Perhaps the most important thing one can discover through the practice of meditation is that the "self"—the conventional sense of being a subject, a … - Sam Harris

And just as some people have obvious moral deficits, others must possess moral talent, moral expertise, and even moral genius. As with any human ability, these gradations must be expressed at the level of the brain.

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic — in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system — learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention — may radically transform one’s life.

What we discover when you 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 intrument 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 pleasureable thing to notice... Concentration is intrinsically pleasureable.