Sam Harris
American neuroscientist, philosopher, and meditation teacher, one of the most influential voices on contemplative practice for the secular, scientifically-minded reader of the early twenty-first century. Born in 1967 in Los Angeles, he holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA and has trained in Theravada Vipassana, Tibetan Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta with teachers including Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Poonja-ji. His 2014 book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion and the meditation app of the same name have introduced contemplative practice — particularly the recognition of selflessness — to a generation of readers who would never enter a Buddhist monastery or a yoga studio. His earlier books, including The End of Faith and Free Will, established him as a public intellectual on consciousness, ethics, and the contemplative dimensions of human experience.
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Quotes by Sam Harris
103 quotes“There is more to learn from the contemplative traditions than from religion.”
“The deepest truth is that you do not exist in the way you think you do.”
“Every moment of attention is an opportunity to recognize awareness itself.”
“In meditation, the goal is not to stop thinking. The goal is to recognize thoughts as appearances in awareness.”
“Awareness has no character of its own. It is simply the space in which experience appears.”
“The contemplative path is the recognition of what is already true.”
“Suffering is a kind of cognitive error.”
“To realize selflessness is to be free from the contraction of being someone.”
“Reality is far more strange than we believe.”
“The truth of who you are is not a belief. It is an experience.”
“What is meditating? Is there a meditator? Look.”
“In every moment, the absence of self can be recognized.”
“Selflessness is not annihilation. It is liberation.”
“The practice is not to escape thought. The practice is to see through it.”
“Mindfulness allows us to disengage from the storyline of self.”
“There is consciousness, and there is the appearance of self in consciousness.”
“What you call yourself is a confused mixture of memories and projections.”
“To meditate is to interrupt the narrative.”
“There is no self that is the thinker of your thoughts. There is only thinking.”
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