Our habitual identification with thought — that is, our failure to recognize thoughts *as thoughts,* as appearances in consciousness — is a primary s… - Sam Harris

Our past is not sacred for being past, and there is much that is behind us that we are struggling to keep behind us, and to which, it is to be hoped, we could never return with a clear conscience: the divine right of kings, feudalism, the caste system, slavery, political executions, forced castration, vivisection, bearbaiting, honorable duels, chastity belts, trial by ordeal, child labor, human and animal sacrifice, the stoning of heretics, cannibalism, sodomy laws, taboos against contraception, human radiation experiments - the lists is nearly endless, and if it were extended indefinitely, the proportion of abuses for which religion could be found directly responsible is likely to remain undiminished. In fact, almost every indignity just mentioned can be attributed to an insufficient taste for evidence, to an uncritical faith in one dogma or another.

According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.

What we discover when we begin practicing meditation is that there is no such thing as a boring object of attention. Boredom is simply a lack of attention. We only become convinced that we are bored because we have not found something compelling enough to capture our attention. Our attention is normally so blunt an instrument that we need something thrilling or terrifying to capture us. What pleases us most in those moments when we are fully captured by experience is the state of complete attention to the present. If you can muster that on your own through meditation, then any arbitrary object — the feeling of the wind past your hand as you walk — can be an exquisitely pleasurable thing to notice... Concentration is intrinsically pleasurable.