Is This Actually the Best Time to Be Alive? — Geshe Legtsok #225Is This Actually the Best Time to Be Alive? — Geshe Legtsok #225
A Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment
Scott Snibbe talks with Geshe Tenzin Legtsok about whether today might actually be humanity’s best era, looking at meditation, negativity bias and modern progress. The conversation links deep Buddhist training with practical reasons for optimism and a more meaningful life.
41:45•14 Jul 2026
Are These Really the Best Days to Be Alive? Buddhism, Optimism and the Modern Mind
Episode Overview
- Meditation is defined as deliberately focusing the mind with a wholesome motivation, not just blanking out thoughts.
- Facing difficult emotions and questions in practice can lead to more stable peace than trying to push them away.
- Modern data on poverty, health and education suggests many aspects of life are better now than at any time in history.
- Negativity bias and fear-based media mean people often overlook everyday progress and positive change.
- Buddhist teachings can be used as a practical resource without needing to adopt Buddhism as a religion.
“It’s kind of like we’re either heading towards a big disaster or just like an incredible new golden age.”
What drives someone to seek a life that feels genuinely happy and meaningful? This conversation between Scott Snibbe and Geshe Tenzin Legtsok takes that question seriously, blending Buddhist philosophy with a clear-eyed look at modern life. You’ll hear Geshe Legtsok’s unusual journey from a Catholic upbringing in Virginia, through cancer in his twenties, to spending about 20 years in a Tibetan monastery and becoming one of the first American geshes.
He explains what a geshe is – literally a “virtuous friend” – and why, after intense relationships and career confusion, he concluded that meditation offered deeper and more stable joy than any job title or romantic drama. The episode digs into what meditation actually means, with Geshe Legtsok stressing that it’s not about forcing the mind blank or pretending to feel something you don’t.
For him, real practice involves deliberately focusing the mind with a wholesome intention, asking honest questions about anger, fear and suffering, and letting genuine calm grow from facing difficult thoughts rather than pushing them away. As he puts it, trying to skip the tough territory just leaves “all those things waiting there… and when they have their chance, they’re going to jump in.” A central thread is his bold claim that this may be the best time to be alive.
Drawing on ideas from psychologist Steven Pinker, he points to falling extreme poverty, rising literacy and wider access to education alongside unprecedented access to meditation and mental health support. He also warns about negativity bias and the way headlines skew our view towards disaster, arguing that paying attention to quiet progress and everyday kindness can shift how life feels.
If you’re curious whether these “degenerate times” might secretly be an opening for a new inner renaissance, this conversation might get you rethinking your own story. Could today’s mix of suffering, science and spiritual tools be the very ground you need for change?
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