Buddhism Beyond Belief with Susan Piver

Seeing Ourselves and Others Through the Five Buddha Families

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Buddhism Beyond Belief, I explore The Five Buddha Families, a mandala that maps five forms of wisdom and their corresponding expressi

The Atlantic Meditation Article: Does Meditation Have a “Dark Side”?

Send us Fan Mail A 2026 Atlantic article explored “The Dark Side of Mindfulness.” They published a similar article in 2014 that also  discussed negative results from med

The Whole Buddhist Path in Four Sentences

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I look at The Four Dharmas of Gampopa, four short sentences I've recited as part of my daily Buddhist practice for more than thirt

Your Space Shapes Your Mind

Send us Fan Mail How we arrange our outer world can have a surprising effect on our inner state. In this episode, I talk about how creating an environment of stability,

Pacify, Transform, Discover: A Buddhist Guide to Difficult Emotions

Send us Fan Mail How do we work with strong emotions when the world feels frightening, divided, and uncertain? I look at three Buddhist approaches to difficult emotions:

Conversation with Samuel Bercholz, founder of Shambhala Publications and my meditation teacher, Part Three

Send us Fan Mail In Part Three of my conversation with my longtime teacher and spiritual friend Sam Bercholz, we talk about the strange and wonderful ways teachers can e

Conversation with Samuel Bercholz, founder of Shambhala Publications and my meditation teacher, Part Two

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I continue my conversation with Sam Bercholz. We talk about bringing the dharma into the modern West without reducing it to either cult

Conversation with Samuel Bercholz, founder of Shambhala Publications and my meditation teacher, Part One

Send us Fan Mail I talk with my longest time spiritual friend, Samuel Bercholz, founder of Shambhala Publications and author of the new book, Rude Awakenings. It was wri

Three Ways to Work With Heartbreak: Part Three

Send us Fan Mail Heartbreak can make our usual strategies for managing pain useless. It can also show us what is true about being human: everything changes, everything e

Three Ways to Work With Heartbreak: Part Two

Send us Fan Mail When heartbreak is overwhelming, the instinct is often to make it stop. But what if the practice is not to fix what we're feeling, but to learn how

Three Ways to Work With Heartbreak: Part One

Send us Fan Mail Heartbreak is something we have the tendency to want to get rid of as quickly as possible. But some heartbreaks cannot be “fixed” or hurried. In this ep

Learning is Remembering: The Outer, Inner, and Secret Teachers

Send us Fan Mail How do we recognize a true teacher? In this episode I talk about the outer teacher, the inner teacher, and the secret teacher. Along the way I share a s

Meditation: An Act of Rebellion

Send us Fan Mail It's no secret that many forces are competing for your attention, especially online. Some are noble and righteous. Some are not. Trying to track it

How Do You Help Someone Who is Dying?

Send us Fan Mail This is a shorter episode, recorded while my family and I accompany my mother through hospice care. I reflect on an instruction I received when I first

What is Emptiness?

Send us Fan Mail What does "emptiness" actually mean in Buddhism? It is one of the most misunderstood teachings, often taken to mean nothingness or the absence of meanin

Four Reminders that Deepen Spiritual Practice

Send us Fan Mail This week I share one of the central teachings in Tibetan Buddhist practice: the Four Reminders that turn the mind toward the dharma. I had a recent con

How to Live as a Mystic

Send us Fan Mail It’s episode 60! A perfect place to reach a summation of my new book, Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics which posits that meditation is not abo

We Dream on Behalf of Others: Presence, Agency, and Staying Sane

Send us Fan Mail This episode picks up on the sixth principle of spiritual practice from my new book, Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics: We Dream on Behalf of O

The Inexplicable Magic of Cleaning Up After Yourself

Send us Fan Mail “The first rule of magic is containment,” said the great Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and many other books. This points to the idea that th

The Importance of Spiritual Boundaries

Send us Fan Mail The spiritual path asks you to open up, and the more you do so, the more you feel everything: your tenderness, things you’ve been avoiding, your deepest