Sam Harris
American neuroscientist, philosopher, and meditation teacher, one of the most influential voices on contemplative practice for the secular, scientifically-minded reader of the early twenty-first century. Born in 1967 in Los Angeles, he holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA and has trained in Theravada Vipassana, Tibetan Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta with teachers including Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Poonja-ji. His 2014 book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion and the meditation app of the same name have introduced contemplative practice — particularly the recognition of selflessness — to a generation of readers who would never enter a Buddhist monastery or a yoga studio. His earlier books, including The End of Faith and Free Will, established him as a public intellectual on consciousness, ethics, and the contemplative dimensions of human experience.
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Quotes by Sam Harris
103 quotes“Consciousness is the medium of all appearances.”
“To realize awareness is to be at home anywhere.”
“You don't need to know philosophy to practice meditation.”
“In every moment, the practice begins again.”
“The recognition of awareness is its own reward.”
“Practice during the day. The practice is the day.”
“Thoughts arise in awareness. They do not arise from awareness.”
“The knower and the known are appearances in the same field.”
“To wake up is to recognize what was always present.”
“The contemplative recognition is empirical, repeatable, and consequential.”
“The hard work of meditation is the work of returning.”
“Awareness is not produced by the brain. It is what the brain reveals.”
“The deepest truth about consciousness is its self-evident nature.”
“There is no separation between the perceiver and the perceived.”
“Selflessness is not absence. It is presence without contraction.”
“What we call the self is just a feeling.”
“Investigate the feeling, and the feeling shifts.”
“The mind, when looked at directly, dissolves into space.”
“Each thought is a small wake. Awareness is the ocean.”
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