Waking Up
For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Waking Up is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology. From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, Waking Up is for the twenty percent of Americans who follow no religion but who suspect that important truths can be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history. Throughout this book, Harris argues that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow, and that how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives. Waking Up is part memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it. [][1]
Stats for nerds
21recommend
37mentions
32people
2014–2023years
68% recommend27% neutral5% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Waking Up by Sam Harris.
It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads of content from big names.
Highly recommended.
- "Waking Up" by Sam Harris. I tried meditation a few times before, but it was always boring and I didn't really think it was gonna be anything special. After reading this book, I started practicing daily, and it has changed my daily life and my outlook on life. Mindfulness training is for the mind, what exercise is for the body.
- While doing my best to distract myself from life at the time, I read the book “Waking Up” by Sam Harris, and this got me curious.
I’ve since been using the Waking Up app also created by Harris. The introductory course is a flavor of Vipassana or “seeing things as they are”, and that’s where I started.
Harris has an extensive background and relationships with many meditation teachers and experts across various disciplines, and he tries to distill the best bits from each into the core meditation course.
In addition to the core practices, the app has a deep library of content from other expert teachers ranging from theory/philosophy to guided practice, and I’ve found it fascinating to try meditations from various schools of thought. Some of the extra content goes down some (secular) Buddhism rabbit holes if that’s of any interest.
(Not affiliated with Harris, but I’m a pretty happy user).
- Investing in fitness (weight lifting, running, eating well) probably has the most impact, but that is fairly obvious. Likewise never reading anything in bed other than long-form books.
The one habit the was very surprising to me was daily meditation. I didn't expect to enjoy it, or derive any benefits, but I did.
I think any beginner app[1] (or maybe book) and 10-15 minutes a day for a 2-3 months is enough to get the n00b benefits I got, namely:
- less reactive to pretty much any kind of negative external whatever, from random assholes to force majeure
- almost complete elimination of the feeling of boredom from my life, regardless of circumstance
The above two things, in turn, led to improvements in just about all my meaningful relationships.
[1]: Specifically, in my case, I read the book Waking Up, by Sam Harris, which caused me to then read Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan, and then I ended up getting the Waking Up app to guide me through the daily practice (but I also tried Ten Percent Happier and Headspace and believe any of them would work).
- Try reading "Waking Up" by Sam Harris. I feel it does a decent job of straddling the fields of science and philosophy, and where we are in each.
Science may not yet be able to explain consciousness but it certainly can inform our understanding, and the work continues. If nothing else, it can help us understand what consciousness is not, and much has been learned about how a consciousness experiences certain degradations of the brain.
- Sam Harris' Waking Up. My time on Earth is best partitioned into before and after I started the project of spirituality without religion (the book's subtitle).
