Sam Harris
Preview
Clip
Alan Watts
“The ideal place is the place where you are.”
Meditation
Henry Shukman
Explore the concepts of past, present, and future.
Joseph Goldstein
Wise practice avoids the extremes of rigidity and indulgence—and promotes calm and insight.
Talk
James Low
To perceive without illusion and attachment is to live without conflict and struggle.
Electron orbits change very quickly. So do the sounds in the ring of a bell.
Q&A
Jason Fried, Sam Harris
What is the difference between attaching concepts to raw sensations and merely noticing them?
Contemplation
John Astin
Feel the "swirl of sensations" of your body and see how there are no boundaries.
Charlotte Joko Beck
True wisdom is found through embracing the simple and commonplace.
Lesson
See how meditation is the ability to experience things clearly, before concepts.
Some examine nature and discover its facts—but fail to marvel at its weirdness.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of meditating with eyes opened versus eyes closed?
Kieran Setiya
Discover how philosophy is not "idle speculation" but a path to living well.
Christopher Titmuss, Sam Harris
Our concept of the present, like those of the past and future, is just that—a concept.
Discover the limits of language as you explore the sensations in your face.
Listen to Sam clarify his ideas about consciousness and first-person experience.
David Whyte, Sam Harris
We have expectations of the world. It has them of us. Reality is where they meet.
Past, present, and future are concepts—and mask the freshness of experience.
Should a beginner meditator focus solely on an object, or be open to all sensations?
Curiosity and questioning are healthy; doubtful indecision isn’t.
Amy Edelstein
With a visual exercise, Amy introduces mindfulness and its benefits.
Learn why meditation is about much more than simply feeling good in the moment.
Intro Course
John Astin introduces his series of short "experiential inquiries."
Sam details two paths to spiritual awakening: progressive and direct.
Stephan Bodian
Orient yourself to the direct approach and see how it can trigger an awakening.
Explore the difference between concepts about experience—and experience itself.
Relax any effort and "feel into the texture" of your experience.
Clarify your understanding of mindfulness and explore how it develops in stages.
"You are the open, empty site of a ceaseless display of an infinite variety of experience."
Discover why you should learn to enjoy the minor annoyances of life.
Drop all projects and agendas and come home to your experience, right now.
Let all prior knowledge and understanding fade into the background.
What is the true purpose of meditation, and what does progress in meditation look like?
The haven of spiritual practice lies in direct engagement with the present moment.
Look into your direct experience and notice how everything is always changing.
Pico Iyer
The pilgrim journeys not to conquer or preach, but to surrender and listen.
Try to find a dividing line between your skin and the rest of the world.
Learn how to identify what progress looks like in meditation.
See how everything appears and vanishes in an instant.
Jonas Kaplan, Sam Harris
Learn what the science really says about the benefits of meditation practice.
Discover how experience "cannot be collapsed into any description or category."
Shadi Hamid, Sam Harris
When are negative emotions useful—and for how long?
What is “the now"?
Notice how this moment is inescapably present, no matter what happens.
Do you see the natural world as precisely segmented or continuously flowing?
Let go of any attempt to control attention and allow the mind to be as it is.
Jayasāra
Text by Nyoshul Rinpoche. Simply rest the mind.
Adyashanti
Explore the profound effects of a simple shift in attention.
David Whyte
Feel how rest is the essence of giving and receiving.
Examine the power of ideas and the impact that they have on the world around us.
Feel how experience "shapeshifts" and never holds still.
Unpack the famous meditation instruction to “be here now.”
Sometimes there’s pleasure in wanting. There’s always more peace in its absence.
Fall back into your experience, with no sense of choice or deciding.
Shift your focus from the "content" of experiencing to the greater "context."
Explore how heartbreak colors, inhabits, and magnifies each and every day.
Michael Easter
Pondering death can inspire us to live with more presence and empathy.
Lean into the feeling of reluctance and hesitation as part of life's process.
The heart of practice is the recognition that each moment is already perfect.
Observe how every experience instantly transforms into something else.
Conversation
Henry Shukman, Sam Harris
Sam and Henry discuss meditative insight, emptiness, jhana meditation, and more.
Learn how it’s possible to improve the quality of your mind through meditation.
The space of awareness is empty, open to the full display of experience.
Notice that presence is happening, all by itself.
Question if there is some level of consciousness that predates your existence.
Discover why we should care about what happens in the brain while meditating.
Examine how denial is the crossroads between perception and readiness.
Donald Robertson
This ancient tradition anticipated today’s best psychological practices.
Reflect upon the ease and disease of ambition.
Discover why real mindfulness is effortless.
Relax the urge to try—simply be in the tumbling stream of experience.
Explore the difference between "ameliorative" and "existential" value.
Joan Tollifson
Joan introduces herself and describes the nature of the explorations in this series.
Learn why vulnerability is not a choice, nor a weakness.
See if you can find a place where "you" end and "the world" begins.
Learn how the ability to make a good beginning is an art form.
Henry describes some of the many paths to awakening.
Sam introduces Jayasāra and shares what her work means to him.
Discover how confession is an entrance to new territory and the first step home.
Feel "the energy of life itself" and make no effort to alter or control it.
Text by Dilgo Khyentse. Exchange yourself with others and discover the true meaning of generosity.
Learn why giving is a true test of character, and the highest form of art.
Text by Adi Shankara. Listen to one of the oldest teachings of Advaita, written around 788-820 CE.
Consider the flow of time and how it’s not what it seems.
Consider how courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life.
What is the self, and in what ways is it illusory?
Encounter the world anew, as if you've never been here before.
Recognize how aloneness is an invitation to depth — and an imminent threat.
“Let go of any idea about who or what you are—and feel what remains.”
Adyashanti, Sam Harris
What is the relationship between truth and love?
James Fadiman, Sam Harris
“The idea that you have a unified self, while quite popular, lacks any evidence.”
Consider the paradox at the heart of meditation practice.
An illusion manifests when a light moves through space—or a person through time.
Sam and David discuss David’s poems “Friendship,” “Honesty,” “Ambition,” and “Alone.”
See why we must fully experience regret before we focus on the future.
Meditation helps us see the self as a continuous process rather than a fixed entity.
"Embrace your losses as fair payment for the surplus of being alive."
Explore the importance of living an examined life and how meditation can help.
True presence comes from embracing—not transcending—the character of experience.
Learn what it means to be truly honest — with oneself and the world.
Jayasāra, Sam Harris
Sam and Jayasāra discuss monasticism, Theravada, Vipassana, psychedelics, grace, and more.
Notice how sensations, emotions, and thoughts arise in consciousness.
Text by Annamalai Swami. Look for "the little self" and see that it's not what it purports to be.
Understand how consciousness is the one thing in the world that cannot be an illusion.
Discover how withdrawal can be a "beautifully freeing act of mercy."
Christof Koch, Sam Harris
Sam and Christof discuss the neuroscience of consciousness and the nature of existence.
Investigate how boredom can simply be a failure to pay attention.
Learn how forgiveness is a skill, and a way of preserving clarity and sanity.
Explore an age-old question: "What is the meaning of it all?"
See how gratitude functions, and points us toward "the underlying gift of life."
Learn the power of gratitude and explore how to invoke it in your daily life.
Discover what it means to "love without naming at all."
How are thoughts different from other objects in awareness?
Explore how we are linked to each other, the past, and everything around us.
Drop all labeling of experience and notice how everything is equal.
Rather than try to define people and things, simply open to the flow of changing experience.
Understand how shyness can be a "hallway of presence."
Notice thoughts come and go, while you remain where you are, in the present.
Explore how joy is the raw engagement with the passing seasonality of existence.
See how genius is not a fixed platform arrived at solely through accomplishment.
Talk to yourself as you would to a friend: compassionately and constructively.
Listen to Adyashanti describe the three aspects of "the awakened view."
Peter Fenner, Sam Harris
Sam and Peter discuss nonduality, degrees of awakening, emotion, teaching, and simplicity.
See how "the more carefully we examine things, the less coherent they become."
See how maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts.
Notice the difference between mistakes and failures—and regret itself.
Oliver Burkeman
Don’t treat yourself in ways that you wouldn’t treat other people.
Explore the supposed boundary between yourself and all that’s happening.
See how robustness is "a measure of the live frontier in a conversation."
Jay Garfield, Sam Harris
We’re continually connected to—and constructed by—a world both physical and social.
Drill down to the raw data of experience, without adding any conceptual overlay.
Reflect on the path not taken—and the life not lived.
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Practicing for the benefit of others is a sign of true wisdom.
Loch Kelly, Sam Harris
Can you discuss the differences between Buddhist and Advaita perspectives on self and no self?
See how self-knowledge is, paradoxically, a "conversation with the unknown."
Underneath our "patterning" of the world is pure, ungraspable openness.
Learn how beauty is a state of both deep attention and self-forgetting.
Notice how everything that’s occurring is simply an expression of now.
Ask "Who am I?"—and find your way back to the source of all experiencing.
True peace often comes once we accept, rather than flee, our most difficult emotions.
Give up all effort and feel the downward settling of just sitting.
Swami Sarvapriyananda, Sam Harris
Sam and Swami discuss the role of nonduality in Advaita Vedanta and Tibetan Buddhism.
See how nostalgia tells us we are in the presence of imminent revelation.
What we see, visualize, introspect, and call the self are all mental artifacts.
Robert Waldinger
Giving others our time, attention, and service lengthens and enriches our lives.
Discover how our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there.
Discover how hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others.
See how deep friendship begins with "the simple act of paying attention."
Notice how despair takes us in when we have nowhere else to go.
Learn how mindfulness can help us navigate less-than-happy social situations.
Reduce emotional isolation by accepting your feelings and cultivating connection.
This present moment, whatever its character, bears the richness of life.
Sam and David discuss work, relationships, and mortality. David reads three of his pieces.
Discover the ultimate touchstone of friendship.
See how help is an absolute necessity — and something we want to do without.
Experience the moment from a different angle, and see how it actually is.
On the spiritual path, is experiencing better than intellectualizing?
Matt Harris, Dan Harris, Sam Harris
The existence of certain psychic powers would be easy—and ethical—to demonstrate.
See how the present moment is continually “liquefying, dissolving, vanishing.”
Discover how hope can give us "the courage to conceive alternatives."
Text by Hongzhi. Pay attention, and see the natural brightness of your own mind.
Erik Hoel, Sam Harris
Hear Sam and Erik Hoel explore important questions in moral philosophy.
See how each instant is “a vortex of ever-transforming, ever-morphing vibrancy.”
William MacAskill, Sam Harris
Discover how we can protect the future of humanity for generations to come.
Shamil Chandaria, Sam Harris
Sam and Shamil discuss perception, psychedelics, emptiness, Effective Altruism, and more.
Look and feel what is presently happening—and contemplate what you are.
Sam and Jay discuss the illusion of the self, free will, emptiness, truth, and Buddhism.
Listen to the crazy wisdom of Gutei, a Zen master who taught in a peculiar way.
Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris
What advice do you have for someone who's about to do their first meditation retreat?
What if the future never actually arrives?
Consider the basic uncertainty about the nature of spiritual authority.
Invite yourself to let go and trust the power of a simple phrase.
Sam and Joseph discuss the nature of enlightenment, nonduality, and meditative progress.
Tom Lutz
Good conversation comes from not knowing what the other person's going to say.
Text by Annamalai Swami. Watch thoughts come and go, just as clouds move through the sky.
Understand the benefits of starting fresh in each moment.
Get a conceptual understanding of how awakening unfolds in stages.
Learn why Waking Up was created—and how it's not a conventional meditation app.
Arthur C. Brooks, Sam Harris
Different cognitive skills facilitate different pursuits at different life-stages.
There’s no end-goal—just connection to the present moment.
Steven Laureys, Sam Harris
It’s the foundation of an examined life. Why not impart its lessons to our children?
Listen to Henry's personal account of Zen koan practice and how it's helped him.
William B. Irvine
Embracing that any moment could be your last can invite a deeper sense of tranquility.
Notice how "time" is an abstraction—a product of memory and thought.
"Something is always here, even if what's present is forever slipping away."
Regain your sense of awe and learn how to live with more wonder and joy.
Can meditation be used to revisit peak experiences one has had on psychedelics?
It's often important to have a healthy ego before you attempt to see through it.
Text by Baizhang. When the mind ceases to grasp, it finds freedom.
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Playlist cover art by Andy Gilmore (top right), Waking Up In House (bottom right).
