The Three Characteristics of Mindfulness

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concentration is the antidote to being perpetually lost in thought. When you're paying attention to the body you're noticing fleeting sensations that you can be connecting with more or less clearly at the level of attention and noticing that they're impermanence. So when you're really noticing the fleeting character of phenomenon on a deep level you begin to feel like it's impossible to cling to pleasant experience. There's no unchanging permanent self carried from one moment to the next so there's just nothing solid there in each moment.

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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