Why Should I Meditate?
Presenter:
Sam Harris
Time:
10:22
Summary
Sam Harris discusses the mystery of our existence on earth and how fortunate we are to be here now—at a time when information and knowledge are so easily accessible. He shares that meditation isn't about understanding things conceptually, but is rather about the ability to experience things more clearly in order to experience psychological freedom.
Transcript
Have all the solar systems in this universe that might sustain complex life, we find ourselves in this one. It took billions of years of evolution on this earth to produce the people we now are. Our brains and bodies have evolved through millions of generations reaching back to creatures totally unlike us, to animals so strange that we wouldn't even want them as pets. And finally, to single-celled organisms. For ages, the world got on without us. But now we're here. And among all the possible people that could exist, we are among the tiny minority that actually do.
And of all the periods in human history where we might have appeared, we live in this one, arguably the first in which it was possible to understand our circumstance in a truly universal sense. For the first time, a person's view of the world need not be dictated by the mere location of his birth, or the religion of his parents. For the first time, the barriers of language and geography have totally fallen away. At this moment, you have instantaneous access to more information than even the greatest scholar or world leader did a generation ago.