Philosopher Sam Harris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guided Meditation

We’ve post­ed on med­i­ta­tion research late­ly because it’s so com­pelling, and med­i­ta­tion music and instruc­tions because so many cre­ative peo­ple have found it lib­er­at­ing. But it’s always worth not­ing that a few med­i­ta­tion skep­tics have weighed in with point­ed objec­tions to the large claims med­i­ta­tion teach­ers often make. And yet even after one of the most unspar­ing cri­tiques of med­i­ta­tion research and teach­ing, sci­ence writer John Hor­gan still admits that “it might make you feel bet­ter, nicer, wis­er” and plans to con­tin­ue med­i­tat­ing in the face of his “per­fect con­tempt for it.”

Anoth­er pro­fes­sion­al skep­tic has gone even fur­ther along this road. Once spo­ken of as one of the dread­ed “Four Horse­men” of New Athe­ism, Sam Har­ris has also long called him­self a sec­u­lar Bud­dhist, and has writ­ten “a guide to spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with­out reli­gion.”

Wad­ing into the pol­i­tics of med­i­ta­tion means deal­ing with skep­tics like Har­ris who treat Bud­dhism as quaint and archa­ic fool­ish­ness that just hap­pened to pre­serve the sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy of mind­ful­ness, and it means sort­ing through a lot of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies, many of which—as is always the case—have a num­ber fatal flaws in their method. Har­ris’ sci­en­tif­ic claims about mind­ful­ness have come in for their own cri­tiques, from both mys­tics and sec­u­lar­ists.

All of this said, the fact is that, like yoga and many oth­er prac­tices designed to har­mo­nize mind and body, the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion, place­bo-induced or oth­er­wise, are observ­able, and the risks entire­ly neg­li­gi­ble. Many skep­ti­cal researchers have decid­ed to dive in and try med­i­ta­tion before ful­ly cred­it­ing their doubts. And that, sup­pos­ed­ly, is the very instruc­tion we find in what is often called the Bud­dhist “char­ter for free inquiry,” which tells prac­ti­tion­ers to inves­ti­gate for them­selves and take no one’s word for any­thing, a few hun­dred years in advance of the British Roy­al Soci­ety’s mot­to, nul­lius in ver­ba.

In this spir­it, skep­tics like Har­ris have inves­ti­gat­ed med­i­ta­tion and report­ed their find­ings. Many also, like Har­ris and aca­d­e­m­ic researchers like Oxford psy­chi­a­trist Mark Williams, have record­ed their own guid­ed mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions that cor­re­spond in many respects to the orig­i­nal ancient instruc­tions. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured guid­ed med­i­ta­tions from UCLA and a com­pi­la­tion of record­ed instruc­tions from new agers and sci­en­tists. At the top of the post, you can hear Har­ris’ very straight­for­ward guid­ed med­i­ta­tion, and fur­ther down a short­er ver­sion of the same.

In the video above, Har­ris employs just a lit­tle hyper­bole in com­par­ing mind­ful­ness to the Large Hadron Col­lid­er. His claim that only through this prac­tice can we dis­cov­er “the self is an illu­sion” rings false when we think of the many oth­er philoso­phers who have inde­pen­dent­ly come to the same con­clu­sion, whether as Taoists or Empiri­cists. But Har­ris isn’t only mak­ing the case for mind­ful­ness meditation’s true cor­re­spon­dence to some fun­da­men­tal nature of real­i­ty, but for its prag­mat­ic use­ful­ness in help­ing us move through the world with greater skill and peace of mind—reliable out­comes from reg­u­lar med­i­ta­tion that no one has yet cred­i­bly denied.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lena Dun­ham Shows Why It’s So Damn Hard to Med­i­tate: A Four-Minute Com­e­dy

Allen Gins­berg Teach­es You How to Med­i­tate with a Rock Song Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan on Bass

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness