March 12, 2026
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone.
One of the many Taleb aphorisms I like and remember. There's a lot of truth to that, I think. Growing up, I subscribed to the unquestioned assumption that India is a fountainhead of spirituality. A very 1960s era view in retrospect. Steve Jobs goes to India and comes back enlightened, the Beatles visit some place there and play the sitar, Savitri Devi equates Hinduism with German Idealism and claims Adolf Hitler is an avatar of Vishnu, and the list goes on. These are some of the images that flash in my mind off the top of my head, and there is a bottomless pit among academics waiting to lecture me on how I misunderstand it all, it feels like. How I am unaware of xyz school of thought, how I haven't yet read this, that, or the other. Or if I have, how much I misunderstand it. It's all just a big misunderstanding.
The solution is to surrender to the idea that I just don't understand, that there is something I am missing, only to be gained by meditation.
I don't know, man. Feels suspect.
Meditation is narcissism.
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