The Importance of Removing Expectations

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When you go on intensive retreat in the Burmese tradition you're given a different set of expectations and it's one that I think is ultimately misleading right. You're left with a kind of vigil that is implicitly at least if not explicitly waiting for something to happen there's no reason to pay attention to the breath really unless you're waiting for some improvement. The point of all of this is to uproot negative emotions or do we do we have to do something about a dog or are you talking yes does that dog speak English?

Sam Harris returns to the podcast to talk about meditation and his new Waking Up meditation app. What are the goals of mindfulness practice - stress reduction and greater focus, or something much deeper? Can it cure David's existential dread? Tamler's fear of his daughter going away to college? Can sustained practice erode the illusion of self? Is that even something we'd want to do? What if it diminishes our attachment to people we love? And what is the self anyway? Is Sam a defender of panpsychism? So many questions... Plus, the ethics of creating talking elephants by curing them of their autism through bonding and possibly mounting. (Seriously.)

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