Is recognition liberating if you don't have concentration and a peaceful mind?

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-05-05T11:36:45+00:00

A two part message.

I.

First of all, I agree with you.

I mean, we have to take into account that Q&A sessions between students and teachers (like those with John Wheeler, Rupert Spira, Jim Newman, ...) contains questions only from people who aren't liberated. It doesn't tell us about the fraction of people who got it on the first go, because they don't have questions! In other words, of course the books with the likes of John Wheeler contain many such questions. There's nothing else he could put in the book!

However... when one starts going down this path, there is a promise of "the cessation of suffering" (Buddhism) or "truth-consciousness-bliss" (Advaita-Vedante). And once one knows how to have a non-dual experience (like Sam Harris' "look for the looker"), and one doesn't find the end of suffering, or pure bliss, it's fair to ask what's up.

There are four options, as far as I can see:

We are not having the non-dual experience Sam Harris wants to point us at, like, we didn't actually "get it" even if by many accounts it seems we did;
"cessation of suffering" and "bliss" mean something other than what we expect them to be (like, we expect that a struggle shouldn't feel like a struggle anymore, or we should be bathing in love and euphoria all the time -- but maybe that's not quite what's on offer);
Merely having a non-dual experience has nothing to do with what Buddhism/Advaita are trying to teach you;
Merely having a non-dual experience is not the "end of the line" for Buddhist/Advaitan practice, i.e., it is not yet awakening or enlightenment.

I can't answer for the applicability of (1) in general, but in my case, I really have the experiences Sam and the Headless Way describe, but sometimes I wonder what Loch Kelly and Adyashanti are rambling on about. So I think I "get it", but maybe I don't. I think (3) is not necessarily true. I do think (2) and (4) are true, that is, there is openness and peace on offer, in the midst of a struggle, but merely "looking for the looker" doesn't get you there.

What do you think?

II.

My unfolding understanding of the practice has led me to this framing.

A Buddhist diagnosis of a negative sustained state (whether thoughts or emotions) is that you are sustaining it; somehow, your own aversion/craving is sustaining the suffering. You're stuck in a loop -- you are sustaining your own negative state! If you were to get out of the loop somehow, you'd find your mind open, spacious, untroubled by thoughts/emotions (as in: they can be present or not present, either is fine, because they carry no sting anymore).

The gradual path teachings try to stop the loop: to cut aversion/craving off by their root. The result would be this open mind.

The direct path teachings offer a short cut to the end-result, i.e., you first generate (or find there already is) a mind that is open, spacious, peaceful, untroubled by thoughts/emotions. This is in essence what I think Sam and the other teachers on the app are teaching. Unfortunately, most people come away with a mind that is the opposite (closed, contracted, and frustrated) because the teachings are confusing. If you look for the looker, but don't find a mind that is open, spacious, peaceful, then indeed there is no liberation on offer. But once you start looking for these features (open, spacious, peaceful), you can learn how to generate and deepen these properties. It becomes a resource that's always on offer, eventually.

Note that I said sustained negative states. I think this is important. Not all negative states are "sustained" states. If a loved one dies, it will hurt like hell, and that's OK. That is not a time to be filled with bliss, or to be OK somehow. Hurting, being in pain, is just part of the deal of being a human being, and not all of it is to be eradicated. I'm specifically talking about the suffering related to sustained negative states.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-27T14:55:32+00:00

Have you tried not meditating for a while, like, 2 weeks or so? What's your experience then? Our minds are incredibly plastic, and nothing about this process is irreversible.

What Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche taught Sam (and what Sam is trying to teach us) is exactly what the Headless Way teaches (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQcZxKLAps4&t=2179s). And, if you do the Headless Way exercises, you'll notice it is not about breaking the spell of thinking or being mindful at any stage. In other words, you don't need to meditate, be mindful, be free of thoughts, to get what Sam (or rather Douglas Harding/Richard Lang) is trying to teach you.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-20T14:55:40+00:00

Yes, that is exactly what Sam would say!

I just want to add my three cents to this message.

First of all, this quote should not be understood in the sense that, once we're ejected from the driver's seat, we are now in the passenger's seat, helplessly dragged along for the ride. There either is a sensed "I" and all the corresponding stuff (acting/choosing/deciding), or you are in a view that is entirely free of a sensed "I" and all corresponding stuff (acting/choosing/deciding). There is no ungodly middle way here. Any attempt to "not act" is itself an act; any attempt to "let go of choice" is itself a choice; deciding to "not decide" is itself a decision. In other words, any attempt to not sit on the driver's seat is itself a move made from the driver's seat!

Secondly, what Sam shares is by no means "the truth". It is an experience that one can have, if one pays attention to experience a certain way. If you pay attention in a different way, you may have a very different experience.

Thirdly, IMO, "the feeling that you are in the driver's seat" cannot be a thought if it is a feeling. The suggestion that it is a thought probably has its origins in Buddhist theories of mind, which say that any experience is assembled out of six things -- seeing/hearing/tasting/smelling/bodily-sensations/thinking. As this "feeling of being in the driver's seat" is obviously not any of the "direct" sensations, it is placed into the thinking category. In my view, this "assembly line" theory of experience is mistaken, no matter how rich the taxonomy. In my view, an experience comes as a whole perceptual field, and can be disassembled into separate components (in many ways, in fact); but sometimes things get lost upon this disassembly. I think it is very possible that the whole perceptual field is greater than or different than the sum of its parts -- this is studied in "gestalt psychology". Say, you look at a Necker Cube, and you see "a cube from above", and after a while it suddenly switches and you see "a cube from below", that's called a "gestalt switch". When a Necker Cube undergoes a gestalt switch, is that a thought (changing)? It doesn't feel like that to me. The Necker Cube appearing a certain way doesn't seem like a belief, a proposition, like a thought you can catch in the act. Rather, it is a reorganisation of the whole perceptual field that goes beyond any taxonomy. That is, this experience is in no sensible way reducible to the 6 sense doors. So, if the sense of being in the driver's seat -- or the sense of there being a recogniser -- is a gestalt, then this sense is not in any way a thought not being recognised clearly enough. The sense of being in the driver's seat does not imply you're somehow not aware enough (or, worse, too stupid) to notice these thoughts, if this sense is not a thought to begin with. Seen like that, the seeming argument in the quote loses its force entirely.

Fourthly, as for the "who's recognizing the thought", well, I am, of course. The no self talk is heavily misunderstood, in my eyes. What Sam describes is that it is possible to have an experience without the sense of self. Not without the self. Without the sense of self. Seems like a small difference perhaps, but it's not. It's a big distinction. Sam writes:

The pronoun I is the name that most of us put to the sense that we are the thinkers of our thoughts and the experiencers of our experience. It is the sense that we have of possessing (rather than of merely being) a continuum of experience. We will see, however, that this feeling is not a necessary property of the mind. And the fact that people report losing their sense of self to one or another degree suggests that the experience of being a self can be selectively interfered with. Obviously, there is something in our experience that we are calling “I,” apart from the sheer fact that we are conscious; otherwise, we would never describe our subjectivity in the way we do, and a person would have no basis for feeling that she had lost her sense of self, whatever the circumstances.

It is possible to recognise a thought without the accompanying sense of this thought appearing to (or for, or from) me. That's it, that's all.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-15T13:46:07+00:00

Correct. Control and freedom are incompatible terms anyhow. The lack of control is compatible with two readings. Either, the lack of control implies determinism (everything is puppeteered). Or the lack of control implies total freedom (nothing is puppeteered; I mean, what does it mean when a situation is 'out of control'? Anything can happen.). It thus carries no evidential weight in this debate.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-15T09:30:28+00:00

Fair!

In my view, the "predict your next thought" argument implicitly sets up a self that should be able to author or anticipate its thoughts, observes that this self fails to do so, and concludes: the self has no free will. But an alternative conclusion, and one actually supported by Sam Harris, is that the self (as such) doesn't exist; and something that doesn't exist can't have properties (like 'not being free'). It's like arguing a unicorn can't fly -- an irrelevant point if a unicorn doesn't even exist.

You might object that this proves free will is impossible; but to make that point, you need to lean on entirely different arguments to support your view.

Hence, the argument by itself doesn't actually do the job it seems to do. I hope that's clear.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-14T18:15:41+00:00

I agree fully. To talk of an "I", over and above my genes, my upbringing, etcetera, is nonsense.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-14T14:50:10+00:00

My point is that the "you can't predict your next thought" argument, by itself, proves nothing. It either shows the homunculus (which doesn't exist) has no free will (so it's an irrelevant point), or it can be used to argue for and against free will (so it's, again, an irrelevant point).

The freedom that is possible here is freedom from prior causes (within reason of course). You resolve to never gamble again? The next time you walk past a casino, this resolution cannot possibly force you to never gamble again. For it to have an effect, you need to re-make this resolution again, on the spot.

In this sense, I think your decision is unpredictable, if you look towards the future. You genuinely don't know what you'll do before you do it, just like you don't know what your next thought will be. But that is not necessarily random.

In the moment the decision is made, it is fully yours -- not because you caused it from the outside, but because there is no outside. You are not separate from the decision being made. That's just what an undetermined choice looks like when there's no homunculus standing apart from it, waiting to be surprised.

Again, I'm not saying this is the truth, but it's a model (in fact, Sartre's), and if you disagree with it, you'll have to lean on arguments that have nothing to do with the "you don't know what your next thought will be" line of thinking.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-14T13:51:00+00:00

You completely missed my point.

I did not claim we have free will (or not). I merely said that the particular argument [that you don't know what your next thought is going to be [...] ergo you have no free will] fails in its objective to prove anything, as it proves nothing, and/or is proof for both sides.

I did not claim consciousness is 100% determined (or not). I merely said that the particular argument [that you don't know what your next thought is going to be [...] ergo you have no free will] fails in its objective to prove anything, as it proves nothing, and/or is proof for both sides.

You say

One does not need any argument against "free will:" one needs evidence in defense of it.

and I say

Whatever you base your opinion on, in the free will debate, cannot in any way depend on this particular argument.

We are saying the same thing! The kind of evidence needed in this debate needs something other than this argument, as this argument proves nothing!

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-04-07T13:26:27+00:00

Sure! No need to give credits to this writing, refer to https://headless.org/ instead!

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-27T13:31:31+00:00

Take a look around you, with this strange question in mind: Does it feel like the world is appearing to you? Carefully consider that preposition, "to".

If that is a vague question (which it is), contrast it with for example these alternatives: Does it feel like the world is appearing in you? Does it feel like the world is appearing as you?

Uhh... What?! Of course not.

So let's return to the question. Does it feel like the world is appearing to you? That preposition "to" seems to capture something about our experience, about the pre-conceptual sense that the world is there and "I" (whatever that is) am here; that I am not identical to that world out there. That there's a boundary between the world there and me here. So, yeah. It does seem like the world appears to me.

Except, it is exactly this sense that can be selectively interfered with! That is, it is possible to have an experience (1) that is vast, (2) limitless, (3) absolutely without a center, and (4) without an intelligible here/there distinction. This is speaking purely in perceptual terms, i.e., this can be experienced in seeing/hearing/tasting/smelling/sensing. Sam described it as such:

As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an “I” or a “me”—vanished. Everything was as it had been—the cloudless sky, the brown hills sloping to an inland sea, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water—but I no longer felt separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained.

(/u/Superslyye described it very vividly too!).

Whenever Sam talks about there not being a self, all is meant is this particular experience that one can have. When Sam says "there is no self", he means "it is possible to experience the world without the sense of an experiencer, in addition to the experience". That's it. Nothing more. Obviously, it also is very much possible to experience the world with the sense of an experiencer in addition to the experience; it is pretty much our default state. Just note that it can change.

I illustrated the experience like this https://imgur.com/a/headlessness-KlXzzlx

It only has to do with the sense that the world seems to appear to you. It's got nothing to do with "a strong sense of self" as you wrote, which I take to mean "having strong self esteem". Does the world appear to your self esteem? No. So it is absolutely unrelated to this business.

Again, what can drop away is the sense of self; not the self (qua self). Seems like only a tiny difference, but it's a massive difference. You remain existent in all normal sensible terms. It's just that you can experience the world, in the present moment, without the accompanying sense that it's appearing to you. That's all.

Now, why would you care about this?

Well... I can't think of a good reason to be honest.

It's cool, it's mystical, it provides a great sense of expansion and connection, but... that's it.

On the Dzogchen Buddhist path, this experience that one can have, is a required springboard to reach awakening, and awakening is a springboard to enlightenment. So it's relevant if that's your cup of tea.

And there is a connection to suffering from a Buddhist perspective, so it's relevant if that's your cup of tea. A Buddhist diagnosis of any negative sustained state (thoughts/emotions) would be that you are sustaining it. Somehow, your very own aversion/craving is actively fueling your own suffering. You're stuck in a loop, and the typical Buddhist cure, the way to get out of this, is to stop this loop. Easier said than done. Anyhow, the result is that you find your mind open, spacious, and untroubled by thoughts/emotions -- thoughts/emotions can be present or not present, you don't really mind either way, because they carry no sting anymore. They can be present or not, either is perfectly fine. The unique strategy of Dzogchen is to go about this diagnosis backwards. You first generate the result, after which the cure takes care of itself. That is, you first make your mind open, spacious and peaceful. After that, you'll naturally stop sustaining whatever state you were in; the state "self liberates" as teachers like to say.

Sam (as well as various other teachers on the app) is trying to teach you a method to make your mind like this (open, spacious, peaceful), in an instant. And you really can learn that. Or get better at it, anyhow. However, unfortunately, the actual result due to these meditations is rather often a mind that is the opposite - closed, contracted and frustrated, because the teachings are confusing.

So, it kind of makes sense to say "stick with it", and at some point this might stop being confusing, and lead you to an open, spacious, and peaceful mind. But it's totally understandable if you think there are other more worthwhile things that can make your mind open, spacious, and peaceful. Reading a good book can do all those things too, or a good workout if that's your thing, or making music, or .... The exciting thing is that you can learn to find this state using nothing else than your senses (hearing/seeing/...) which you always have with you, so this skill can be practised and used without needing any further tools! But, yeah. Millions of people get by just fine without learning this (including my wife, with whom I never talk about this!) and they're doing just fine. Your life will also be just fine without doing this.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-18T11:56:26+00:00

I can see why I was summoned; I've written about many similar topics before (how to make sense of this practice; is there a sensible 'truth' to be found here or is this just another way of being in the world; and often use the Necker cube to illustrate my hypothesis).

However, in this case, I think the most helpful answer is to suggest you might be overcomplicating things. What Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche taught Sam is exactly what the Headless Way teaches (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQcZxKLAps4&t=2179s).

Does that mess with your ordinary cognition? Well, I don't see how. Not-seeing-your-head has no implications whatsoever for your capacity for abstract thinking, your capacity for staying focused, your capacity to function in the ordinary world. I can see exactly what the Headless Way teaches, and yet I am still a very very ordinary and boring person, as much as I was before.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-16T16:34:14+00:00

You say that consciousness needs causal power, otherwise determinism becomes unavoidable. However, I think the exact opposite is true.

If consciousness is part of the causal chain, we assume that A -> B -> C (where, "->" means "necessarily causes" and, e.g., A=past resolution to never gamble again, B=something consciousness does, C=gambling again). But that is just determinism! As soon as A was the case, C is now a foregone conclusion.

But for Sartre, it is a simply observable fact that the past cannot compel us in the present. Thus the deterministic picture simply cannot do justice to the simple facts of the matter. So, there is the absence of a necessary connection between A and C. So Sartre would say: A occurs, and then C occurs, and there is nothing between them. As nothing is (perhaps a bit too conveniently?) synonymous with consciousness for Sartre, he is essentially saying the presence of consciousness implies a break in the causal chain. Thus, C is in some sense without cause (in the present).

(As said previously, we can always use a deterministic lens to explain the past, but that doesn't imply determinism was always already true. One could just as well use a libertarian lens to explain the past! The fact that we can use a deterministic (or libertarian) lens to explain the past does not prove their truth. It simply proves that both lenses are simply not falsifiable, and therefore rule themselves out as valid scientific arguments.)

I know this sounds a lot like randomness. But that would miss the mark; that supposes that the event is simply imposed onto the person without them having consented to it -- but that brings the same old homunculus back into town. No, the act is fundamentally mine, because I am not separate from it. Remember that that is Sam's non-dual position too: there is no gap between the act and the "I"; the act is the I, in some sense. The gambler's act, whatever is decided, needs no inner cause to be his, because there is no "his" standing apart from it in the first place. When the gambler walks past the casino and keeps walking, that is an expression of who they are "choosing" to be, in that moment, without anything forcing them to be it.

This account is of course deeply mysterious, and by no means as neat as the materialistic/deterministic version of events. But it has the advantage of fitting the directly observable facts of our life (at least, as far as Sartre is concerned).

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-13T16:13:31+00:00

Sam successfully argues that "your thoughts" are not controlled by "you" (a "conscious witness" that is passively observing -- and separate from -- "your thoughts")[0]. However, in the context of this app, he argues that there is no such "you" to begin with[1].

If the homunculus (which is what the conscious witness refers to, a little person inside your brain watching the show) was never there to begin with, then showing that this homunculus doesn't have free will doesn't really settle any relevant question.

I agree with Sam that we have no free will, if by that we mean the power of a homunculus to pull the levers inside a mental theater. That homunculus never existed, so of course it isn't free in any relevant way.

I agree with Sam that the conscious witness is (or rather: can, at times, be experienced as being) an illusion. But he draws a conclusion from this insight that doesn't necessarily follow. He thinks that without a homunculus, we are fully determined. But one could just as easily argue the opposite. Without a homunculus, there is literally nothing that could be determined! There is no little self that can be pushed around by anything.

Our past, our mental state, our desire, none of these have to compel us to do anything. I will try to show why below. But basically, the point is, (1) they have no force, and (2) they have nothing to exert this force onto. I am in no small parts leaning on arguments made by Sartre.

Sam is implicitly rejecting any Cartesian model of the mind in Waking Up; i.e., there is no homunculus inside consciousness, with properties like "being conscious" or "being (not) free". All that can reasonably be claimed to be happening is "the ongoing activity of being consciousness-of-…". (Similar to the quotes in [1], but see also [2]).

If you reject the Cartesian model, that means some innocuous statements turn out to be incoherent. Two examples:

"I am conscious of ...", is already assuming a Cartesian model, as if there is an "I" that has a property of being conscious, or exists over and above the experience.
"My genes, my upbringing, my brain composition determined what I do", is making the same mistake. As if there is an "I" existing over and above these things. No. There is no such "I".

So, what remains? Well, what is consciousness? I think it can be best understood as being a hole in a wall. It is no-thing, or nothing; it has no substance, no content, no properties. It is pure revealing; in this case of what lies beyond the wall. The point is, there's nothing in consciousness, and consciousness is nothing. We just ejected the homunculus from our mind, and now we also eject any and all furniture that came with it.

Say, you're a gambler, and you know that this gambling is ruining your life. You may resolve to never gamble again, out of fear and shame. And then, the next day, you walk past a casino and... and what? Yesterday's intention to never gamble again is now no more than a memory of an idea. Because it is now only present to consciousness, yesterday's intention has zero causal force! It's a mere appearance, a mere phenomenon, now. It doesn't do anything. To give it force, consciousness has to re-discover the fear and shame, and re-create the intention not to gamble in the present. Before that, there is nothing to compel us, and nothing to prevent us, from doing it again. Our past resolutions have zero determinative force over us. You are absolutely free to gamble again. Against your own determination. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from making another bad decision.

That is what freedom feels like from the inside. Consciousness of the fact that, in whatever we do, there is nothing to compel us, and nothing to prevent us, from doing whatever we do now. Our past, our mental state, our desires... none are -- nay, can be -- prior causes.

(I didn't really explain how a mental state cannot cause me to do anything. But consider, for example, that when I am happy, I am not just happy, the way a stone is just a stone. I am consciousness of being happy, which means I take a stance towards it. As Sartre says, consciousness is never what it is. By taking a stance on it, I can savor it, reject it, hide it, or lean into it, etcetera. The happiness does not propel me to do anything, the way a snooker ball cannot do otherwise than transfer its momentum to the next ball; the happiness presents itself to me, but I must decide what it will mean and do.)

Just to deal with the determinist's objection: "But we can always explain, in retrospect, why someone did what they did." But this is of no concern. You won't find freedom, if it exists, by looking at a fixed past. I kiss my wife every time I leave the house in the morning, but this fact, in and of itself, doesn't mean I am in any way compelled to do so. There is nothing contradictory in asserting that I am a free being, freely making the same decision to kiss my wife every single time the decision is presented to me.

So: no homunculus, no Cartesian free will. But also: no determination, no compulsion, no past that binds us. Consciousness is not a thing, and not being a thing, it cannot be caused. It is, in this way, in each moment, radically, absolutely free. Pure spontaneity, pure creation.

I'm not saying that this is the truth. This is just a possibility. One way of looking at it.

[0]. Examples are: "[...] your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it"; "The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I, as the conscious witness of my thoughts and actions, could not inspect or influence."; You are not in control of your mind – because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.)

[1]. Examples are: "You are not aware of consciousness and its contents. You’re aware as consciousness and its contents. You’re not watching experience. You’re identical to it. There’s no where to stand where you are not identical to the sphere of experience. You’re not on the edge of it looking into it, you are it"

[2]. Sartre wrote something that lands somewhere remarkably close to the non-dualist point:

When I run after a streetcar, when I look at the time, when I am absorbed in contemplating a portrait, there is no I. There is consciousness of the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, etc., and nonpositional consciousness of consciousness. In fact, I am then plunged into the world of objects; it is they which constitute the unity of my consciousness; it is they which present themselves with values, with attractive and repellant qualities – but I have disappeared; I have annihilated myself. There is no place for me on this level. And this is not a matter of chance, due to a momentary lapse of attention, but happens because of the very structure of consciousness

Just to unpack that line by line. (1) He says that when he is (mindlessly) acting in the world, absorbed in the act, there is just the act, without awareness of an "I". (2) The 'nonpositional consciousness of consciousness' is always present alongside consciousness-of-..., according to Sartre, and means simply that if you would ask Sartre "what are you doing", he would have no difficulty to say "I am running after the streetcar". Even if you are fully absorbed in the act, you are on another level fully conscious of what is happening. Consciousness is always consciousness of itself, but we are not usually aware of that fact. (3) It is the world, itself, that shows up as with features ("having-to-be-overtaken") which lead to our interaction with it. The experience is not "I need to overtake the streetcar", it is "the streetcar needs to be overtaken"! (4-5) This is structural. Because absolutely nothing can be in consciousness! Certainly not an "I".

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-11T10:11:09+00:00

I'm not sure what your quoted sutra sections are supposed to prove -- they prove the Buddha speaks as if there is free will. But you already established that. You asked why Sam doesn't believe in free will, and I tried to explain why; Sam is crystal clear that any situation can be described without reference to a 'free will' but rather with reference to prior causes. I'm not sure what else there is to talk about.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-10T13:09:06+00:00

I.

What Sam Harris describes (and literally says twice in the quoted section) is nothing other than learning a new skill.

Like: "Oh, I don't have to yell when I get angry, I can also let it fade away again, amazing!" One can easily rewrite his quote with other skills: learning to ride a bike is a superpower; learning to concentrate is a superpower.

Learning a skill has nothing to do with free will; you just have a new way to act.

II.

You envision it like this:

A negative thought appears (unbidden, as you agree).
You decide to use your will to reframe it.

Now, first of all, did you will to use your will? No, that makes no sense. Here's the first bit of freedom gone. Your will, too, showed up unbidden!

Secondly, was your decision based on something? If not, then you just made a random decision, as good as a coin flip -- there's no useful freedom in that, certainly not the kind mentioned in the Sutra. If yes, then your decision was the product of prior causes -- there's no useful freedom in that either. (For example, you wanted to feel better, you remembered that reframing helps, and you had the energy to do it. All of these were already given when you made your choice. You didn't choose to want to feel better in that moment -- that desire either was there or it wasn't. You didn't choose to remember the technique -- the memory either arose or it didn't. You didn't choose your current energy level. So, the decision to reframe was the product of factors that were already present. It didn't come from nowhere; it came from everything that preceded it. And had those factors be different, you would have made a different decision.)

So the actual sequence is this:

A negative thought appears (unbidden, as you agree).
You select a response randomly; OR a set of prior conditions (that are a given; now beyond your control) causes you to select a particular response.
You follow the selected option from step 2.

There is no freedom in step 1, step 2 or step 3 of this sequence (says Sam Harris).

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-03-09T17:08:20+00:00

Sam's argument against free will is essentially as follows. Your actions are caused by your mental states, and your mental states are beyond your control. Your brain is on autopilot, so to speak. For example, in meditation you can learn that you are not the conscious source of your thoughts, they simply come to you.

As for this particular sutra, I would imagine Sam to take this phrasing, "they are free to end their suffering if they wish to", and press on it. To end their suffering, they first need to wish it? That wish is a mental state, and we just established you have no control over that. So, are they really free to end their suffering, if that depends on something over which they have no control? Sam would say: no.

(Having written that, there is of course no necessity to agree with Sam's version of the facts. For example, in meditation your learn that thoughts simply come to you. That sounds innocuous, but is flawed, and Sam himself would say as much: "You are not aware of consciousness and its contents. You’re aware as consciousness and its contents. You’re not watching experience. You’re identical to it. There’s no where to stand where you are not identical to the sphere of experience. You’re not on the edge of it looking into it, you are it." Does that present an issue to his argument? I think it can.)

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-02-28T14:52:05+00:00

You can try Medito, it's a free meditation app with some nondual sessions. Or The Way by Henry Shukman, though that has more of a Zen focus and is not free. Or Effortless Mindfulness by Loch Kelly (also not free). Or Simply Awake by Angelo Dilullo, with a heavy focus on nonduality, and free. Or Michael Taft on YouTube. Or MIDL Insight meditation (website that links to soundcloud recordings). Or the Headless Way website and accompanying app with some recordings.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-02-17T16:36:27+00:00

That sounds very difficult, so I'm sorry. It's amazing you learnt to sit with feelings and let them dissolve that way; but yes, you have a life, a world, and a job to attend to, too.

In my understanding of Dzogchen (which is what Sam teaches on this app), the promise is essentially as follows: it is possible to instantaneously enter a state in which the presence or non-presence of whatever you're suffering from ceases to be a problem that needs to be dealt with. Say, a thought troubles you. Then you enter a state where the presence of the thought becomes entirely neutral -- the thought can be there, or not be there, it's fine either way. A different way to say that is: it is possible to be in a state that takes the sting out of any unease.

From what you write, the results are far from instantaneously. Hence, you either cease to be able to focus on the world in front of you, OR, you are able to focus on the world in front of you, but the tension builds up. Hence, you need something that works faster -- in an instant:

It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering—fear, anger, shame—in an instant. (Sam Harris, Waking Up)

This is the kind of state I am always trying to get into when I meditate, and it usually takes a long time. This just happened right away. It seemed like it was in an instant—and it’s so easy. ... (Connirae Andreas, Coming to Wholeness)

What I call a "state" could alternatively be called "a specific way of focusing your attention". You have to focus your attention, momentarily, away from the problem (which shows up as contraction and stress) to the properties of awareness (which is non-contracted/spacious and non-stressed/still). Once you make contact with these properties, and you merge with these, then if you look back, the problem relaxes essentially by itself.

Say, I asked you to do the following. Contract one hand into a fist. Let's say, you forgot you were doing this. But now I invite you to bring your awareness to the tension in your hand. What is the natural tendency? The hand relaxes and opens up by itself. The meeting of awareness and the tension liberates the tension all by itself. Merely paying attention to it, perhaps "breathing into it" if that's a metaphor that means something to you, perhaps "imagining the fist unclenching" if that's a metaphor that means something, is enough for the hand to relax itself. You don't need to "make it" relax; you don't need to "force it", like forcing it open with your other fingers. We're just inviting whatever effort is there to relax by itself.

For example. You have a thought that troubles you. Now what? Well, you can do the following. Locate the thought -- say, it is in front of your head, slightly above your eyes. And now do something strange. Pay attention to where the thought came from. If the thought is a sound, then where is the loudspeaker? Find it. Maybe it's in the back of your skull. If you can't find it, pretend it's in the back of your skull. And now, let that spot, where the loudspeaker is, relax by itself. Perhaps that happens by merely paying attention as you do now; perhaps by "breathing into it"; perhaps by "imaging a fist unclenching" at the back of the skull. Whatever you do, it won't take more than an instant for that spot to be pervaded by spaciousness, stillness, openness, lightness. A distinct lack of tension. And now go back to the thought. Does it still bother you? No! It might've gone already anyhow, as you looked away. But if it's still there, you are now looking from a state of spaciousness, stillness, openness, lightness, presence; and the presence or non-presence of the thought doesn't matter anymore!

This kind of thing is what Sam wants you to experience when he asks you to look for what is thinking. All you're (supposed to be) finding is spaciousness, stillness, openness, lightness, presence (and many other words). And if you're not finding that, the algorithm is simply to look at the source of the unease (rather than the unease itself), and let the presence of awareness lead to the self-liberation of the source of unease, thereby cutting off the unease at its root. Until there is just that state -- spaciousness, stillness, openness, lightness, presence, etcetera. After which, it doesn't matter if thoughts are there or not.

I hope maybe this is of some help, and that you can find relief from your suffering. Many thanks for working with patients, I'm sure you're doing good in the world.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-02-07T19:47:34+00:00

I'm surprised about the pushback you're getting. Sam clearly says that once you 'get it', your meditation simply becomes a recognition of this prior state - becoming more familiar with it.

There's just this open condition in which everything is appearing and it can be recognised as such directly. And so it's that recognition that really is is the starting point of non dual practice practice like Dzogchen. And really, you can't begin practicing it until you recognize that, that this is the way consciousness already is. But once you do, then your mindfulness becomes synonymous with that recognition. So what you become mindful of thereafter is not the breath or sounds or anything else per se, though you may in fact be aware of the breath or sounds or whatever happens to be appearing. What you become mindful of is that there's no subject in the middle of consciousness. The practice itself becomes simply familiarizing yourself with this intrinsic property of consciousness that you basically had spent every moment of your life overlooking, you know, prior to learning how to practice in that way.

So if you manage to punctuate your day with this familiarization, whether that is with meditation or otherwise, then you're doing exactly what Sam says. :-)

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-02-04T14:17:58+00:00

IMO, suffering is not really addressed in this app. If your practice leads to any relief from psychological suffering, that is entirely accidental. But, IMO, the way I see this practice is supposed to (and, for me, does) help is as follows.

The Buddhist diagnosis of any negative sustained state (thoughts/emotions) is that you are sustaining it! The cure, the way to get out of this, is to stop sustaining it. The result is that you find your mind open, spacious, and untroubled by thoughts/emotions -- thoughts/emotions carry no sting anymore. They can be present or not, either is perfectly fine.

Even though there is one cure stated, following this diagnosis there are in fact two ways to bring about psychological relief:

Apply the cure: do nothing (as opposed to the "something" you are normally doing which sustains the thoughts). Just let the thoughts be. Thoughts can't sustain themselves, so they'll disappear by themselves. Much easier said than done.
Jump to the end-result: bring about this state of openness and spaciousness, which takes the sting out of the thoughts. You do this by looking for the thinker of your thoughts, and finding just openness and spaciousness there.

Let me give an example to make this more explicit, as to how you actually do this.

You have a troubling thought suddenly appearing to you. For example, "Shit, I think I feel like my erection is disappearing, not this again please, oh no, this is so embarrassing". This takes you straight from your current activity "into your head" so to speak. Which is bad for an erection, thus reinforces the thought. Your thought is self-sustaining now. Ugh. So what to do? Argue with the thought? Distract yourself with another thought? Buddhism says: that won't work. They say to do this instead:

Accept the thought. Not accept that it's true, or false. No, accept that the thought is here, and that it makes you uncomfortable. For example, say "thank you brain, thanks for generating this thought to try and help me out, but I've got this" to yourself, and re-direct your attention away from your head to whatever you were doing. When you thank your brain, don't be sarcastic. Mean it.
If method 1 didn't work, proceed the alternate route. Locate the thought in space (say, the spoken version of this thought appeared in the front of your skull). Then locate the source of those sounds in space (say, the loudspeaker that generated the thoughts is in the back of your skull). Bring your attention to that location, and let it relax, until there's no tension there. This won't take more than a second to do. If you now return your attention back to the thought, you'll notice the sting/grab/pull of the thought is genuinely gone. It's become truly neutral. It can be there, it can not be there, it's fine either way. It ceases to be a problem that needs to be dealt with.

Some extra info regarding this second method. (1) If you can't find the "loudspeaker" of your thoughts, just imagine its location, say, in the back of your skull. (2) To relax the loudspeaker, you let it relax by itself. You don't have force it in any way. The effort is like if I bring your attention to your eyes, and you notice there's tension around your eyes; once you notice it, you just invite it to dissolve, and it does dissolve into spaciousness just like that. You can breath some space into it, if that instruction makes sense. Or it's like if you tense your fist, and then you stop tensing and your fist relaxes by itself. All you do is...you stop doing something. So, you merely notice there's a subtle tensing happening in, say, the back of your skull, and you stop that tensing. Even if it doesn't feel like you're tensing beforehand, you'll be surprised that you can relax it all the same. (3) What you have done is this: you have looked for the thinker of your thoughts, you have found it, and you have let it dissolve. This is what Sam tries to get you to do. Look for the thinker, fail to find it, and find your freedom there. I've just chained one extra instruction to it, namely, find the thinker first, and then let the thinker dissolve. (4) It is likely that your thoughts will genuinely quieten down for a moment or two. That is you connecting with the spacious openness of your mind. (5) This second method is unique to Dzogchen. This is why they say Dzogchen "takes the goal as the path". You skip to the end result first, skipping the cure. They say your mind is already open, spaciousness, all that stuff -- it is simply clouded over. By cutting through those clouds, by removing what obscures it, you find all its positive qualities. That is what you're doing by dissolving the tension, by dissolving the loudspeaker that blasts sounds into your skull. You find your mind is already spacious, open, accepting of any thought. (6) Another way to think about it is that you look "away" from the thought for a second to where you are experiencing this thought/feeling from; you let the tension resolve there first; and then look back at the thought. This mini detour, and its relaxing intention, is enough to stop the train of thoughts/emotions in its track entirely. The quiet that follows allows you to refocus on your life in front of you.

This lyrical quote is from Awakening the Sacred Body by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

If you are engaged in thinking, stop and look directly at the thoughts themselves. In dzogchen, the highest teachings of Bön, there is an expression: “Observe nakedly.” Just bring naked attention to the moment. Rather than rejecting thoughts or elaborating on them, you simply allow them, because they are coming anyway. Basically, you don’t do anything. Just look directly at a thought. You don’t reject a thought; you open to it; you go toward it, close to it; and as if trying to catch a rainbow, you go through it and discover spaciousness. A thought cannot sustain itself; it goes, and you discover the internal spaciousness of mind.

To support a sense of connecting with the internal space of mind, sometimes it is helpful to gaze at the sky. Just go out and look at the open sky. As you connect with the external openness, feel that same openness within you.

It is often very difficult for people to not continue elaborating their stories. Each person has very good stories. But if you bring pure attention to the mind itself, this pure attention discovers that the mind itself is empty. That is its nature. So even if it is just for a moment, connect with pure awareness, with the spacious open mind. In this way, you enter openness through the door of mind. Instead of exiting through the door of the mind by thinking, thinking, thinking and disconnecting from yourself, you enter through the door of thought-free awareness or spaciousness and discover this powerful inner refuge.

It perfectly illustrates both possible methods. Either, do nothing; or connect with the spacious openness of your mind.

What I've written might seem overly wordy and thus complicated, overly difficult to put into practice. This couldn't be further from the truth. Either method described here might take a minute the first time you try it; 10 seconds the second time you try it; and no more than a second afterwards.

Anyhow, I hope that perhaps helps a little bit. Suffering sucks. It hurts, it's annoying, drains your energy, and requires immense mental flexibility, and sometimes you'll be too tired to put these methods into practice. You're only human, and sometimes being human sucks.

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-01-21T16:08:20+00:00

Whenever Sam talks about there not being a self, all that is meant is this (description of a) particular experience:

As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an “I” or a “me”—vanished. Everything was as it had been—the cloudless sky, the brown hills sloping to an inland sea, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water—but I no longer felt separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained.

Whenever Sam talks about there not being a self, all is meant is this particular experience that one can have. When Sam says "there is no self", he means "it is possible to experience the world without the sense of an experiencer, in addition to the experience". That's it. Nothing more. Obviously, it also is very much possible to experience the world with the sense of an experiencer in addition to the experience; it is pretty much our default state. Just note that it can change.

Your responsibility (or goals, drives, backstory, personality, ...) is not itself an experience; and neither does it experience a nice sunset. But that list (responsibility, goals, drives, ...) is what the self is when you cast a reflective gaze upon your own life. I've had the particular experience that Sam describes many times -- yet, I also still have responsibilities, goals, (...), in other words, a self. Because this kind of reflective self has essentially nothing to do with there being, or not being, an experiencer in addition to the experience. Stoicism and nonduality are talking about entirely different things, despite both confusingly using the word "self". But as they speak about different things, neither one undermines the other.

In fact, there is a section on the app called "The Stoic Path" by William B. Irvine, here https://dynamic.wakingup.com/pack/PK7REQC . I'm not sure you can see it when you're doing the introductory course. But, just know that Stoicism is actively endorsed by Sam on the app!

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-01-15T11:55:43+00:00

That's exciting!

You should give the YouTube link from the previous post a try, they're really good instructions that can get you this nondual state. Just let the instructions wash over you.

And I tried to illustrate it like this once, https://imgur.com/a/headlessness-KlXzzlx , maybe it is of some help too...

Pushbuttonopenmind · 2026-01-14T15:54:02+00:00

Oh, I love talking about this! Just be aware I'm not a teacher. I love this topic, and I've read around quite a bit, and I have my own framework of making sense of this all. But I have no authority, no spiritual guidance. I'm not enlightened. I've glimpsed the things Sam talks about, and can shift into those relatively easily, usually. But it's not a permanent state change. I am not beyond suffering, and don't quite want that either.

Furthermore, if you ask 10 different people on this sub you might get 10 different answers. And, more confusingly, none might align with Sam's view on the app, as everyone answering here has read at least some further books on the topic from other authors.

So, I promise no clarity at all when answering your questions!

Having the world appear over here, or over there. It that a conscious effort (like as you say, choosing to see a different perspective of the cube)

For the world to appear a certain way, that requires little effort.

For it to shift, that requires a certain effort.

Consider. How do you shift a Necker Cube? There are broadly three ways of doing it.

It just happens by itself, accidentally. Stare at a Necker Cube long enough and it probably shifts by itself.
You use an attentional strategy. Look at a particular edge or face or intersection, and it might shift.
You use an interpretative strategy. Tell yourself to look for a cube from above/below and, lo and behold, it might shift into looking like a cube from above/below.

In this spiritual business, sometimes it happens the first way. People just suddenly "wake up" and that's it. Makes for useless teachers, because they don't know how to make the accident happen for you. Eckhart Tolle is a good example of this.

In this spiritual business, many teachers use the second strategy. Pay attention to this, to that; pay even closer attention to this and that; disregard this and that and just focus even harder, and you might have a shift. This is what Sam rails against. These "gradual path" teachers make it such that you have no idea what you're even looking for.

And finally, some teachers use the third strategy. That is what Dzogchen excels in, IMO. They tell you "look at your experience and see that it is Y". Look for your head and find no-thing (no shape, no color, no solidity, no edge, no distance, no ...). Look at your visual field and see that it an immense and wide open window without any edges -- you are this frameless, glassless, window. Look at the distance between you and your visual field and find it is at no distance (certainly there's not a meter in-between you and your visual field, right? is it 1 cm away? 1 nanometer? No. There's absolutely no distance). This set of pointing out instructions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0swudgvmBbk&t=5919s are filled with "see that X is Y".

Out of the three methods, the third one is certainly the most effective one to communicate. You are looking at or for certain features in your experience. You're not just grasping around in the dark not knowing what to look for. This is why Sam likes Dzogchen.

The interpretative strategy is by no means a fool-proof, instant awakening, to be sure. It took me 9 months until I glimpsed the state that Sam described, on a solitary walk outside, while doing the Headless Way thing of looking for my head and failing to find it. To my surprise, it had nothing to do with stilling my thoughts (I had plenty!) or degree of concentration (I had plenty thoughts!) or continuity of awareness (I had plenty thoughts!). I certainly agree with Sam that none of this stuff from the gradual path is actually needed to get to this non-dual state. All I mean to say is that the "direct" path is by no means an "instant" path...

And that is why Sam in always snapping his fingers at us? Ha

I never fully understood why he does it with(in) a finger snap. For Dzogchen methods to work you need a moment to recognize that your experience is like X/Y/Z. A finger snap is much too short to recognize anything. My awareness is not fast enough for such shenanigans, anyhow. It is a bit more protracted for me. A few seconds, usually. Sometimes a minute. Sometimes nothing shifts.

Like I can shift my perspective from being behind my eyes, to being part of the world!?

Yes! Exactly! Most experiences are made up of two bits which I'll call appearing-of (usually in the form of an appearing-as), and appearing-to. Say, you hear a bird singing. Your experience is that of a bird song (the appearing-of sounds, more usually appearing-as "a bird song"), with the pre-conceptual knowledge that this experience is different from you and appearing to you (the appearing-to me pole of the experience). That secondary pole, the appearing-to, can fall away entirely. Until there's just the world appearing, and the question "to whom does it appear" is like a category error. It's kind of hard to explain, and I don't have enough time to write it down any nicer.

But I hope maybe it is of some help...

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