#111 — The Science of Meditation

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2017

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson about the current scientific understanding of meditation practice. They speak about the original stigma associated with meditation, the history of introspection in eastern and western cultures, the recent collaboration between Buddhism and western science, the difference between altered states and altered traits, an alternate conception of mental health, “meta-awareness,” the relationship between mindfulness and “flow,” the difference between pain and suffering, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and other topics.

SUBSCRIBE to listen to the rest of this episode and gain access to all full-length episodes of the podcast at samharris.org/subscribe.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today I'm speaking with Daniel Goldman and Richard Davidson. Daniel is known for his best
0:22.6	selling books on emotional intelligence. His book, Emotional Intelligence I Believe, was
0:28.8	the best selling nonfiction book of the 90s. It's not literally true, it is close. And
0:34.4	Danny's interest in meditation goes way back to his year spent in India as a graduate student at
0:39.0	Harvard. He's a trained psychologist who for many years reported on the brain and behavioral
0:44.9	sciences for the New York Times. He's been a visiting faculty member at Harvard. He's received
0:51.2	many journalistic awards including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. And he received the career
0:57.9	achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association. And my experience with
1:05.1	Danny goes way back. We have spent many, many months on retreats together back in the day. We've
1:12.0	traveled to Indian Nepal to study with various meditation teachers together. And Danny has over the
1:19.1	years given me advice with respect to publishing. So it's great to be able to get him on the podcast.
1:24.4	And Richard, known as Richie, to those who know him, is a professor of psychology and
1:31.4	psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And he's the director of the Wasteman
1:36.9	Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior there. He's also the founder of the Center for Healthy
1:42.4	Minds at the Wasteman Center. Richie also received his PhD in Psychology from Harvard and has been
1:48.6	at Wisconsin since 1984. And he's been a very prolific experimental scientist. He has published more
1:56.4	than 300 papers as well as numerous chapters and reviews. And he has edited 14 books. And I think
2:04.0	it's beyond dispute that Richie has done the most important neuroimaging research on meditation to
2:10.5	date. He generally works with functional magnetic resonance imaging and EEG as well. All of those
2:18.6	articles you've seen with the French monk Matthew Ricard with EEG electrodes on his head that
2:25.5	research was done in Richie's lab. And really there's no one better to talk about the current state
2:30.4	of the science for our understanding of mindfulness and meditation. And as luck would have it, Danny and
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Waking Up with Sam Harris, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Waking Up with Sam Harris and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.