, anger, and ignorance. How does the exaggeration of anger, seeing only the bad in someone distort your view?

Craving tells us if we only get this or that, we’ll be happy. Is that story true?

Are we really as separate, lonely, alienated as we feel, or are these distortions clouding our ultimate interdependence with all other life?

True renunciation means releasing these delusions, not life’s joys. Imagine life with less craving resentment and self-centeredness. Wouldn’t you enjoy life’s pleasures more fully? Wouldn’t your relationships be better?

Love, compassion, and rejoicing

Wish happiness for your loved ones, offering them everything they need materially and mentally.

Then wish your enemies happiness too, and then all beings.

Do the same with suffering, wishing to take away everyone’s pain, starting with those you love.

Wish to take away the pain of your enemies.

Wish to take away the pain of everyone in the world.

May all beings be happy and free.

Celebrate all the goodness in yourself, your friends, your heroes, even your enemies.

This is rejoicing, what some call the easiest, laziest practice because there’s so much to rejoice in.

The interdependent self

Now ask the deepest question, where is this solid self? That gives me so much grief, that wants so many things yet is never satisfied, that sees its problems, not stemming from delusions, but blames, projects, its delusions onto those around me.

Do I find this annoyed self in my body, my thoughts, feelings, perceptions? Notice how elusive it is.

If this self, that seems so important, shifts from place to place, is it really there?

Or maybe you don’t find it at all. If so, embrace a way of being that’s a tumbling collection of mental and material parts changing, interrelating. They function perfectly well without a center, without an ego, without that strong hard core of self that causes us so much grief.

May the benefits of this meditation carry with me through the day, in my words, my actions, my smile. May I bring happiness, insight, and attention to everyone I encounter. And may I steer the world toward equality, abundance, and the thriving of all life on our planet.

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