Interview with Sam Harris (Part 3)
November 24, 2004 | 9 Comments
Atheist bloggers Strange Doctrines and Brian Flemming continue the questioning of The End of Faith author Sam Harris on the merits of meditational mysticism. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.
STRANGE DOCTRINES: You state, “[T]he feeling we call ‘I’ is one of the most pervasive and salient features of human life: and its effects upon the world, as six billion ’selves’ pursue diverse and often incompatible ends, rival those that can be ascribed to almost any other phenomenon in nature. Clearly, there is nothing optimal–or even necessarily viable–about our present form of subjectivity.” (214) This puts me in mind of W.H. Auden’s remark: “We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.” I read Auden’s irony here as laying bare a central puzzle about the notion that the highest morality (or the most advanced state of being) consists in setting the self and its reflective interests aside: The meaning of my existence surely must include me, and so subjectivity (and whatever degree of egoism that entails) would seem necessary for any meaningful human life.
Is Auden (as I read him) wrong? If so, why? If not, what would the optimal” form of subjectivity look like?
HARRIS: Leaving aside the issue of what Auden may or may not have meant, I think your question goes to the link between ethics and spiritual experience. I discuss this a little in my book. To my mind, the contradiction between true selfishness and true selflessness is only apparent. (I’m by no means the first person to make this observation.) From the perspective of most spiritual traditions (once again, I use the word “spiritual” squeamishly and in a restricted sense), to be truly selfish is to seek the happiness that only comes with the total abandonment of self, and the abandonment of self opens the door to those states of mind that have been traditionally associated with saint-like selflessness. There’s a passage in my book (p. 186-187) that gets at this issue with respect to the emotion of love, ending with the following observation: “There is a circle here that links us to one another: we each want to be happy; the social feeling of love is one of our greatest sources of happiness; and love entails that we be concerned for the happiness of others. We discover that we can be selfish together.”
The other point to make, perhaps, is that even on strict retreat, while attempting to meditate every waking moment, most of us will still spend much of our time lost in thought, feeling like separate selves, and motivated on the basis of this feeling. So the total loss of self is a very rare problem, if it is a problem at all.
Another thing to mention, perhaps, is that successful (selfless) meditation is by no means synonymous with the total suppression of thought. There are types of meditation that try to achieve this, of course. And in the beginning, discursive thinking really is an obstacle to concentration. But there comes a point of stability in meditation in which thoughts can arise and yet cease to be distracting, which is to say they cease to imply the existence of an inner thinker who is thinking them. There’s a beautiful image that the Tibetan Buddhists use, describing thoughts at this stage as being like “thieves entering an empty house.” So the “optimal” form of subjectivity is surely compatible with thinking.
BRIAN FLEMMING: Several years ago I edited an instructional video about zazen meditation for a California Zen center. It was my first exposure to that culture. While I found the focus on breathing to be similar to yoga or other forms of physical exercise, the trappings of a religion or cult designed to control people were clearly present: the students submitted to the authority of the guru, who would order them to think about confusing concepts, which would humble them and cause further submission; as a group they thought of themselves as different and better (more “enlightened”); and so they would proselytize (the purpose of the video, I discovered). Is it possible to explore consciousness under the instruction of an authority (”serious training is usually in order,” you say above) and have the experience *not* turn into religion?
HARRIS: This question of how healthy it may or may not be to idealize a spiritual teacher is an interesting one. First, we should note that this issue visits us throughout our culture. Just look at how we treat great athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Such enchantment is not entirely misplaced, of course, because certain people really are the best in the world at what they do The same is true in science, where people like Richard Feynman inevitably become the objects of a kind of hero-worship. Other scientists even succumb to these devotions, if for no other reason than that they are in a better position to appreciate a virtuoso performance when they see it. So the first point to make is that idealization is not always a sign of infantile projection. As long as we value certain talents, we will have a special fascination for those who are most talented. That said, there are surely dysfunctional forms of guru-infatuation and group-think.
The bottom line, however, is that spiritual practice is a domain of genuine expertise (or its lack), and so there will be both experts worth listening to and charlatans worth avoiding. All of this is complicated by the fact that devotion to a guru — that is, love and gratitude toward a spiritual mentor — is a legitimate (and even unavoidable) aspect of this line of inquiry. Of course, people often feel love and devotion toward teachers of all sorts, but in the area of spiritual practice, these emotional states are very closely related to the subject under study. So the answer to your question is a qualified “yes.” Yes, I think it should be possible to do all this without falling into egregious cultishness and irrationality. But it should not surprise us too much when some of that happens. I would wager that some of the people hanging around Feynman when he was at his prime were as annoying as anyone you met at the Zen center.
[Interview continued here]
November 24th, 2004 @ 12:44 pm
There is another aspect to meditation. By definition, the point of meditation is to create an empty space in the jumble of your thought stream, where your true self can blossom for a while. But (especially if you’re new to meditation) that empty space can look like a vacuum that needs to be filled, and it often becomes an opportunity for irresponsible gurus to slip in their baggage of crap.
So, one reason for using a meditation guide is to avoid this kind of psychological trap. Guides are human, and they enjoy being praised and revered and glorified by others as much as we all do. So be on the lookout: as soon as you think you detect supernatural properties in your meditation guide, get rid of those thoughts or get rid of the guru.
A Zen saying is “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”. By definition, you are the buddha. Therefore, any buddha you meet outside yourself has to be an emotional construct, an illusion of your brain, so rid yourself of that. Yes, it is OK to admire Nature or Jesus Christ or Julius Caesar or Winston Churchill, but when you start sanctifying him, lighting candles to him, ascribing miracles, it’s time to dump him.
Something like that.
November 24th, 2004 @ 3:22 pm
Hmmmm, June the guru.
Thanks for that.
November 24th, 2004 @ 4:01 pm
Leon, I alone know the way and will guide you to the light.
Please send the deed to your house to Paypal, and you will have eternal life.
Trust me.
November 24th, 2004 @ 6:33 pm
June,
I’m probably not supposed to negotiate with the guru but in return for giving you all my world goods I at least expect an orange sheet and a simple wooden bowl.
November 25th, 2004 @ 5:25 am
And so it starts, Debbie. Next thing you’ll want a spoon. And then some rice. And then a cushion, a prayer mat, a special haircut, a prayer wheel, and your own cave! That’s why the Buddha returned the vacuum cleaner: too many attachments.
November 25th, 2004 @ 6:02 am
give me some inner peace or i’ll mop the floor with ya
November 25th, 2004 @ 11:35 am
I see Buddhism as an early open-source project where the respectability of a teacher should come in terms of results, not mere reverence. If one desires to talk about the rather subjective experiences in mediation it helps to have a single consistent terminology to explore it. Buddhists seem to have the best tools yet. Still there seems to be a lot of bogus around than anything else. When you can’t live without the teachings and the initiated people around you, you have made Buddhism a religion for yourself, and it all becomes whooplaa!
There is nothing to guarantee anything remarkable for anyone trying meditation. To accept suggested ideas, on faith, helps as long as one understands that these ideas may then be mainfested through that faith and not be anything more than products of wild imagination. Still they remain things worth to go and see. Going through a huge number of different mental states allows one not to take for granted the ordinary state of mind. Missing some aspects or having something new allows for comparison. Given two or more people can attain similar altered states, with a lot of suspect, gives room to discussion and interpretation. To conclude something concrete about their nature simply through agreeing with each other is madness.
Of course, there always may be the case that there is a connection with religious experience, meditative enlightenment and a spontaneous psychosis. They could all be the same except their nature is different through different suggestive basis. If psychosis through meditation is attainable through will and effort, it might turn out to be valuable. To be able to come and go as one desires, now that, that would be real magic.
Some nice quotes:
“Real Masters never charge for their services, nor do they accept payment in any form or any sort of material benefits for their instructions. This is a universal law among Masters, and yet it is an amazing fact that thousands of eager seekers in America and elsewhere, go on paying large sums of money for “spiritual instruction.”. Masters are always self-sustaining. They are never supported by their students or by public charity.” – awakening 101
“Hui-k’o, the Second Patriarch of Zen passed on the bowl and robe to his successor, the Third Patriarch, Seng-ts’an, signifying the Transmission of the Dharma. Hui-k’o, who had received the seal of approval from Bodhidharma himself, then went everywhere drinking and carousing around like a wildman and partaking in the offerings of the brothel districts. When people asked how he could do such a thing, being a Patriarch of the Zen school and all, he would respond with: “What business is it of yours?” – awakening 101
- vince
* awakening 101 – Mysteriously huge amounts of interconnected web pages containing everything.
If you have time, just have fun! Link
November 29th, 2004 @ 10:58 am
Is it me, or did Mr. Harris seem too rushed to answer the first question adequately?
The response to the followup question about teachers was fine, but the answer to the first question is as clear as mud. Mr. Harris responded about mediation, while the question was about higher morality and meaning.
The only way the response makes sense at all is by using some kind of newspeak definition of “selfish.”
Just me?
February 7th, 2005 @ 8:14 am
After a tragedy, I felt lost and turned to Tibetan Buddhism for comfort. There was a nice group of people there and the teachings were all about love and compassion. They encouraged us think for ourselves and said they were creating an enlightened society.
As time went on I found that was just what they told us in the beginning:( As in implicit and explicit rules)
Their real opinions are:
Women are subhuman. Monks are gods. And – most importantly – if you sleep with a monk they will give you a pin to wear to show all your friends. (it gives you status and access to secret teachings)
If one person or a group of people run both church and state – they have too much power. It translates in how they relate to you and teach you.
I still meditate, but I don’t need to give my power away to someone who thinks I am a dog or who publically humilates me by publically exposing very personal things I told him when he was in his role as a meditation guide.