Podcast Summary
Exploring Meditation and Eastern Spirituality: Meditation offers a return to basic truths and a gateway to deeper exploration, despite initial apprehensions or confusion.
Meditation and Eastern spirituality, as explored in the Making Sense podcast, offer valuable insights for personal growth and self-awareness. This compilation, aimed at beginners or skeptics, invites listeners to explore the practice in an accessible and humorous way. Sam Harris argues for the unity of knowledge, and this topic naturally overlaps with identity, consciousness, belief, and death. Despite initial apprehensions or confusion due to its association with spirituality or the saturation of hype in the public arena, meditation offers a return to basic truths and a gateway to deeper exploration. Through this series, listeners will be pointed to full episodes with featured guests and additional resources for further study.
Exploring the Depths of Our Mind through Meditation: Approach meditation with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to explore the mystery of our own minds
Meditation is a practice that invites us to explore the depths of our mind and understand its true nature. Sam Harris, in his book "Waking Up," advocates for a secular approach to meditation, emphasizing the importance of getting to know our own minds and learning techniques to train and focus it. Meditation comes in various forms, such as Dzogchen and Vipassana, each with unique approaches. Vipassana focuses on an object, like the breath, while Dzogchen aims to recognize the openness of the mind and the illusory nature of thoughts. Both paths aim to help us rest in a state of nonconceptual awareness. However, it's important to remember that language and descriptions of meditation are inadequate and may not fully capture the experience itself. The challenge is to let go of attempts to package and cling to the experience with words and instead embrace the present moment. So, the takeaway is to approach meditation with curiosity, openness, and a willingness to explore the mystery of our own minds.
The Dissolution of the Self through Meditation: Meditation can lead to the realization of the non-existence of the self, as expressed through the experience of 0ness or non-occurrence.
Key takeaway from this conversation between Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein is that meditation can lead to the dissolution of the self, expressed as non-occurrence or 0ness. Goldstein, a longtime meditation teacher and friend of Sam's, shared his personal story of discovering meditation during his time in Thailand in the late 1960s. He was initially drawn to Buddhism and meditation after attending a discussion group at a temple. Despite his initial skepticism and intellectual curiosity, Goldstein was encouraged to try meditation by a monk. During his first sitting session, he experienced a shift in perspective, realizing that there was more to explore within his mind rather than just looking out through it. This realization changed the course of his life and led him to become a dedicated meditation practitioner and teacher. Ultimately, the goal of meditation, as expressed by Goldstein and other practitioners, is to reach a state of consciousness where the notion of self drops out of the picture.
A transformative moment during a Peace Corps stay: An imperfect reading of the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation led to a profound realization of '0' and sparked a lifelong exploration into meditation and Buddhism
A transformative experience occurred for the speaker during a Peace Corps stay when they listened to a friend read from a faulty Victorian translation of the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. Upon hearing the word "unborn," the speaker's mind experienced a moment of nonoccurrence, breaking the stream of continual birth and occurrence. This moment was described as an experience of "0," a loss of ordinary sensory experience accompanied by a knowing of that loss. This experience marked the beginning of the speaker's deeper exploration into meditation and Buddhist teachings. Despite the intermittent practice and poor resources at the time, the speaker's enthusiasm and openness led to this transformative moment.
Meditation reveals no inherent self to life: Through meditation, Goldstein discovered that consciousness is selfless and there's no inherent self to life. Questioning the existence of our heads can lead to a deeper understanding of self.
Consciousness is selfless and there is no inherent self to life. This was a profound realization for Goldstein after his meditation experiences, which he described as a rebooting of the mind. He emphasized that "0" is not nothingness, but rather a powerful concept that resonates in discussions of meditation and mind. Goldstein's teachings encourage us to understand that there is no one to whom life is happening. Our next guest, Richard Lang, also explores selflessness, but through the simple yet profound insight that you have no head. While it may seem counterintuitive, Lang encourages us to question the existence of our heads and consider the evidence we rely on, such as mirrors and others' confirmation. This perspective, inspired by Douglas Harding, can lead to a discovery of our true selves that is different from what the world tells us.
Exploring the layers of self with Douglass: Douglass' introspective practice encourages us to question our perception of self by recognizing we are made up of various layers and the closer we get to the center, the less there is.
Douglass, a man who grew up in a strict Christian community but left to seek his own spiritual truth, developed a unique introspective practice based on the idea that we are all like onions with layers. He recognized that he was made up of various layers depending on the observer's perspective, from being human at six feet, to being part of a city or species when viewed from a distance. This realization led him to wonder what was at the center of these layers. He went to India with his wife and had children there, but when war broke out, he came to the conclusion that the closer you get to the center, the less there is. This idea, known as the "headless way," encourages us to look inward and question our own perception of self.
Exploring Self Beyond Physicality with The Headless Way: The Headless Way invites us to recognize the absence of a self-image when looking inward, challenging our perception of a fixed self.
Our perception of self is not limited to what we see in the mirror or what we can physically touch. Douglas Harding, a British philosopher, discovered this through a simple yet profound realization inspired by a self-portrait of Ernst Mach, a physicist, which showed Mach from his own perspective, without a head. This experience, called "The Headless Way," involves turning one's attention inward and recognizing the absence of a self-image when looking at one's own face. Although many of the related experiments are visual, this concept can be explored with closed eyes and a focused awareness. A simple exercise is to point at an object and then turn the finger back to point at the source of the perception, noticing the lack of a visual self in that space. This inward and outward pointing is a useful gesture to understand the concept of perceiving the world without a fixed self-image.
The indivisible, expansive space of individual experiences: Our unique experiences, including vision, sound, body sensations, and thoughts, exist in an indivisible, expansive space that is the very essence of who we are, challenging our perception of the world as something measurable or comparable.
According to the speaker, our individual experiences of the world, including vision, sound, body sensations, and thoughts, are all unique and singular, existing in an indivisible, expansive space that cannot be measured or compared to anything else. This space, which contains our individual perspectives and experiences, is not contained within anything else and is the very essence of who we are. The speaker emphasizes that this concept can be applied to all aspects of our experience, from the visual field to sounds, body sensations, and thoughts. This idea, as the speaker suggests, challenges our perception of the world as something that can be measured or compared and invites us to consider the interconnectedness and oneness of all things.
The Blind Spot of Our Perception: We can't directly observe ourselves, challenging the limits of our perception and understanding of reality
Concept of the "blind spot" in our perception, specifically the inability of the eye to directly see itself. While it may seem trivial, this idea has profound philosophical implications. Some listeners might argue that they are aware of their own faces and eyes, so what's the significance? The speaker suggests that this seemingly insignificant fact can lead us to question the limits of our perception and understanding of reality. It's a reminder that there are aspects of ourselves and the world that we can never directly observe, and that our knowledge is often based on inference and assumption. The speaker encourages listeners to explore this idea further and invites them to subscribe to his podcast for more in-depth conversations on this and other thought-provoking topics. The podcast, which is ad-free and relies on listener support, offers access to full-length episodes, bonus content, and live Q&A sessions.
