#34 - Sam Harris, Ph.D.: The transformative power of mindfulness

The Peter Attia Drive

Peter Attia, MD

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Fitness

4.7 • 7.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2018

⏱️ 164 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Sam Harris, neuroscientist, author, and host of the Waking Up Podcast, walks us through the profound, yet practical, ways that meditation can transform our lives. Additionally, he helps to define the types of meditation and clarifies potential misconceptions with terms like happiness, pain, and suffering.

We discuss:

The transformative moment that led to Peter reaching out to Sam [3:45];
Comparing the two broad types of meditation, and Peter’s favorite meditation apps [7:45];
The pleasure of a concentrated mind, meditating with pain, and the difference between pain and suffering [13:15];
What it means to be happy, and how to break out of our default state [23:15];
The disease of distraction, why humans suffer, the limitation of happiness, and letting go of anger with mindfulness [31:00];
The challenge of learning mindfulness, the benefit of silent retreats, and Sam’s first experience in solitude as a teenager [54:15];
Sam’s life-altering experience with MDMA [1:03:00];
Mettā meditation a.k.a. loving-kindness, and the concept of ‘moral luck’ [1:14:00];
Overcoming grief and dread with meditation [1:34:45];
The wrong way to practice mindfulness, and the difference between Vipassana and Dzogchen [1:44:45];
Sam’s commitment to never lie, honesty in politics, and Sam’s viewpoint on the Trump phenomenon [2:06:00];
Teaching kids to be more mindful [2:18:30];
Sam’s current book projects, the consequences of a politically correct environment, and the potential of neuroscience to cure psychopathy [2:25:30];
How you can follow Sam’s work [2:39:00]; and
More.

Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia.
0:10.0	The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking,
0:15.7	along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working
0:19.6	with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast
0:23.8	is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality
0:28.3	more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's
0:32.5	episode and other topics at pteratia-md.com.
0:41.6	Hey everyone, welcome to this week's edition of The Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia.
0:45.8	Our guest this week is Sam Harris. Someone I consider a friend, a mentor, a teacher.
0:51.4	I met Sam about four years ago, and I suspect many of you already know about Sam or are familiar
0:56.2	with his work, but in case you're not, let me say a few words on that. Sam trained in neuroscience,
1:00.7	he has a PhD in neuroscience, but in many ways I consider him a philosopher and frankly just one of
1:05.6	the greatest minds that I know. He's an author of some extraordinary books, The End of Faith,
1:10.6	Being His First, The Moral Landscape, Lying, Free Will, and probably my favorite, which you've
1:15.5	also probably heard me talk about, is waking up a book that I've read, I think three times now,
1:20.3	and I'm almost at the point where I understand half of it. Sam is also the host of arguably,
1:26.5	I would say the most important podcast to me, The Waking Up Podcast, and he is also the creator
1:31.9	of an app for meditation called Appropriately. Waking Up. I had the privilege of beta testing it
1:36.8	for about nine months before it went live, and it is now officially live, and for anyone who
1:41.0	meditates I would consider this an essential part of your meditation app routine. You've probably
1:48.3	heard me talk a lot about this in the past few months, the importance of distressed tolerance,
1:54.1	mindfulness, the ability to understand what's going on inside our own heads as a tool to be less
	...

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