The Utility of Worrying About Death

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The seed of the dissolution of all your happiness is apparent in almost any moment that you think about. I noticed that I'm relating to my daughters as though they're always going to be this age. The scariest things about getting older for me is not dying, but just watching the changes in the people around me and how that affects our relationship. meditation has identified resistance as a source; it's not the thing that you're resisting as the source of suffering, but the resistance as the source-of-suffering.

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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