Sam Harris On: Equanimity in Turbulent Times; Compassion for Difficult People; And Dualistic vs Non-dualistic Mindfulness
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2025
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An old friend (and my spiritual brother) discusses some of the most important things he’s ever learned.
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, author, podcaster and the proprietor of Waking Up, a top-notch meditation app with amazing teachers and a ton of courses for all levels. If you subscribe via this link: wakingup.com/tenpercent, you’ll get a 30-day free trial—and you’ll be supporting the 10% Happier team, too. Full and partial scholarships are available.
In this episode we talk about:
- How to maintain equanimity in shitty situations
- How to have compassion – or at least non-hatred – for people you disagree with politically
- The illusion of free will and its relationship with compassion
- The difference between dualistic and non-dualistic mindfulness
- The concept of having no head
- Why meditating with your eyes open can be super helpful
- And much more
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:07.9 | Hello everybody. How we doing? Today, I'm talking to an old friend and somebody I honestly really look up to, somebody who has played a critical and formative role in my contemplative career. Sam Harris. This is a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation that covers how to maintain equanimity in shitty |
| 0:39.6 | situations. We recorded this not long after the fires in LA, which forced Sam and his family |
| 0:44.9 | out of their home for an indefinite period of time. How to have compassion or at least non-hatred |
| 0:51.3 | for people you disagree with politically in these highly polarized times. |
| 0:56.1 | The illusion of free will and the relationship of that concept to compassion. |
| 1:01.5 | The difference between dualistic and non-dualistic mindfulness. |
| 1:06.0 | We spend a lot of time on that. |
| 1:07.6 | The concept of having no head, which is fascinating and weird, why meditating with |
| 1:13.2 | your eyes open can be super helpful, and much more. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sam, |
| 1:19.2 | even though he's been on this show many, many times, I will say briefly that he's a neuroscientist, |
| 1:24.0 | philosopher, and author of five best-selling books. He hosts an extremely popular |
| 1:29.3 | podcast called Making Sense, and he is the creator of the excellent app waking up, which offers |
| 1:36.3 | a modern approach to living a more examined life through both in-depth mindfulness and meditation |
| 1:41.7 | training and secular wisdom. It's really quite a rich |
| 1:45.4 | experience, lots of guided meditation, but also really cool courses on various life skills, |
| 1:51.3 | from cognitive behavioral therapy to wise approaches to time management. |
| 1:56.8 | Speaking of the waking up app, Sam and I, the Harris brothers, even though we're not actually brothers, I guess not biological brothers, more spiritual brothers. |
| 2:06.0 | Anyway, we are now teaming up. Since I'm no longer part of the app formerly known as 10% happier, I am now experimenting with a whole bunch of new projects. |
| 2:15.8 | As you know, I launched a newsletter slash community over on Substack called |
| 2:19.5 | Dan Harris.com where you can get ad-free versions of this podcast and twice-monthly |
| 2:24.1 | live sessions with me where I guide a meditation and take your questions. |
... |
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