Yuval Noah Harari: belief

Transcript context

…I would be amiss if I didn’t ask, for people interested in hearing you talk about meditation, if they want to start meditating what advice would you give on how to start? You mentioned you couldn’t hold your attention on your breath for longer than 10 seconds at first. So how do they start on this journey? First of all, it’s a difficult journey. It’s not fun, it’s not recreational, it’s not time to relax. It can be very, very intense. The most difficult thing, at least in the meditation I practice, vipassana, which I learned from a teacher called S. N. Goenka, the most difficult thing is not the silence. It’s not the sitting for long hours. It’s what comes up. Everything you don’t want to know about yourself, this is what comes up. So it’s very intense and difficult. If you go to a meditation retreat, don’t think you’re going to relax. So what’s the experience of a meditation retreat when everything you don’t like comes up for 30 days?…

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