Over the past few years meditation has become popular as a way to help reduce stress, be focused at work, sleep better, or simply relax. Yet meditation isn’t just a tool to improve focus or relax, but a way to strengthen the positive qualities we all naturally possess: compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, humor, and finding joy in everyday life. This episode explores this higher purpose of meditation through the less familiar technique of analytic meditationthat uses stories, thoughts, and emotions to steer our minds toward happiness, meaning, and benefiting others. Episode 2: What Is Meditation? Four years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we will be re-releasing newly recorded versions of these talks and meditations. On March 12, podcast host Scott Snibbe's book How to Train a Happy Mind  with  a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be release worldwide. Book events in New York, California, and New Mexico will feature Scott with some of the great artists, authors and activists you’ve heard on the podcast like Robert Thurman, Laurie Anderson, and sujatha baliga. Go skepticspath.org for more details on the book and tour. Support the show