Making Sense with Sam Harris - #63 — Why Meditate?

Episode Date: January 31, 2017

Sam Harris and Joseph Goldstein answer questions about the practice of mindfulness. They discuss the nature negative emotions, the importance of ethics, the concept of enlightenment, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Thank you. of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming Today I'm speaking once again to my friend Joseph Goldstein. Joseph is a meditation teacher. He started the Insight Meditation Society in Berry, Massachusetts, where I did, I think, most of my retreats back in the day. And he's been on two earlier podcasts, podcast number 4 and 15. And if you haven't heard those, those are worth listening to because you find out who Joseph is and how he got

so deeply into practice. It is no exaggeration to say that Joseph is as responsible as anyone for bringing the practice of Vipassana, otherwise known as mindfulness, to the West from India. Joseph is certainly one of the finest meditation teachers I know. And today we take your questions in an AMA and we deal with some basic questions like why meditate in the first place and how long do negative emotions actually last when you pay attention to them. But then we get into esoterica like selflessness and the Buddhist concept of enlightenment and topics that will only be of interest perhaps to a subset of you. And again, as always, if you find conversations like this valuable, you are free and encouraged to support the podcast at samharris.org forward slash support.

And now I bring you Joseph Goldstein. I am back here for a third podcast with my friend Joseph Goldstein. Joseph, thank you for doing this once again. My pleasure. So we have taken questions from the internet this time around, so as to ensure that we answer questions that are interesting to people rather than try to find our way through the maze of our minds together. We went out on Twitter and Facebook and got a bunch of questions.

We went out on Twitter and Facebook and got a bunch of questions. First, I got many questions about my meditation app, and I am increasingly embarrassed to say it is still coming. It is still coming, but I have just, it's been a long and somewhat painful education in what is required to develop an app. I'm confident that we will beta test this soon, so more on that hopefully within a month or so. But Joseph, you already have a meditation app that you did with our friend Dan Harris, so if you are hungry for a meditation app, you can get Joseph's immediately, and that is called 10% Happier. There are a few questions on why one would use an app and the utility of guided meditations, and so we'll talk about that. But Joseph is available to you right now on an app as a

meditation teacher. So, Joseph, the first question. Why should I care about meditation practice or mindfulness? Why should I start a practice like this? What am I missing? Well, I think the answer to that is really very simple. The first time when I went to India, when I was looking for a teacher, I ended up in India, Bodh Gaya. That's where the place the Buddha was enlightened. And I met my first teacher there, and he said something very simple to me the first time I met him. And I think it conveys the underlying reason why we meditate. He said, if you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it. And I just appreciated the simplicity of that. There was nothing to join, no rituals, no ceremonies. It's just the simple understanding

that understanding ourselves is possible. It's very pragmatic and very simple, and there is a methodology for doing it. In that understanding of ourselves, we begin to see what creates suffering in our lives and what brings greater happiness and peace. And when we see that, we can make wiser choices. And as we make wiser choices, we become happier. And as we become happier, we make wiser choices. And as we make wiser choices, we become happier. And as we become happier,

we make wiser choices in our lives. So it becomes a spiral of greater fulfillment and greater ease. So you would say there's a direct connection between understanding the nature of your mind, and in particular, being able to observe its character moment to moment and actually living a wiser life and making better decisions that translate into your own happiness or ceasing to suffer unnecessarily? Definitely. I mean, because we're all a mixture. We all have a whole range of skillful and unskillful thoughts. And we begin to see very directly without an intermediary, you know, the kinds of thoughts and feelings and emotions that are productive of suffering for ourselves and others. You know, we feel greedy or angry or envious or jealous

or, you know, a lot of what are called the afflictive emotions. We can see directly and feel directly their nature. And we say, oh, this would be good to let go of. And we see those kinds of thought patterns and emotions that are actually happiness producing. But this is not theoretical. You know, that's the beauty of meditation, that it's not theoretical. It's not just following what we read in the book. We're actually experiencing for ourselves the nature of these thoughts, of these emotions. And we see that when we're feeling generous, we're feeling kind, we're feeling compassionate. It makes us happy and it makes the people around us happy.

And so the choices become more obvious. This is not to say that in the first hour of our meditation, all the old habit patterns of our mind, the unskillful ones are going to disappear. This is why it's called meditation practice. It takes a repeated seeing and learning to effect the transformation. Well, can you say something about how being able to observe the nature of your own thoughts and

emotions and reactions, merely being able to observe it translates into being able to change course in any way? That's not intuitively obvious that that would be the case. It happens, I think, in a couple of ways. In one very obvious way, we begin to see the difference between being lost in a thought pattern. We were just carried away in a train of association, and we're just lost in the thought,

in all the emotions involved with it, and it can be lost for a short period of time, can be lost for a really long period of time. We see the difference between that and being mindful that the thought and emotion are present. So this is a huge understanding, because before people begin some kind of introspection, you know, some kind of meditative discipline, mostly we're just lost in and acting out whatever particular pattern of thoughts and emotions are there. With meditation, with mindfulness, we're actually beginning to observe the fact that they're there as they're happening. And so that gives us a little space. It gives us the possibility of not being carried away by them.

And in that space, we have the choice. Do I want to build on this? Do I want to follow this? Or do I want to let it go? So that's one way the mindfulness gives us that freedom. Second way is what we actually learn from being mindful. And one of the things we learn is that all of these thoughts, emotions, and everything else are impermanent. That they're there and they're there for some time and then they disappear.

And even though we all know this intellectually, we don't live it as if we know it. You know, we take our thoughts and emotions to be so stable in who we are. So seeing the impermanence of them again and again and again begins to loosen the bonds of attachment to them. It's interesting to be precise in describing just how much of a change this is experientially when you really grasp the impermanence of an emotion like anger, say. So how long would you say you could stay angry without being lost in thought about the reasons why you should be angry? So you're thinking about an argument you just had, say, and you're not aware of a thought, that thought arising. So

you're identified with a thought, you're lost in the thought, you're getting angry, and now, because you know how to practice mindfulness, you notice a thought as a thought, right? You unhook from, you're no longer identified with that bit of language or image in your mind. And the emotion of anger is still present because it's just, it's a matter of physiology. It arose and it takes some time to subside. It has some sort of half-life. Most people are walking around with the impression that it's possible to stay angry for hours or even days, right? How long would you think you could be angry if you were not subsequently lost in the next train of thought?

I think not very long. Generally, when people are not watching their minds this carefully, may not be realizing that there's a pretty continual stream of thoughts that's feeding the anger. You know, and so we may catch a thought or two, see it, release a little bit, and maybe feel an easing of the anger. And then 10 seconds later, or a minute later, another thought comes, you know, which triggers the emotion again. Without that continual feeding of the emotion, I don't know exactly how long it would last,

but it certainly wouldn't last as long as it usually does. But I mean, I would put it on the order of seconds, not even minutes, and certainly not hours. If you are actually completely unhooked from the discursive thinking that is producing the anger, how long can the emotion of anger stay present in your mind? You think you could be angry for five minutes? Here, this gets to be an interesting question because it's really about then how we define anger. So for example, the mind changes a lot more quickly than the body, right? Just the rapidity of change. So the feeling of anger in the mind might disappear pretty quickly, as you say, but there may be a residue of what we would call anger in terms of the bodily feeling. Right, the physiological arousal. Yeah,

so that may last a bit longer than the actual emotional feeling of anger in the mind. But emotion seems to me a complex phenomena that involves both the body and mind. So it's hard to isolate just the mental aspect. Yeah, well, it also has the physiology of two different emotions can be very similar, and it's the cognitive interpretation of what's going on. I think this is still known as the James Lang theory of emotion and psychology, going back to William James. Many, perhaps even before William James, have noticed that an emotion like fear or anxiety is very similar to a positive emotion like excitement, and yet it's just the interpretation of that arousal that makes for the difference. So when you're no longer interpreting, and then you

just feel pure physiology, in my experience at that moment, as you say, it goes to the question of what is an emotion, what is anger in this case. It's not mere physiological arousal, right? It's arousal that has a psychological significance and points to very likely some subsequent goal-oriented actions you may want to take based on this as a motive or a set of intentions. And when you break the spell of you are thinking about it and all you're left with is the physiology, I would say it ceases to be anger. Yes. It basically has all the psychological import of something like indigestion or a pain in your knee or something that really has absolutely no implications at all. It's just your body at that moment. But then again, as you say, if in the next moment you are lost in thought about

why you have every right to be angry at this person, well, then it instantly becomes anger again. Right. There's another component of this, which which is and this is kind of what makes the meditation so interesting because there are there are just different levels to what's going on so you know so if we can unhook from the thoughts and we're just left with the physiological remains you know of whatever the thought pattern was so then the question becomes, how are we relating to those physical energetic sensations? If they're unpleasant, we may no longer be feeling anger towards the content of our previous thoughts, but we may be feeling, we could say, aversion to the unpleasant sensations that are the residue. So that becomes another level to look at.

You know, how's the mind relating to that energetic phenomena? That becomes another place of investigation. So the flip side of this, and this is another question we have more or less on this topic, can meditation or mindfulness be bad for you? Are there people who shouldn't meditate or shouldn't go on silent retreat? And I guess I would add to this, you've just talked about how increasing your ability to observe the flow of your own consciousness reduces suffering, seemingly almost by definition, and gives you an ability to choose more wisely. But is there a period in one's practice where seeing more

actually just translates into more suffering or new kinds of suffering that wouldn't be there otherwise? So take both parts of that. Even if meditation is ultimately good for you, are there periods where it can certainly seem to be bad for you? And are there people for whom it's actually bad? I think for different people at different times, it's not, I would say it's not recommended, certainly in terms of intensive, silent retreat. You know, so something might be good in short doses, but in larger doses may not be helpful. For example, if somebody is really suffering from a deep depression, the isolation of a meditation retreat where people are in silence and not talking, that might be counterproductive. What might be needed more is some kind of engagement with other people,

with therapeutic skills. So that would be one area where it would be worth looking to see, is the form of meditation the right form for what's going on? And we should say that you do encounter this problem with some regularity on silent retreat, where people who have some psychopathology like schizophrenia get in over their heads and it's just objectively bad for them to be in isolation and silence yes i would say that that that does happen definitely and over the years we've experienced that it's not the common experience for most people the practice and the various forms of practice work well, but there are these cases where it doesn't.

So then there's the question of even if meditation is good for you, there can be periods where it doesn't seem to be good for you in terms of the character of your experience is getting worse by some metric. This points to kind of a key question in understanding the appropriateness of meditation at a particular time. And it has less to do with what it is that's arising, whether what's arising is difficult or not, because in meditation, lots of difficult things come, whether it's physical pain or really difficult emotions, you know, or memories. So sometimes we're really facing different aspects of suffering in our lives. The question of whether it's skillful to continue and proceed

really has to do with the quality of balance in the mind and whether there's enough balance, enough mindfulness to hold those difficulties without being overwhelmed by them, without getting caught up in them too much. I mean, we do get caught up to some extent until we learn how to, you know, create a place of balance. But that's where a teacher can be really helpful because very often when I'm teaching retreats and other teachers as well, if we see somebody losing their balance, you know, really getting overwhelmed by what's coming up, we'll very often suggest back off a little bit, you know, and go for a walk or relax or do a little reading as a way of titrating the speed

of the material that may be coming up. So it's very much a question of finding the right balance for dealing with particularly difficult material. The difficulties themselves are not a problem. They come up for everybody. But it's really our capacity to be with them, either in a skillful way or not. And that's the key question. The analogy I often use is to physical exercise. So physical exercise is, in a generic sense, objectively good and basically good for everyone. But if you have a specific injury, if you've got a bad knee, well, then you have to work around that.

And there could be some exercises you just shouldn't do because it's synonymous with hurting an already injured knee. So there's all of those caveats. And yet you can still say that exercise is good for you in general. And there's a kind of a range of competence

where you see, though you will never be, say, an Olympic athlete, right? You're not talking about me, are you see, though you will never be, say, an Olympic athlete, right? You're not talking about me, are you? Yeah, I will never be an Olympic athlete. I can still see that the same principles by which an Olympic athlete becomes an Olympic athlete apply to me and will make me as good as I can be. I think it's a good analogy. And my pole vault is terrible.

Have you interacted with Willoughby Britton, a scientist who has focused on the cautionary tales of intensive meditation practice, where she thinks that some number of people are harmed by meditation, and we in the scientific community have to understand that more and be less boosterish about meditation, certainly intensive meditation practice, and more honest that there's a potential downside here. I don't know her, and she's someone who ultimately I probably should have on the podcast, but is there anything to react to in there beyond what we just said? Well, I think she has pointed to the fact that in intensive practice, you know, where people are on like a silent retreat, meditating all day long, it can go very deep. We're really going into the psyche, you know, on levels that we usually don't in

our ordinary life. So it's a powerful, it's a very powerful process. And we're learning things about ourselves on many, many levels. It's not just the content of our stories, which in some ways is the most obvious level, but we're learning about the basic ephemerality of our experience. And when we're experiencing the bodies in energy field dissolving, which can be a meditative experience. It can be both exhilarating, but also for certain people, it could be destabilizing,

you know, because it's very different than our usual solid sense of self. So I think she's pointing to that level of experience and the need to take a lot of care when we enter into that realm. And that's where well-trained teachers are really important. Because if somebody's not familiar with that terrain, as somebody enters into it, they may not be giving the best advice for how to stay balanced with it. And it's not to say that even well-trained teachers, you know, may make mistakes in offering some guidance, although that doesn't happen so often when people are familiar with, you know, with those experiences. As I said before, over the years of teaching,

and it's something we've learned, and it took some time to learn it, is to know when people should back off, when things are getting out of balance. And with experience, that just becomes more clear. Okay, next question. I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on the use of meditation to cope

with negative emotion. This is something we've already gotten into. Is it fundamentally misguided from either of your perspectives to use meditation to make yourself feel better when you aren't happy? So this cuts to really something that falls out of the definition of mindfulness, which we should probably just remind people what it entails as a matter of attention. Mindfulness, by definition, is a type of mere attention to character of one's experience, which does not have an agenda. You have to surrender your agenda to be mindful, because your agenda would be subtly or grossly coloring your attention with grasping what's pleasant or aversion to what's unpleasant. So you have to be willing to just be aware of an unpleasant emotion, a negative emotion in this

case, or an unpleasant sensation, without seeking to change it. And yet the reason why one is mindful in the first place is implicitly goal-oriented because you want to change the character of your experience. You want to be less distracted. You want to stop suffering unnecessarily. You want to be able to make the wise choices of the sort that you just described. So how do you deal with that apparent paradox in the moment?

I think this points to an interesting question that I think is coming up more and more these days with the growing popularity of mindfulness in more secular situations. There's even kind of a movement called secular mindfulness. And it really points to the need to define how we're using the word mindfulness in different contexts, because in the ordinary way it's being used now, broadly speaking, I think one could define it in the way you suggested of just paying attention in the moment, you know, being undistracted, coming back when you lost. So just a very kind of simple, generic kind of awareness, which is very helpful. That begins to open us up to a different understanding of our minds. But there are also deeper meanings of mindfulness, which become more significant when we undertake it or understand it as a vehicle for something more than simply being a little

happier in the moment, but rather see mindfulness as a vehicle or a methodology for what we could call awakening or, you know, a more profound spiritual understanding, profound spiritual understanding, that there's something else that it has the potential to reveal. In that meaning of mindfulness, there's not only a choiceless awareness, you know, which you were talking about, but embedded in the meaning of mindfulness in that context is also, you could say, a discerning wisdom of what is skillful and what is unskillful, what causes wholesome and unwholesome, whatever words you'd like to use. So there is the acknowledgement and the understanding embedded in that kind of mindfulness that some mind states are the cause or cause us or others suffering,

that create suffering in our experience, both for ourselves and others. And there are certain mind states which are freeing. So already there's a wisdom component in that kind of mindfulness, which takes us a bit further than simply being attentive to what's arising. It's like, it's attentive to what's arising, but also learning from being attentive. You know, what, what is it we're actually learning from being mindful? And in that there is, you could say there is an implicit

choice being made to cultivate the skillful and to let go of the unskillful. Except in the moment, there's another level there where the choicelessness is actually the deeper insight in that if you can truly be mindful of the anger, say, that was there a moment ago as anger because you were identified with thought and not being mindful, if you're truly mindful in the next moment, then you realize that anger is just as good an object of mindfulness or, you know, the residue of anger is just as good an object of mindfulness as anything else, including a skillful emotion. You know, this is the phrase one taste in the Tibetan tradition. So the agenda goes away in

that moment of mindfulness. Yes. It's almost like, I'm not sure I remember this correctly, so you might clarify it if I don't, but that Zen teaching about in the beginning, trees are trees and rivers are rivers. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. It's a Donovan song. It was first a Zen teaching, then it was a Donovan song. So things are, first we see them as being ordinary, you know, so that's the first kind of attention. We're just seeing things arise without this discernment. Then we're seeing them with a discernment of what's skillful and unskillful. And through seeing that we drop into the level you just described where we're

experiencing everything as being empty, you know, empty of substance and therefore equal in that sense. empty of substance and therefore equal in that sense. It's very few people who can jump to and sustain that level. There's a whole foundation of understanding that makes that possible. And I think in all the meditative traditions that's understood, in the Tibetan tradition and certainly in Theravada tradition, stood in the Tibetan tradition and certainly in Theravada tradition. There are practices which help to stabilize that deeper level. Right. So in the beginning of virtually any tradition, I wouldn't say every, but certainly most, there's an acknowledgement that there are certain

classically positive mental states that are a better foundation for exploring than the classically negative mental states that just entangle you in your own neurotic misadventures. Exactly. And that discernment actually provides the motivation for going deeper, for going to the other level. Because if one is not seeing that, why do anything? And this is, I think, a cautionary note is it's very easy to bypass. You know, sometimes people talk about emotional bypass and they jump to a level where, oh, it's everything's empty. It doesn't matter. There's also, you could call it a meditative bypass, you know, oh, everything is equal, therefore it doesn't matter what I do. Or what kinds of thoughts are being cultivated.

But that's missing an important piece. You know, even though we eventually come to the place of what you called one taste, that comes through a very clear discernment, you know, of what on another level we see, oh, yeah, this is helpful. This is wholesome. This is not. I think the bypass, and I've seen this, you know, in various, you know, meditators and communities where people can justify unwholesome actions with the rubric, it's all empty. Yeah. Well, you can see some film footage of Rajneesh's community and get a sense of where that leads. I mean, once you admit to yourself that

no matter how much you're meditating, a significant percentage of your time will be spent merely captive to the contents and character of your thought, then it matters what you tend to think and feel about other people, say, or the kinds of relationships you form on that basis and all the rest. So I just want to jump in here for a minute. I think that's why it's important and acknowledged, as you say, in most meditative or spiritual traditions, that there needs to be an ethical foundation to the practice. Because until the mind is extremely well-trained, we do get lost in the conditioning of our habit patterns. And so we will be acting out both the more positive and more negative thought patterns and emotional patterns. Having an explicit ethical foundation

becomes another kind of support and protection. So as we're about to do something, maybe we're about to lie, you know, or to speak unskillfully. If we have in our minds, no, this is unethical. This is a harmful action. Just that, in that moment, can become a reminder to actually pay attention. Say more about speaking unskillfully.

Obviously, that's a term of art or jargon within Buddhism. What are the range of things that covers? I love talking about this because this is a practice that for everybody can have such a tremendous impact in our lives, mostly because we speak a lot. You know, we, we got up in the morning and we spend most of the day or a good part of the day speaking. I think very few people actually pay attention before they speak to what they're going to say. And I've certainly seen this in myself enough times where words seem to just come tumbling out in the enthusiasm one way or another of the moment. Also the intention behind what they're saying. Well, exactly. Why are they saying that? Exactly.

Very often there is a motivation to divide or to cause harm in some way, or to speak what is untrue. Or one of my favorites, which it amuses me to see it, is what in the Buddhist tradition is called useless talk, where it serves no purpose. And the word in Pali,

which is the ancient language of India that a lot of the texts are written in, the Pali word for useless talk, it's really anamata piya, because the Pali word is sampapalapa. So it sounds just like what it is. And very often I'll be in a conversation, you know, with friends or group of people and just see the urge to say something that is completely useless. And it's just a way of declaring here I am. That's its only purpose. And when I see that, when I can catch that impulse, see that this is can catch that impulse see that this is some popple

up this is useless and refrain it actually feels good it feels like a conservation of energy it's not it's not just spilling out you know verbal energy and it makes our words more valuable. People have more respect for what we say if what we say is useful in some way. So that's just one example. I think there might be ways in which the Buddhist conception of right speech may not totally map to what we understand about human speech now. So for instance, like gossip is a classic example of wrong speech in a Buddhist sense. And you can see how divisive gossip often is. You can see how you tend to feel when you are around people who are gossiping, especially if it's malicious gossip, the impulse in oneself to dish about somebody who's not present can certainly seem, under scrutiny, seem like not the noblest of things. But gossip also does serve a function, and in many cases it serves a good

social function. Gossiping about others serves a function, and living in a context where you know you might be gossiped about, so you have a reputation that you are concerned to manage, that also serves a function. It actually builds in a kind of moral shame, and it puts a few breaks on the system, you know, and people who are totally shameless, well, some of them get elected president of the United States, but in the usual case, it doesn't work out quite that well. So what do you think about gossip? Do you just think it's intrinsically bad across the board? No, I think what you're pointing to is that we use that term to cover quite a wide range of speech. And I would say kind of the dividing line or a dividing line between what one might call useful gossip and harmful gossip. One dividing line, which is very interesting to

observe, is what our motivation is. You know, is our motivation really to harm someone, you know, or to cause divisiveness? Or is it in some way the sharing of information that seems useful to share? Because if the motivation is to harm in the repetition of that kind of speech, we are creating within ourselves a toxic mental environment we're creating in our in our own mind stream impulses and actions filled with some degree of aversion of hatred of fear whatever whatever the unwholesome motivation is. So we're just strengthening these forces in the mind that cause us suffering,

you know, and creating an inner world for ourselves that's not a peaceful one, as well as, you know, causing harm to others. So I would say really looking at the motivation behind whatever it is that we're calling gossip is a key element. But what about the case at the motivation behind whatever it is that we're calling gossip is a key element. But what about the case where the motivation certainly isn't obviously noble, but nor is it obviously malicious? It seems to me that most gossip arises on the basis of people wanting to

have amusing, entertaining conversations. So like, I have a great, oh, you won't believe what happened to X. It's not that I have a malicious attitude toward X. It's not that I want, necessarily want to harm X's reputation with you. But this is just something amusing that has come to mind. And the crucial variable for me, I guess, now I'm kind of looking for the algorithm that covers all of these cases. The measure of the toxicity of any of these moments is, I think, largely in the distance between how I'm talking about X now to you and how I would be willing to talk about X knowing that X was going to overhear it, or if X were in the room, right? If there's a drastic difference there, that suggests something unskillful, to put it in Buddhist terms, about my attitude and motives and all the rest.

No, I think that's a good simple frame in which to assess. I think there is a more subtle level which would not fall within that framework. And that is something that I've noticed in myself and I see it in others as well. Even in what seems like benign gossip, kind of the example you say, an interesting aspect to pay attention to is whether in some way, whether speaking in that way is coming from or reinforces a sense of self. And I think in very subtle ways, even when it's, you know, it's not malicious and we're not intending to harm, very often there's just a... Self-aggrandizing motive. Something, or self-satisfaction or schadenfreude or something and so that would just be worth investigating you know to see whether that's there or not you know let's talk about that because this notion that something about the success of meditation translates into an erosion of

self, right? The sense of self, yeah. That is surprising to most people and on its face I think undesirable to most people. And it's also something you don't find very much in what you call the secularization of mindfulness. Mindfulness as a useful thing to have in your business toolkit or your efficiency toolkit or something that a life coach would give you to improve your functioning in one domain or another. So how do you view the secularization and popularization of mindfulness in the absence of a clear teaching about selflessness or the illusoriness of the self and the other elements of classic Buddhist

anchor to the practice? Basically, I think it's great. I think mindfulness at whatever level, and this seems to be borne out, you know, in people's experience, and when it's taught in a secular way, it seems to be helpful. People are getting something from it, you know, so I think that's great. I don't have any problems with that at all, and I'm hoping that the deeper aspects of the practice and the teachings are not lost for those who want to pursue them. That's all. So people are not left with the impression we could say, level of practice, that's fine, because it definitely enhances the quality of one's life. And there's more.

And so I think it's just helpful, even in the teaching of secular mindfulness, for people who are aware of the greater depth of potential that's possible, even just to mention that. You know, that for those of you who are interested, there are other possibilities as well in this practice. So the whole spectrum, you know, of what's possible is known. If I recall correctly, there is a Buddhist sutta. This is where my limits as a Pali scholar will likely show themselves. But isn't there a sutta called the Mahamangala Sutta, where the Buddha talked

about different levels of happiness? And basically, it's just a straightforward acknowledgement that there's a hierarchy of happiness, or many tiers to happiness, where the fact that there are deeper, more profound forms of happiness that go into very esoteric areas of things like Buddhahood, that doesn't negate that every one of these steps is a step in the direction of happiness. So just having a healthy family is a form of happiness. It just goes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into the esoterica of nirvana. Just there's the flip side of that as well. For those people who might be thinking that by going or aiming for, you know, the higher happiness, somehow they're going to miss out on the kinds of happiness we're more familiar with.

My first teacher, his name was Munindraji, he used to say something which I really loved. He said, if you aim for the highest happiness, all the others come along the way. So it's not a question of missing out on anything. It's actually enhancing the probability that we'll experience all the kinds of happiness because we understand their causes.

We understand what gives rise to them. That's a nice sentiment. I'm not so sure I've seen that borne out in the Dharma community. What I believe I've seen among Buddhists and hippies and new agers and people who have, quote, aimed at the highest happiness in explicitly, you know, meditative terms, I feel like I've seen a lot of casualties of the Dharma. I've seen people who have, because they spent, you know, crucial years of their lives engaged in these esoteric pursuits, they actually didn't become self-actualized in ways that they really would want to have been to access ordinary levels of happiness, to have ordinary careers,

or to start families at the right time, or to make money when it was easy to make money so that they had money when it was harder to make money, you know, when they're older. And so there's a kind of mismatch between the enlightenment project, we should get to what the most esoteric goal of meditation actually is. But I feel like I've seen people who, I guess, fell through the cracks in a way, because it's hard. It's obviously, it's hard to reach the goal. It's hard to meditate so effectively that your feeling of well-being becomes impregnable and is no longer dependent on anything substantive happening in your life, right? So it's hard to become the person who doesn't really care whether you got to have kids if you're the person who really wanted kids,

right? But now you've spent 20 years in Nepal studying with lamas and you missed that chapter of your life. So do you want to say anything about the casualties of the 60s or the Dharma or any other way you want to frame it? Well, I think the 60s are fast fading into the mists of history. The 60s are back. Psychedelics are now being used in science now. I think the point you raised is an important one in that undertaking a path of practice in the way that you talked about really requires or is helped by a certain level of, you could say, emotional maturity or understanding and realistic assessment, both of one's life, one's opportunities, one's aspirations, one's goals, and to somehow integrate all of that in one's decision. So there are many ways to practice. And even in the Buddhist time, many lay people practiced and achieved high levels of realization.

practiced and achieved high levels of realization. So if there is that strong wish to both go as deep as possible, you know, in a spiritual path and also live a fulfilled, we could say, worldly life, it's helpful to know that about oneself. And so then one makes the choices appropriate to that. And it may not be going off for 20 years to Nepal. You know, we may be doing intensive practice in ways that fit into the more worldly aspirations, but it's really no different than, you know, somebody who is, just has this thirst or hunger or passion to become an artist, you know, and they devote years of their life to their art and they may never be a Rembrandt, you know, and they may

end up in a worldly situation that's not so successful in worldly terms, but they have fulfilled that side of themselves. And so I think it's the same thing. Some people have a passion for this kind of practice and are willing to say, okay, whatever comes will come from it. And as I said, other people may also be very dedicated, but want to be more inclusive of other aspects of their lives. So I think both are really possible. And there'll be some people who make mistakes, you know, who make the wrong choice, which happens in every arena. Let's talk about this concept of realization. You just used that term enlightenment i guess an earlier stage could be called awakening what what do these words mean and how do you explain them to someone

who hasn't had any experience in meditation i think the simplest and most pragmatic way of understanding it and i think we probably have talked about this before previous discussions but i find this just the most And I think we probably have talked about this before in previous discussions. But I find this is just the most down-to-earth way of understanding it. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content,

including bonus episodes and AMAs and the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. And you can subscribe now at SamHarris.org.