How meditation can change your life and mind | Sam Harris, Jon Kabat-Zinn & more | Big Think

A common misconception about meditation is that success involves sweeping all thoughts away to achieve a nirvana-like state, but this is impossible because the mind will continually produce thoughts, and even thoughts about meditation are just thoughts, not meditation itself.

“People misunderstand meditation as oh, I just sweep all my thoughts away and then I'm in this like nirvana. What you'll get by trying to sweep all your thoughts away is a headache at the most, because there's no way to sweep your thoughts away. They will get you every time. And then you can have millions of thoughts about mindfulness and meditation and those are just thoughts, too. They're not meditating.”

When a meditator observes thoughts without attachment or reactivity—without getting caught in them—thoughts naturally self-liberate in awareness without any action needed, similar to how touching a soap bubble causes it to disappear.

“But when you see that you're not your thoughts then you can watch them in this kind of impersonal, more sort of if you will observing way with kindness, with self-compassion, because a lot of them are heavily loaded with negative emotion. And you can see that if you don't touch them, if you don't do anything with them, if you don't get caught in them, they self-liberate naturally in awareness. The awareness is like touching a soap bubble. It's fun for kids and fun for adults, too. A soap bubble and you touch it and it just goes poof.”

The human mind contains multiple drives and agendas: 'greed' (wanting more for oneself) and 'aversion' (pushing away what one fears or dislikes), which are distinct from ambition and are inherent to human psychology, appearing whenever one observes the mind carefully.

“When you start to watch the mind you'll notice that its got a lot of agendas on the greed spectrum. I mean it's – and greed is not quite the same as ambition. Greed has to do with more for me, more of what I want for me. Then there's this other thing that you'll also notice which is you're sitting there and the opposite will come up. What I don't want, what I'm afraid of, what I need to keep at the door, keep at bay, to push away. And that's collectively referred to as aversion.”

Life will never be perfect no matter how much effort one puts into perfection; acceptance of this reality and cultivation of patience—even toward stressful people—are fundamental human virtues

“Life is not perfect. Life will never be perfect. How much we put into effort to be perfect, there is no perfect everything. We are human. Patience is wonderful to have. So, if somebody who is in your life, if he or she is so stressful and at that time sometimes not necessarily there's not much room for communicating, just be patient.”

Mindfulness and awareness applied to greed and aversion does not eliminate these drives but transforms one's relationship to them, allowing the drives to be attenuated or liberated through awareness, resulting in 'pure awareness fully embodied' where the person remains but their unconscious drives no longer control them.

“But nevertheless, we have to admit it's here all the time. It's not like oh, I've transcended greed. I don't think we do transcend greed, but we can transform how we are in relationship to it and with awareness the greed doesn't have to run us. So we can bring mindfulness to greed, and the greed can be attenuated or liberated. Mindfulness to aversion, and the aversion could be attenuated or liberated, or mindfulness to our own deluded nature, thoughts and emotions and so forth. And that is liberating of them. Then what do you have left? You. As pure awareness. Fully embodied.”

To develop meditation capacity, one does not need extreme commitment or to 'sit in a cave for 30 years'—one only needs to 'get out of your own way' through practice, which is difficult but achievable through moments of stopping self-interference, revealing that many difficulties are illusory constructs rather than objective problems.

“And don't take my word for it. This is something that when you sit down and you begin to watch you'll see this is not rocket science. You don't have to sit in the cave for 30 years to have that kind of experience. All you need to do is in some sense get out of your own way. Now, I'm not saying that's easy. That's really hard, but if you can have moments when you get out of your own way then you'll see that a lot of this stuff that we get so caught up in it's like it's a mirage.”

Research shows the human mind wanders approximately 50% of the time, and when the mind is wandering (focused on future worry or past regret) people experience more negative emotions compared to when the mind is present in the moment, even if engaged in an unpleasant task.

“Research shows that our mind actually wanders about 50% of the time, and research also shows that when our mind is wandering we are never as happy as when our mind is in the present moment. So if your mind is in the future worrying about something that is going to happen, or in the past because you're regretting something or angry at somebody, you're more likely to feel more negative emotions. But when you're in the present moment, even if you're doing a task you don't particularly like, you'll actually feel happier.”

Present-moment awareness increases productivity because focused attention naturally produces better performance on tasks compared to distracted or wandering attention.

“But also what we know is that you'll be able to be more productive when you're in that state because you're going to be naturally focused.”

Thought itself is not the problem—thinking is essential for reasoning, planning, social relationships, and science—but the problem is that most people spend their entire waking lives thinking without awareness of the thinking itself, and this unconscious thinking generates unhappiness through judgment, worry, and regret.

“Now, the problem is not thoughts themselves. We need to think. We need to think to do almost anything that makes us human – to reason, to plan, to have social relationships, to do science. Thinking is indispensable to us, but most of us spend every moment of our waking lives thinking without knowing that we're thinking”

Every emotional experience (such as anger felt yesterday or a year ago) is impermanent—it arises and passes away naturally—and if retrieved in the present moment through thinking about it again, it will subside once thinking stops, but people typically extend emotions far beyond their natural half-life by repeatedly thinking about reasons justifying the emotion.

“every experience you've ever had, every emotion, the anger you felt yesterday or a year ago isn't here anymore. It arises and it passes away, and if it comes back in the present moment by virtue of your thinking about it again it will subside again when you're no longer thinking about it. Now, this is something that people tend not to notice because we rather than merely feel an emotion like anger, we spend our time thinking of all the reasons why we have every right to be angry. So the conversation keeps this emotion in play for much, much longer than its natural half-life.”

Mindfulness shifts one's relationship to emotional and cognitive experience by allowing observation of thoughts and feelings as separate from the self, which disempowers them and distinguishes this from the experience of being depressed or anxious where one is identified with and caught in the mental content.

“Mindfulness allows us to shift our relationship to our experience. Instead of getting sucked into our emotions or our thoughts which is what happens when we're depressed or anxious, we see them as those thoughts again or those feelings again. And that disempowers them.”

Excessive engagement with greed (the drive for more) is toxic because it produces increasingly egocentric behavior, willingness to abandon ethical standards for results, and paradoxically leads to unsatisfaction that drives an endless trajectory of chasing the next goal without ever achieving lasting satisfaction.

“So we've got greed on the one hand and it is toxic. The more you're sucked into greed, the more egotistical you become, the more it's all about me, the more you're willing to lose your own ethical foundation to get a particular result, only to find that even that result is not really satisfying so you're on to the next result and it's a never ending trajectory.”

Attention is evolutionarily designed to move toward the highest opportunity (food, valuable resources) or the highest perceived threat in the environment, automatically concentrating all mental resources on that target, which was adaptive for hunter-gatherer survival but creates vulnerability to modern attentional hijacking by devices.

“What happens with attention is it either goes to the highest opportunity or it goes to the highest threat that we perceive in our environment. So suddenly there is something that we in our hunter-gatherer times something that was valuable to eat and then that's where our attention goes. Or there's something like a dark shadow moving and then that's where our attention goes. It's automatic and the reason that we have attention is to pay attention and then summon all of our resources to either take advantage of the opportunity. or to avoid the threat.”

The practical benefit of meditation is achieving a 'wiser relationship to your possibilities' rather than eliminating life's challenges; your circumstances and aging continue, but your relationship to them transforms

“You'll be the same you. You'll have the same bank account. You'll have the same social security number. You'll have the same face in the mirror. You'll be aging every day, but you will be in wiser relationship to your possibilities.”

Meditation serves as a tool to interrupt the continuous internal conversation and automatic thought patterns that engineer unhappiness, allowing practitioners to break the habitual cycle of rumination

“So meditation is a tool for cutting through that, for interrupting this continuous conversation we're having with ourselves.”

Beginning meditation practitioners should start with very short sessions and gradually build the practice, such as starting with breathing meditation (which most people encounter in yoga classes) and expanding from there

“But then when I came back again starting very, very small with things that I can just do on my own, just breathing meditation, focusing on the breath. Something that we all do at the end of yoga classes. That's what really kind of helped me build my muscle and I just have to stick with that very short meditation and build it up that way.”

We need peace of mind, which comes from mindfulness; through mindfulness comes understanding of the importance of kindness and compassion, creating a chain where one mental quality develops into the next

“We all need that peace of mind. So the peace of mind comes from the mindfulness. Through that we understand how important kindness or compassion. One mental good quality leads into the next and the next and the next.”

The special state of consciousness in the highest-level meditators matches descriptions in classical meditation literature of states called 'liberation,' 'enlightenment,' or 'awake,' but science has no existing vocabulary to capture what this state is, and advanced meditators describe it as 'very spacious' where you are 'wide open' and 'prepared for whatever may come.'

“So we have to assume that the special state of consciousness that you see in the highest level meditators is a lot like something described in the classical meditation literature centuries ago, which is that there is a state of being which is not like our ordinary state. Sometimes it's called liberation, enlightenment, awake. Whatever the word may be, we suspect there's really no vocabulary that captures what that might be. The people that we've talked to in this Olympic-level group say it's a very spacious and that you're wide open. You're prepared for whatever may come.”

Many people misconceive mindfulness as a spiritual practice or private home activity, when mindfulness is actually about speeding up mental processes to be more effective and task-focused through developing attentional muscle.

“There is a general huge misconception around mindfulness. Many people think that mindfulness is a spiritual thing. Many think that it's a private thing that we do at home, and most people think that mindfulness is about slowing down. That's wrong. Mindfulness, in short terms, is really about speeding up our mental processes whereby we can be more effective with whatever we're doing, that we have this attentional muscle that allows us really to be on task with what we are doing.”

Mindfulness and meditation balance the attention-capturing effects of modern devices by quieting the mind and allowing people to 'be at home in your body,' which fades distraction and allows access to the underlying happiness the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia.

“And that is really what mindfulness and meditation is trying to balance out a little bit, so that when the mind quiets and you actually are at home in your body, then that distraction fades away and you actually get in touch with that underlying happiness that the Greeks call eudaimonia.”