W.W.B.J.S.H.D.

by Benny Mattis

The modern heretic, given an initial rejection of nihilism, is presented with the various religious traditions as the first place to look for answers that cannot be provided by indifferent scientific observation (namely, how one ought to live).  As Hume wrote, you can't derive an "ought" from an "is," and science is only concerned with what is.  But there is a strain in atheism that is less preoccupied by the thrills of deicide and more concerned with helping people come to terms with life without God; Sam Harris is a member of this group, and has been working on adapting Buddhist spirituality towards a more fulfilling secular life.

Harris recently tweeted a link to his speech at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, entitled "Death and the Present Moment."  Never content to let the audience merely wallow in their shared disrespect for belief in the supernatural, he brings up what tends to be the elephant in the room among antagonistic atheists: the simple fact that a belief in the afterlife does bring people a great amount of comfort, and that a destruction of that belief can lead to a rather violent rude awakening to the injustice and overall absurdity of life on Earth.  Nobody's beliefs should be influenced by a desire to escape uncomfortable truths, and any serious religious folk would agree, but I'm glad Harris brought up this topic because, as he mentions, atheism is nothing more than a way of "clearing the space for better conversations" about the art of living.  The funny part is that it seems like these "better conversations" consist largely of reclaiming leftover pieces from the religious beliefs that had to be "cleared" out of the way in the first place.

So, how does Harris propose the modern infidel deal with suffering and finitude?  He notices that "If we're right, and nothing happens after death, death, therefore, is not a problem.  Life is the problem.  The problem is that, without God...life appears to be an emergency."  The constant demands of living in reality, Harris claims, are constantly tearing us away from well-being and towards stress and neuroticism.  A solution to this natural flight from the present into the future, linked to the decline from mindful appreciation to irritable discontentment, is the Buddhist practice of mindfulness meditation.  Harris takes it upon himself to lead his audience in a complimentary trial of this spiritual technique, advising them to avoid being swayed too much by their various 'objects of thought.'

I think here would be a good place to mention Slavoj Zizek.  Zizek, a self-professed Christian materialist, notes in his book The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity that Harris' brand of spiritualism can function rather well as a tool of harmful political ideology, currently leading people to become ultimately indifferent to some of the less-than-appealing aspects of global state capitalism; I wonder if it's just a coincidence that Harris, in his litany of uncomfortable truths and absurdities the modern man is presented with, mentions the dismal conditions of the workers who make Apple products in China and elsewhere.  Zizek would likely say that the way to find true well-being in the face of such suffering would not be to discount 'thought objects' of future justice in order to accept the present as it is, but rather to make that future a reality by working ceaselessly for it in the present, losing not one's attachment to justice, but rather one's attachments to inner peace and even survival.  In other words, you can only really live by finding something you'd be willing to die for; a world of emergency is, therefore, full of opportunities for truly meaningful existence.

This concern regarding indifference to injustice finds its object in Harris's talk about the conscience.  "If you're constantly ruminating on what you just did, or what you should've done, or would've done if only you'd had the chance, you will miss your life," warns Harris.  "The conversation we have with ourselves every every minute of the day comes at a cost.  I'm not saying that discursive thought is not necessary or useful, but it is the mechanism by which most of our suffering is inflicted."  Harris paid his respects to the late Christopher Hitchens in the beginning, but hearing this part of the speech reminded me of Hitchens's praise for the "inner witness" as the primary source of morality, and I don't think Harris's own view on 'ethical intuitions subject to rational justification' is much different.  So, it would seem that Sam Harris, champion of secular ethics, in this speech advocates for a moral moderation of sorts.  But is this much better than the so-called religious moderation that he so (rightfully) detests?  If one's ethical intuitions must be domesticated and controlled to avoid stress, then how does one know when to actually pay attention to them?

The problem when life stops appearing emergent is is one of boredom and anxiety.  What is there to do once you've escaped the vicious incarnate cycle of attachment to virtue?  No action can be justified or condemned, not even by one's own 'objects of thought.'  Real anxiety comes not with moral sensitivity, but at a distance from the self-evident validity of those stress-inducing ethical intuitions.

Yet, this is not a problem for Harris or the Buddha.  They do not discount all the value of human well-being, but take it upon themselves to spread their teachings into the rest of the world.  Like Christ, who "Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant" (Philippians 2:6-7), Sidhartha Gautama, being in very nature Enlightened, gave up the isolated bliss of nirvana by investing himself in the spread of wisdom throughout the world.  As Harris tries to bring back morality without anxiety and guilt, so too Jesus "Redeemed us from the curse of the Law" (Galatians 3:13), forgiving past sins without destroying the role of morality as an imperative to progress.  Once detachment has been achieved, re-attachment or Christian love can be chosen by a free choice, in spite of the suffering that comes with it.

What if Buddhism, like Atheism, is just a way of "clearing the space for better conversations?"  What if those conversations lead back from detachment and nirvana to a conscious embrace of attachment and its resultant suffering?  Zizek wants to set Christianity and Marxism in opposition to a bourgeois spiritual detachment from significance, but it seems like the love and sacrifice of Christ may only be fully understood through the Buddhist lens of attachment and nirvana.  Next time you're faced with a moral dilemma, be sure to ask yourself: "What Would the Buddha, Jesus, and Sam Harris Do?"