{"id":3771,"date":"2014-04-19T08:15:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T13:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2014-04-19T08:15:59","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T13:15:59","slug":"changing-fast-and-slow-notes-on-sam-harris-meditation-spiritual-impatience-and-the-rising-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/changing-fast-and-slow-notes-on-sam-harris-meditation-spiritual-impatience-and-the-rising-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing, Fast and Slow \/\/\/ notes on Sam Harris, meditation, spiritual impatience, and the rising sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch, in the same way this Doctrine and Discipline\u00a0(dhamma-vinaya)\u00a0has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual progression, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch.<\/em><\/p>\n

—\u00a0Uposatha Sutta, \u00a05.5<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

I<\/span>\n\u2019m looking forward to September\u2019s release of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion<\/i>, by Sam Harris. When an \u201cacerbic atheist\u201d (to use the phrase of ABC\u2019s Dan Harris in his mini pre-review<\/a>) who has done so much to open up\u00a0discourse\u00a0on faith, reason, cognitive science and ethics comes out of the closet about his personal\u00a0practice of meditation and proposes to evaluate his experience in terms of neuropsychology, it\u2019s some good times. But a number of details from this recent dialogue<\/a> with the same Dan Harris give me pause. (If he has modified these claims somewhere I haven’t come across, I ‘d be happy to know.)<\/p>\n

In the dialogue, the Harris known as Sam is describing to the Harris known as Dan the paradox at the heart of the meditation that seeks to deconstruct the self: how can we use consciousness to penetrate consciousness? The black box records the flight but not its own recording. How do you look directly at the thing that is looking?<\/p>\n

Sam uses the analogy of standing before a window. You can look through it to the garden beyond. Or, if you shift focus, you can catch a sudden glimpse of your own face. He likens the former to meditating on the contents of consciousness, and the latter to meditating on its mechanism. Harris valorizes meditating on the mechanism, and then appears\u00a0to draw a hard line between the two.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give a long quote from the dialogue here:<\/p>\n

SAM HARRIS: Imagine that the goal of meditation is to see your own reflection clearly in each moment. Most spiritual traditions don\u2019t realize that this can be done directly, and they articulate their paths of practice in ways that suggest that if you only paid more attention to everything beyond the glass\u2014trees, sky, traffic\u2014eventually your face would come into view. Looking out the window is arguably better than closing your eyes or leaving the room entirely\u2014at least you are facing in the right direction\u2014but the practice is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. You don\u2019t realize that you are looking through the very thing you are trying to find in every moment. Given better information, you could just walk up to the window and see your face in the first instant.<\/p>\n

The same is true for the illusoriness of the self. Consciousness is already free of the feeling that we call \u201cI.\u201d However, a person must change his plane of focus to realize this. Some practices can facilitate this shift in awareness, but there is no truly gradual path that leads there<\/i>. Many longtime meditators seem completely unaware that these two planes of focus exist, and they spend their lives looking out the window, as it were. I used to be one of them. I\u2019d stay on retreat for a few weeks or months at a time, being mindful of the breath and other sense objects, thinking that if I just got closer to the raw data of experience, a breakthrough would occur. Occasionally, a breakthrough did occur: In a moment of seeing, for instance, there would be pure seeing, and consciousness would appear momentarily free of any feeling to which the notion of a \u201cself\u201d could be attached. But then the experience would fade, and I couldn\u2019t get back there at will. There was nothing to do but return to meditating dualistically on contents of consciousness, with self-transcendence as a distant goal.<\/p>\n

However, from the non-dual side, ordinary consciousness\u2014the very awareness that you and I are experiencing in this conversation\u2014is already free of self. And this can be pointed out directly, and recognized again and again, as one\u2019s only form of practice. So gradual approaches are, almost by definition, misleading.<\/i> And yet this is where everyone starts. [Emphasis mine.]<\/p>\n

First, Sam\u2019s dismissal of the efficacy of \u201cmost spiritual traditions\u201d might be a casualty of brevity, but it’s overly broad and unfair. Second, the window analogy doesn\u2019t really work, if deconstructing the self-that-sees is the point. But more importantly, his rejection of gradual learning in meditative paths seems psychologically and maybe neurologically obtuse. And his seeming sureness about it all looks like a right-turn away from the bright skepticism he espouses. If Harris wants to become the kind of spiritual guide he won\u2019t be compelled to shred in a subsequent book, some tweaks may be in order.<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

H<\/span>\narris is off the mark about \u201cmost spiritual traditions\u201d missing the distinction between content and mechanism, or that they fail to recognize both indirect and direct approaches. The four Satipatthanas<\/em>\u00a0(“foundations of mindfulness<\/a>“) in the form of Buddhism that Harris is trained in, play\u00a0exactly\u00a0upon such distinctions in their objects of attention. Focus is to be placed on 1) sensations of the body itself, including its evidence of impermanence, 2) feelings of pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality, 3) “mind” itself, i.e., the presence or absence of grasping, aversion or delusion, as well as the mind\u2019s functioning as\u00a0restricted, scattered, enlarged, surpassed, concentrated, released and their opposites, and 4) dhammas:\u00a0<\/i>mental qualities and categories, such as the five hindrances, five aggregates of experience, six sense spheres, seven factors of awakening and the four noble truths. These four focal points effectively blend meditation upon the contents<\/em> of consciousness with the trickier meditation upon (but also\u00a0through) the mechanism<\/em> of consciousness. Each one on its own is felt to be sufficient to provoke “awakening”. (Thanks to Frank Jude Boccio<\/a> for helping me clarify these via personal email.)<\/p>\n

Second: the window analogy falls short of capturing the problem. I\u2019m surprised that Harris uses it, since it so clearly echoes the absurdity of the Cartesian Theatre<\/a>, as described by his colleague Daniel Dennett. The capacity of the viewer to either see objects through the window or to focus on his own reflection doesn\u2019t touch the mystery of who or what the viewer is. The analogy punts the question up to another order of abstraction: who is looking through the viewer\u2019s eyes at the reflection of the viewer\u2019s face? The analogy fails as it must, because its aim is to mitigate the fact that it is simply impossible for the mind to see its own mechanism in media res<\/i>. The Buddhism I learned used an analogy that didn\u2019t attempt to solve the unsolvable. It said: the eye cannot see itself. (In English, there’s a lovely homonymic elision: the \u201cI\u201d cannot see itself<\/i>.\u00a0<\/i>Yet another homonym captures the homunculus problem: the \u201cI\u201d cannot see its elf.<\/i>) This was enriched for me by the notions\u00a0of Drew Leder in The Absent Body<\/i><\/a>, which describes how sensory self-blindness is one of the many ways in which the invisibility of the body to itself resonates with the fact that the “self” seems to be other than the “body”, but is ultimately unfindable.<\/p>\n

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\"48605700\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The window\/reflection analogy is also dodgy because it uses the image of instantaneous facial recognition \u2013 a precognitive reflex <\/i>that constitutes one of the first building mechanisms of the social self \u2013 as a symbol for the post-cognitive deconstruction<\/i> of that same social self<\/i>. The image is at best confusing in a world in which facial recognition technology is becoming the gold biometric standard in naming, labeling, and surveilling the obedient citizen. The face is the site of the self\u2019s most public construction. In Harris\u2019 analogy, the startling recognition of your reflected face equals the shock of recognizing the mechanism of consciousness. But experiencing the mechanism of consciousness, if it were even possible, would mean recognizing that you have no \u201cface\u201d at all, but a continually generated flow of masks that no biometrics could ever define or control.<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

T<\/span>\no me, the larger problem is\u00a0Harris\u2019 claim that there is no truly gradual path<\/i> that could utilize contemplation upon the content of experience as preparation for a frank encounter with its mechanism. Let\u2019s lay aside the fact that he probably hasn\u2019t conducted longitudinal studies on meditators to confidently assess what works and what doesn\u2019t, or even how to measure the accuracy of meditators\u2019 self-reports, including his own. Not only can Harris\u2019 claim of \u201cno truly gradual path\u201d never be proven, it also flies in the face of the ways\u00a0in which we regularly\u00a0observe the infinite subtlety of change. Additionally, it glorifies a pedagogy of rupture that can anxiously perpetuate the very illusion of the self it seeks to uproot. There\u2019s nothing more supportive of the self-illusion than the thought that the nature or intelligence or beneficence of the self can be abruptly changed from a less attractive to a more attractive version: from a person who doesn\u2019t get it, into a person who does. The dream of the enlightened self erupting from a chrysalis of ignorance is the stickiest ruse of all.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the obvious blindspot. There is no way that Harris can know what<\/i> his months and years of staring through the glass instead of at the reflection prepared him for, or obscured him from. It’s easy for self-made pitta-predominant men to be anxious about\u00a0wasting time. But those dry years can give\u00a0a kind of graceful patience that naturalizes a growing revelation. Think of the Karate Kid grumpily painting those fence boards, and then realizing he can easily deflect a ninja attack. I\u2019m also reminded of one of my early writing mentors telling me that there was no such thing as wasted time: while I was distracting myself or bored, or depressed \u2013 this is when some of the key work might be happening. You just can\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The Kid, with Mr. Myagi, taking it slow.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a fine explicator of contemporary neuroscience who has written an entire book<\/a> deconstructing free will, Harris is aware that the causes of cognitive change are largely unintended, and buried deep within the prefrontal maze. But when it comes to meditation, does he imagine our sense of agency is suddenly trustworthy, or that we can pinpoint the causes of epiphanies? Will that then allow him to define the difference between true and false wisdom paths? That would seem to be where the argument leads. Some practices of meditation will, according to Harris, unlock the black box, and others won\u2019t. Sounds like something to build a religion upon, but we know that\u2019s not Harris\u2019 thing. Or is it? Despite his consistent attack<\/a> on the religious trappings of the techniques he loves, scholars\u00a0of religion take note: following the fall lecture tour<\/a> for Harris\u2019 new book could amount to a fascinating study in whether gatherings centering on charismatic atheism can meet the definitions of \u201cNew Religious Movement\u201d. The critic’s\u00a0paradox is that it can be very hard not to mimic what one attacks.<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

I<\/span>\nn the Tibetan Buddhist lineage I trained in, contemplating the selflessness of objects was taught as a natural introduction to contemplating the selflessness of other persons, and then finally the selflessness of one\u2019s own self. Teachers would say that the selflessness of one\u2019s own self was to be approached cautiously and gradually. If it wasn\u2019t, there could be a spectrum of unsavory results, from polyanna nihilism to outright dissociation. (We might look for both these trends in the shadow cast by Eckhart Tolle, whose work focuses almost exclusively upon the mechanism of self-focus.)\u00a0 The thing about deconstructing the essentialism of a chariot (\u00e0 la Nagarjuna) or a blade of grass (\u00e0 la Dogen and so many other poets), is\u00a0that it puts one into a consistent reverie upon the fact that things are not as rigid as they seem. This reverie slowly goes viral within.<\/p>\n

The reverie is also characterized by slowness. Far slower than the slow thought described by Kahneman, whose famous phrase<\/a> I\u2019m echoing in my title here. During a\u00a0slow-enough analysis, one can see how the very edges of moments are knit together by cognition into something one calls \u201ctime\u201d. One might slow down that very time enough to become aware of the ongoing granular process of the naming and knitting-together of things into the illusion of an objective view. Further, one may begin to feel how imputing essentialism to a blade of grass is filled with both pathos and unnecessary tension. One can see that we want to grant an impossible essence to each and every thing, perhaps so that we can feel a sense of command-and-control amidst this tender tsunami of data.<\/p>\n

We are like children, naming the world in order to possess it. It is a drive which, when we recognize its self-reflexive form \u2013 the will to bestow an essence upon ourselves<\/i> \u2013 can break our heart with its na\u00efvet\u00e9. This definitely gradual<\/i> deconstruction is a mood to which the meditator acclimates, slowly, as if beguiled by minimalist music or sound poetry. As the analysis becomes more and more natural, it might be finally turned upon the agency of consciousness itself, and if it\u2019s slow enough, it won\u2019t feel like the sky is falling.<\/p>\n

Lineage experience has believed this useful, I think, because it\u2019s clear that dramatic psychic changes are not only difficult to stabilize, but also mired in a web of student-teacher transference and counter-transference. Consciously or unconsciously, gurus thrive on provoking the dramatic shift, because they usually force adherents into dependency. (We might consider this to be the shadow of d\u012bk\u1e63\u0101 initiation.) I hope Harris explores this liability\u00a0of \u201cimmediacy\u201d teachings in his book. But from his largely uncritical endorsement of Eckhart Tolle\u2019s messianic message (if not the resulting deepities), we\u2019ll just have to wait and see. If Harris doesn\u2019t qualify his acceptance of neo-Advaitist Tollisms like \u201cYou<\/i> can\u2019t get there from here\u201d, he may unwillingly lend support to the toxic idea that there are \u201crealized\u201d teachers whose koans of impossible immediacy mirror their presumed post-human state.<\/p>\n

That Harris seems to believe that full enlightenment is possible should raise a red flag for those concerned about a new type of religious bureaucracy creeping into the market under the guise of secular rationalism. On the home page for “Waking Up with Sam Harris<\/a>“, he writes:<\/p>\n

There is no discrete \u201cI\u201d or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is\u2014the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself\u2014can be altered or entirely extinguished<\/strong>. [Emphasis added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He had me up to “entirely extinguished”. Because that’s pure speculation territory<\/a>, which will ultimately serve no-one but those who are willing to hawk\u00a0stories about the unverifiable accomplishments of their masters or themselves. No one can ever prove that the separate self-sense has been “entirely extinguished”. It’s actually an absurdity given the reality of the self-as-social-construction. It doesn’t matter how powerful your meditative technique is or how profound your experience of selflessness. When you emerge from meditation you will meet other people who will construct you as a self, and if your experience has not damaged your brain, you will comply. (Again, the above quote could be abbreviated and careless marketing copy, but my impression so far is that Harris takes pains to write exactly as he thinks.)<\/p>\n

When Tolle uses the “You can’t get there from here” line, he can<\/i> be interpreted as saying that the you<\/i> you think you are \u201cisn\u2019t going to meditate itself into a new condition\u201d, as Harris explains. But many people (I used to be one of them) will focus upon the accusatory construction of the sentence, effectively turning it into \u201cYou can\u2019t get there from here, but I have done so.\u201d What are Tolle\u2019s millions in net worth, if not the massive cultural transference that he is a different kind of human being? That he is someone unencumbered by the gradual muck of regular learning? And that, having crossed some impossible threshold of realization, he now resides on a planet where happiness and non-dual bitcoins shine out of his ass? It\u2019s much more like: You can\u2019t get to be Eckhart Tolle from here.<\/i> \u201cHere\u201d being reality, where learning is slow, and people remain largely themselves, even as we live in a culture built upon the technology-spiked illusion that instantaneous change \u2013 of identity, status, the oil economy \u2013 is possible.<\/p>\n

The graduated process is also described in detail in the Yoga Sutras<\/i>, where the editor Pata\u00f1jali advises\u00a0a spectrum of external and internal focal points for the contemplator that range from breath to mantra to an image of a deity to the richness of a dream. These are all offered prior<\/i> to the task of taking aim at the mechanism of consciousness through its various layers of memory and language. The idea is that one\u2019s quality of attention is the first faculty to be cultivated. Its object is unimportant, because the fact of interdependence will eventually show that the content of consciousness is ontologically indistinguishable from its mechanism. As McLuhan and the deconstructionists say: content and form are inseparable. Interrogating one is<\/i> interrogating the other.<\/p>\n

If you measure the value of an experience according to how much it feels like the sky is falling, the long and slow road will seem quite drab. And who can make money on it? \u00a0But perhaps we\u2019re only unimpressed by the gradual path because we don\u2019t notice and enjoy the infinite steps of the journey as much as we could. This exact failure lies at the heart of the anxiety of spiritual development, an anxiety sharpened by the \u201cimmediacy\u201d presentation that Harris is pointing to. The shock-and-awe scenario of psychic evolution betrays a fixation with crisis and revolution which echoes the very fearfulness it tries to overcome, and which characterizes the tone of most Axial Age spiritual reformers, who happened to be prolific in the more manic years prior to the age of forty. It forgets that most change in everything is almost imperceptibly subtle.\u00a0 Change happens molecule by molecule, neuron by neuron. Sea drop by sea drop.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

H<\/span>\nere\u2019s what I\u2019ve noticed: our spiritual narratives tend to be burdened by an impatience bias (there is no truly gradual path) commingled with a fascination for flashbulb memory<\/a> (the yearning for breakthroughs) and the anxiety of circumstance. Together, these influences can work against a more empathetic understanding of how things, and how we ourselves, actually change. The episodic drama of psychic transformation overshadows the majority of its work, which progresses at a mundane, intimate, uncertain pace. Focusing unduly upon this drama might unconsciously lay the rigid groundwork for religiosity, which gathers power by forming prescriptive ideas, and then by telling people what things should happen to them, how, and why, as well as telling them what won\u2019t work. In the transition from contemplative to spiritual teacher \u2013 a transition that Harris might be making \u2013 it seems difficult to avoid the assertion that a personal epiphany regarding\u00a0one\u2019s subjective hygiene is somehow good for others. That way lies priesthood.<\/p>\n

You can hear the flashbulb influence in any invocation of the \u201cmeditation breakthrough\u201d. Breakthroughs do happen \u2013 I have a little familiarity with them. The senses seem to reverse their outward reach. The internal monologue not only stops, but seems to invert itself into a pulsing silence. Shivers jag up the spine, colours appear, the flesh shakes or jolts or floats. Often, a veil of chronic pain will part to reveal an older peace or an undiscovered bliss. These events can be etched as deeply onto memory as our most profound moments of emotional coherence or blinding fear. And herein lies the problem: the flashbulb memory\/ meditation breakthrough is soaked with such full-bodied limbic provocation it produces as many false recollections and self-perceptions as correct ones. There\u2019s no way to attribute stable and definitive meaning to meditative breakthrough, either with regard to where it came from, or what kind of person it makes you. As neuroscientist Bruce Hood<\/a> (with whom Harris dialogues here<\/a>) might suggest, it\u2019s most likely that we\u2019ll confabulate the most convenient social narrative possible for the post-breakthrough self.<\/p>\n

Which begs the question: after Eckhart Tolle\u2019s or\u00a0Byron Katie\u2019s, or Geshe Michael Roach’s\u00a0breakthrough experiences, how did their self-illusions confabulate the most plausible new identity? Is the only difference between contemplatives that have breakthrough experiences who do and do not go on to become gurus that those who do become gurus are surrounded by those who need their story to be true? I\u2019ve known two gurus who have claimed to have been changed by breakthrough realizations that left them dismissive of their former selves and social circles. Both became social isolates until they were able to surround themselves with people who for their own reasons validated the nascent guru\u2019s new self. (They\u2019re never family members, by the way.)<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

P<\/span>\narts of learning seem to be stroboscopic for sure. But surely the main part of learning comes through the pace at which most of our lives progress, in the shadow of the infinitely gradual and continuous change of sunrises, seasons, and diapers. Every peak experience \u2013 the home run, the orgasm, the moment of sublime expansiveness in the garden \u2013 has been meticulously prepared for by a thousand semi-distracted moments of batting practice, eye-contact, and weeding that we\u2019ve long forgotten about. We take a hundred pictures of a baby’s first steps, and freeze them into digitally-watermarked time. These pictures overwhelm our memories of the countless motor-skill jiggles and tests that led up to it. We’re suckers for the big reveal. Suddenly seeing ourselves reflected in the window, we forget that looking at the garden beyond trained us to see at all.\u00a0We seem hardwired to forget that every moment is equally precious.<\/p>\n

Currently, I’m watching my son develop an I-sense before my very eyes. Six weeks ago he had the words\u00a0da-da<\/i>, na-na<\/i>, pa-pa<\/i>, moon<\/i>, dog-dog<\/i>, monkey<\/i>. The last person in our family matrix he was able or willing to name is mama<\/i>, because it was clear that Alix my partner was still the larger part of his own body and self. Naming her would have separated her off. Several weeks after that, he was able to call a doll “baby”. But when we showed him a picture of himself, he would say mama<\/em>!\u00a0Slowly, he transferred the word\u00a0baby<\/em> to the photos. But he’s still not at the point of referencing himself by gesture as “Jacob”, even though the sound of the name quite firmly attracts his attention.<\/p>\n

In other words, the construction of his illusory selfhood is a gradual accumulation of objective zings and hits. There are threshold moments, bootstrap moments. Some days it sounds like he\u2019s on the verge of full-on sentences. Whenever they start pouring out, the subject-verb-object construction will deepen the groove. Meanwhile, we can feel ourselves inoculating his brain with the self-concept whenever he points us out as dada<\/em> and mama<\/em>, and then we ask him \u201cWho\u2019s the baby? Where\u2019s Jacob?\u201d Sometimes we point at his little chest, and I imagine he is slowly feeling a subtle knot develop in there somewhere. The knot that says this is me<\/i>. It is a knot he is familiarizing himself with through play. When we say \u201cWhere\u2019s Jacob?\u201d he covers his eyes with his hands, as if by not seeing us, he himself becomes invisible. Then he throws his arms wide open with a laugh and we say \u201cThere he is!\u201d when what\u2019s really happened is that he\u2019s able to see us<\/i> again. We, who contain the more clearly-defined, tightly-bound selves that he is learning to mirror.<\/p>\n

If it ever comes time for him to loosen that knot, why wouldn\u2019t it happen as gradually as it was bound? The paths of immediacy offer a knife, but the gradual paths offer oil and gentle kneeding. I have a fantasy that he\u2019ll ask me one day about meditation, and I\u2019ll start really slowly, substituting Nagarjuna\u2019s chariot with a dinky car. Or we’ll go into the garden, and try to find the the hard lines between soil, hummus, and the root tendrils\u00a0of grass. We won’t find them.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

B<\/span>\nut will the world I share with him have time for all of that? As much as I\u2019m arguing for slowness, the environment calls out for speed in a voice that Harris seems to hear quite acutely, whether he’s addressing climate change or the need to confront\u00a0fundamentalist ideology. Perhaps the anxiety of Axial Age \u201cimmediacy\u201d paths will become newly useful in a world in which the speed of our impulses collide with our slowness to change them: a collision that is killing life on the planet.<\/p>\n

In Isaac Cordal’s “Politicians Discussing Global Warming” (posted at the top here) the micro and macro crises converge within a tiny sculpture in a Berlin sidewalk puddle. We have much complexity to wade through, so many psychic knots to untie to arrive at a consistent experience of interdependence. The atomistic self elides with the capitalistic self, and we are mystified as to how we might give it up. We work at the environmental problems with the pitifully gradual paths of recycling and solar power. Given enough time, such paths could<\/em>\u00a0lead to that\u00a0unyielding commitment to environmental empathy that destroys the infrastructure of greed that holds us as tightly as we hold onto the self-concept that built it.<\/p>\n

But meanwhile there is another gradation of change provoking our impatience. It gathers in\u00a0one drop of sea water after another.\u00a0In the\u00a0Uposatha Sutta I epigraphed this piece with, the Buddha compares realization with the gradual deepening of the sea:<\/p>\n

Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch, in the same way this Doctrine and Discipline\u00a0(dhamma-vinaya)\u00a0has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual progression, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the Buddha’s\u00a0analogy imagines the yogi walking into the sea. Not the sea rising around the yogi. Which is\u00a0happening so quickly that it’s difficult not to fantasize of the rupture, the rapture, that would save us all in a moment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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If Sam Harris wants to become the kind of spiritual guide he won\u2019t be compelled to shred in a subsequent book, some tweaks may be in order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1,19,28],"tags":[319,63,320,258,321,322,232],"class_list":["post-3771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-uncategorized","category-yoga","category-yoga-philosophy","tag-atheism","tag-buddhism","tag-meditation","tag-mindfulness","tag-sam-harris","tag-theravada","tag-tibetan-buddhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}