A 1971 television
recording with Alan Watts walking in the mountains and talking about
the limitations of technology and the problem of trying to keep track
of an infinite universe with a single tracked mind.
Essential listening from the Alan
Watts Collection is one of my favorite CD more than 14 hours of eastern
spirituality. You can find it at sounds true all of there audio are
life time warranty that's why I buy it from them. There web-sit is www.soundstrue.com
or you can call them at 1-800-333-9185
"Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go
'out of your mind."
"To see things we must be able to distinguish them,
which means that we must be able to separate them from other things
or from ourselves. But with Brahman this can not be done, for when you
look at this book Brahman is looking at Brahman We have have therefore
to consider how the sage comes to understand this and in what way this
understanding is of practical value."
"People imagine that letting themselves go would
have disastrous results; trusting neither circumstances nor themselves,
which together make up life, they are forever interfering and trying
to make their own souls and the world conform with preconceived patterns.
This interference is simply the attempt of the ego to dominate life.
But when you see that all such attempts are fruitless and when you relax
the fear-born resistance to life in yourself and around you which is
called egoism, you realize the freedom of union with Brahman In fact
you have always had this freedom, for the state of union with Brahman
can neither be attained nor lost; all men and all things have it, in
spite of themselves. It can only be realized, which is to say made real
to you by letting life live you for a while instead of trying to make
your self live life."
"You will soon reach the point where you will be
unable to tell whether your thoughts and feelings are your own or whether
life put them into you, for the distinction between yourself and life
will have disappeared. If the truth be known, there never was any distinction,
save in our imaginations. This is called union with Brahman, for "he
that lost his life shall find it." " a famous Zen koan asks:when
a cow goes out of its enclosure to the edge of the abyss, is hors and
head and its hoofs all pass through, but why can't the tail also pass?"Commenting
on this, an old master says:if the cow runs it will fall into the trench;
If it returns it will be Butchered. That little tail is a very strange
thing.In the quest for understanding of life there comes a time when
everyone is confronted with "that little tail"- the one tiny
obstacle that stands in the way of complete fulfillment."
" The first step in Buddhism is right motive, and
to attain enlightenment it is said that we must do away with selfish
desire. But if we have selfish desire in the beginning, surely the desire
to get rid of it is also selfish. We desire to be rid of our selfishness
for a selfish reason, and again we may easily have a selfish reason
for getting rid of the selfish reason for wanting to be selfless."
"You say you do not feel this abandonment right now.
What do you expect to fell? it is not a feeling; it is feeling. It is
not a thought; it is thinking. If it were a particular thought or feeling
there could be coming into it and going out of it; but God is one and
all-inclusive, and here there can be neither coming nor going, inside
or outside. More than this, the great abandonment of enlightenment does
not depend even on feeling and thinking, consciousness or unconsciousness,
living or dying. As the verse says:
this you can not describe, nor paint, nor yet admire, nor feel. "It
is your real self, that has no hiding-place. Destroy the universe, and
it remains."
: A pupil asked his teacher, "what is the Tao(life)? he answered,
"Every day life is the Tao.""How," went on the pupil,
"does one get into accord with it?"
"If you try to accord with it," Said the teacher,
"you will get away from it."
" I have never yet met anyone who tried to become
a real person with success. The result of such attempts is invariably
loss of personality, for there is an ancient paradox of the spiritual
life whereby those who try to make themselves great become small. The
paradox is even a bit more complicated than this; it also means that
if you try, indirectly, to make yourself great by making yourself small,
you succeed only in remaining small. It is all a question of motive,
of what you want."
" There was a young man who said, "Though It
seems that K know that I know,
What I would like to see is the 'I' that knows 'me' When I know that
I know that I know."
