Shortcut to Bliss

The Gathering Room Podcast

Martha Beck

Courses, Education, Entrepreneurship, Self-improvement, Business

4.9 • 714 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if you could turn even your most painful moments into a pathway to bliss? In this episode of The Gathering Room, I talk about the Hindu concept of satcitānanda—which means the joining of truth, consciousness, and bliss—and how we can drop into this state by letting go of resistance. I’ll share a "formula" for how to do this that I learned from the zen monk and mathematician Shinzen Young, and I’ll guide you through a meditation to help you take a shortcut to bliss right now. Join me!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Gathering Room podcast, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.
0:08.3	I'm Martha Beck.
0:09.2	Today I wanted to talk about being happy because it's a thing I like and I don't like suffering.
0:18.1	I'm going to quote Daffy Duck who said, I'm not like other people. I don't like pain.
0:23.5	It hurts me. So I don't like pain and I don't like even slight malaise. I don't even like
0:30.3	oh we. I am not really geared for suffering. So I have to learn not to suffer and I've spent
0:36.7	so many like 10,000 hours.
0:39.0	I had that by the time I was 16, I think. And still, I will tell you this. If you use it or lose it,
0:47.2	like you have to continue to do sort of your mental, spiritual hygiene in order to stay in a place of peace and happiness. I keep waiting for an
0:57.2	enlightenment where I never go back away from bliss, right? But I don't think that, well,
1:03.6	I used to say that's not going to happen in my lifetime. Now I'm saying it could happen in all
1:07.4	our lifetimes. But lately I've been really, really trying to get back in shape.
1:14.1	And to do that, I've been focusing on a Sanskrit word, which I will now mispronounce.
1:20.2	It's satchi da nanda.
1:23.1	And it's the combination of three different words, and it means, I'm trying to get my reference up here.
1:30.3	It means reality.
1:32.3	They changed all the icons.
1:35.3	Okay.
1:36.3	Sat means being or existence, but it also means the truth, the truth of whatever is.
1:42.3	Chit or chit is consciousness. So it's awareness,
1:47.8	knowledge itself. And an ananda is bliss. You out there who are good yogis and Buddhists
1:55.9	and whatnot who know how to say this, please forgive me. I am self-taught. So Sachi thananda means truth plus
	...

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