I usually listen to a daily guided meditation on Sam Harris' Waking Up app. But sometimes I enjoy other offerings on the app, which includes a section called Theory. There's also Practice and Life.
Now and then Harris correctly says in his guided meditations that listening to a conversation in the Theory section can be just as valuable of meditating. After all, meditation is about paying attention to what's happening in the present moment.
If that thing is an interesting conversation between Harris and someone else, and I'm paying close attention to it, then, hey, that's a form of meditation.
As is everything else in life, since Harris and most other meditation teachers emphasize that there's no real distinction between formal meditation and what we do the rest of the day. It's all about attention and experiencing life as fully as possible in the present moment.
This morning I only had time to listen to about ten minutes of a several hour conversation between Harris and André Duqum. I liked what I heard. Duqum has a video of the conversation on his Know Thyself web site. It's in the middle on the bottom row, "Sam Harris: A Rational Mystics Guide to Consciousness and Awakening."
It's a YouTube video, which I'll share:
In what I heard today Harris speaks about the familiar theme of how our thoughts can prevent us from genuinely experiencing reality. Obviously there's nothing wrong with thinking. It's essential for much that we do. However, thinking interferes with experience when it isn't needed.
Though we can become fully absorbed in thinking, which makes it a form of meditation, typically thinking creates distance between us and the world. We're paying attention to thoughts inside our head rather than attending to the outside world.
For a long time, 35 years, I practiced a form of meditation that aimed at "going within." This wasn't only closed-eye meditation. It also was closed ear meditation for much of the meditation session. Since, I've learned that the best thing I can do to feel more in touch with both myself and the world is to go without, not within.
When I meditate now, which includes everyday activities, since mindfulness has become my meditation, I try to focus on the sensations of what I'm doing and what's around me rather than thoughts. One thing at a time. Look out, not in. Those are two of my basic principles.
Harris spoke about how there can even be a watcher in meditation/mindfulness. By "watcher," he means the feeling, or assumption, that there's a person inside our head who is viewing reality like an air traffic controller in a high tower.
The watcher is mistakenly considered to be our true self, not the body/brain. But actually the watcher is an illusion. For when we try to find that person inside our head, the Self who is in charge of things, we come up empty.
It's better to experience life directly, not through a made-up watcher. We all know how pleasant it is to lose ourself in dance, music, walking, conversation, sex, work, or any other activity marked by a minimal distinction between us and what we're doing.
This is a flow state, which is much different from a thinking or watching state, for those are marked by duality.
I find that usually it makes sense to trust my deeper mind or consciousness. After all, I heartily agree with Harris that both free will and an independent self are fictions. We don't need to worry that if we stop thinking, worrying, and fretting about the past and future, nothing will get done.
In my experience, I get more done when I simply trust that whatever I need to do will appear as something that needs doing. Yeah, I realize that sentence doesn't make logical sense. But it resonates with me.
I do use to-do lists. I find them helpful in lessening my need to think, since I'm outsourcing some of my thinking to a piece of paper, my iPhone, or laptop. Often, though, some task that I've forgotten to jot down yet needs doing will pop into my mind unbidden, which strengthens my faith that a part of me beyond thinking can handle things just fine much or most of the time.
Tomorrow I'll listen to more of the conversation between Harris and Duqum. I find Harris to be my kind of spiritual teacher. He truly is a rational mystic. Harris has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, yet also is well versed in Dzogchen and other forms of Buddhist meditation.
"The watcher is mistakenly considered to be our true self, not the body/brain. But actually, the watcher is an illusion. For when we try to find that person inside our head, the Self who is in charge of things, we come up empty."
Didn't Harris support torture, the profiling of Muslims, the killing of people for thought crimes, and a US nuclear first strike? He has said all these things at various times but then added caveats. When his statements are taken at face value, he becomes angry and says that his critics are acting in bad faith by deliberately distorting his words.
Harris is famous for being especially thin-skinned when his views are criticized. I believe he once remarked on Joe Rogan how he'd spend hours on Twitter obsessively poring over what people said about him.
One might think that someone of Harris' advanced spiritual background (years spent with Advaita guru Papaji and one-on-one tutoring from a renowned Tibetan Lama in Dzogchen) would provide the security and serenity that 99% of the world's writers seem to have. But no, the temptation to read and take to heart what others said about him was too much for Sam, so he up and deleted his Twitter account
What's a bigger illusion than the Watcher? Sam Harris' guru posing.
Posted by: SantMat63 | October 05, 2023 at 07:54 AM
Everyone has feet of clay, which is why anything that speaks to you and helps you grow into a kinder, more compassionate person is good.
If you need to feel no one is there, not even you, go for it.
If you need to feel someone is there living and helping you every moment of every day, go for it.
Whatever gets you through the night.
Just try to avoid telling people they are wrong for finding positive inspiration in their own way.
One day, if what you are doing is really healthy, you will see the good moving everyone regardless of the concepts they favor. You will never need to regret it criticize, since all your history brought you to today. Then you will understand Oneness isn't about a concept, but reality that transcends concepts and contains all of them.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | October 05, 2023 at 08:16 AM
"In my experience, I get more done when I simply trust that whatever I need to do will appear as something that needs doing. Yeah, I realize that sentence doesn't make logical sense. But it resonates with me.
"I do use to-do lists. I find them helpful in lessening my need to think, since I'm outsourcing some of my thinking to a piece of paper, my iPhone, or laptop. Often, though, some task that I've forgotten to jot down yet needs doing will pop into my mind unbidden, which strengthens my faith that a part of me beyond thinking can handle things just fine much or most of the time."
The two things work together. To do lists help focus your mind. A focused mind spontaneously also identifies need, solution, priority and motivation to act.
A less focused mind reacts and so there is error in what is unseen but affected by our actions.
There is Zen in good time management...
https://bethenumber1hospital.blogspot.com/2023/05/management-for-hospital-executives.html?m=1
Posted by: Spence Tepper | October 05, 2023 at 08:42 AM
Excellent talk. Thanks for sharing that video, Brian.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | October 05, 2023 at 06:09 PM
From my own experience, I agree that "watching" is a limited approach to the practice of Buddhism. And I can agree with what Harris said somewhere about watching being a "vigil" and not the best approach. Constantly watching one's mind and impulses of volition makes sense in terms of Buddhist theory, but is it in any way natural? There's the Goenka approach and the even more rigorous Mahasi Sayadaw approach of painstaking attention to everything one thinks and does. I've done the Goenka retreats a few times, and they were about as fun as ice climbing in Alberta. Ironically, this minute attention to one's self seems to only result in a feeling of isolation of self. That was my experience anyway.
I offer this for the sake of one of my main themes of religious criticism: Does it work?
That is, I've found it's easy to be taken in by the grandeur of theory, or the lure of promises, or the fascination with personality, or the authority of tradition. And that it's all too easy to defer on whether the religion I'm "in" is actually leading me to something worthwhile.
Posted by: SantMat64 | October 06, 2023 at 08:42 AM
Paying attention https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-the-self-if-not-that-which-pays-attention
Posted by: William J | October 10, 2023 at 02:36 PM