"Waking Up"

 

That face looks like clouds.

"Waking Up" was a book group read by proxy: I added it to my list after one of the participants in our discussion of "Zen Mind, Buddhist Mind" recommended it. Author Sam Harris presents spirituality as a psychological need distinct from religious belief and its associated rituals, a search for meaning outside the mundane.

Harris's personal experience is with Buddhism, and this is the lens from which he approaches spirituality as an atheist. The book describes spiritual practice, mindfulness, the sense of self, and other phenomena in terms of neuroscience and psychology – typically in a fairly surface-level, but still interesting, way. A few excerpts below.

How thoughts shape experience:

Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvement—when your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But it's the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won't matter how successful you become or who is in your life—you won't enjoy any of it. (2)

On wisdom:

On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one's own advice. However, there are deeper insights to be had about the nature of our minds. Unfortunately, they have been discussed entirely in the context of religion and, therefore, have been shrouded in fallacy and superstition for all of human history. (15)

Beware of gurus:

If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex, and subsist on a diet of raw vegetables, you would find a new golf instructor. However, when gurus make demands of this kind, many of their students simply do as directed. (152)

The case for self-awareness:

Consciousness is the basis of both the examined and the unexamined life. It is all that can be seen and that which does the seeing. No matter how far you have traveled from the place of your birth, and how much you now understand about the world, you have been exploring consciousness and its changes. Why not do so directly? (200)

Verdict: "Waking Up" attempts and generally succeeds at differentiating spirituality from the practice of religion. Worth a read for anyone curious about mindfulness from a nonreligious point of view. Recommended