More Watts and Eastern Thoughts

I was finally able to finish listening to the Alan Watts lecture series Out of Your Mind. 

I even went back and listen to a couple of the CDs twice, especially the parts on Hindiuism, Buddhism, and Zen. 

The collection of lectures helps put things in perspective when you have no starting point for reference, it would have been a large help earlier on when I was reading the Bhagavad-Gita, the Dhammapada and some books on Theravada. 

Some of the terms he throws around are a bit out of date. He relates some eastern concepts to things like Jazz, compares the usefulness of having hermits and shamans in human society to the beatniks of the time, and talks about people “digging” on different things. 

This isn’t too much of a hindrance for anyone who has gone through a beat phase in their life, and by this point I think anyone who took the time to acquire an Alan Watt’s series of audio lectures has possibly even had a second beat revival in their bedroom notebook or on their livejournal.

The main gist is that all of our understanding is based on relevance. We don’t sincerely know one thing from another without having something to compare it to. This carries over to our personalities, as we interpret a string of events occurring in the now as actually being a cohesive motion that goes from past, to present, to future. Akin to how watching a reel to reel movie gives the impression of motion, when in actuality your just seeing still frame after still frame. 

Through this we get the impression that the thoughts in our brain are more than just thoughts, that there is an actual thinker behind those thoughts- when in reality there is no thinker, just an empty void.

He goes into Hinduism in explaining how Brahman/Atman are connected and gives a good analogy of people’s connection to the Self as similar to the nerves in your body. Should the nerve cells in different locations of your body be personified, they would only know their one limited experience, and never put together that they were all part of the same body (i.e. without your brain your hand would never know it was part of the same body as your foot). We are all then in turn manifestations of one God/Brahman/Atman/The Self/Shiva whatever you want to call it playing with itself by creating drama and trying on different roles, this play is known as Lila. 

Watts describes this as being the hiding phase of the big game of hide and seek. The seeking phase is when you try to look inward through contemplation/meditation to find this Self, and enlightenment occurs when you actually find it as you become the universe knowing itself.

His description of the universe as a peopling universe had never occurred to me- that we as humans are created out of the all the same elements found in the universe and are therefore the universe becoming conscious of itself. 

Thats how he covers some of the large macro topics. He gets down to the nitty gritty in going on about Zen Masters and Guru’s by discussing the ways in which different traditions will help a person to reach enlightenment. 

The Zen stuff was new to me, as I had only read very little on Zen previously (only Suzuki’s famous book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind). His goes over in details the method by which students were traditionally accepted into a Zen school and the means by which the master would give them an unsolvable problem (koan) to dwell on while practicing mediation (zazen).

The idea is to drive the student into a double-bind as a means of forcing them into mental liberation. They crank up the pressure to solve the problem until the student realizes there is nothing left to realize, that the problem was not real to start with, that the whole game of trying is absurd as there is no where to go and nothing to get to being with.

He goes on to discuss how Guru’s work in a similar manner. The Guru will wait till a student comes, will tell the student that they can reach liberation by just letting go. When the student does not get what that means, the Guru will then create elaborate practices and hoops for the student to jump through until they finally can convince their self that they have earned it because people feel they need to suffer for things before they can arrive at the place they already are.

I found it to opened up Mahayana to me more than before. I had only been focusing on reading up on Theravada under the auspice that it was closer to the original teachings of Siddartha Gotama. A bias on my part with no real basis, although I had read in Huston Smith’s World Religions that Mahayana in a way was Buddhism going back on everything it tried to hard to avoid being (i.e. superficially God like). 

He is able to do a lot of linguistic comparisons as well. Showing the connection between words like Yogi which are derives from the same sanskrit word (Yug) as the english Yoke or Junction that help to make it more clear through a straight connection to western society. 

My big flaw is that all I do is read about it without practicing. At the same time Watts notes that trying to achieve enlightenment or liberation is itself a hindrance out of the attachment to the practice. That the harder you try the more you are unable to get it because you need to stop trying and just realize it.

Watts is the best I’ve stumbled into in the way of eastern thought translated into common parlance. Nothing I can write here would honestly do his metaphors, bad jokes and ability to convey his knowledge base the justice they deserve. 

He also makes some interesting references to others, namely Krishnamurti. I’m hoping this will prove worth at least some further reading. I was able to find a copy of A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of Sankara translated by Sengaku Mayeda at the Brookline Booksmith. 

I feel that all of this is of interest to me only because it serves to reaffirm my preconceived notions about life. That God doesnt exist in any personified sense, that there is no point to life in that the only point there is would be one you made up, and that we all live in the sense that only thing that dies when we die is a bunch of trivial memories that none of us can keep straight and a few inclinations towards meaningless things- or that we are all human and anyone of us is potentially the other so what difference does it make. 

Eastern thought kind of codifies this and fills in the gaps. It lets me know that its alright to think the world is a large amount of bullshit and that feeling like things are meaningless and pointless isn’t depressing but is realistic and actually the way it is for those who aren’t locked into the massive multiplayer game called spouse, house, kids and career.  

My trouble is that I can understand it intellectually till I’m blue in the face while being entirely unable to feel it and live it. I need to do my homework to find a good Buddhist center in the Boston area. 

Further Reading:

What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula (academic overview of Buddhist concepts)

Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana (instructions for starting basic mindfulness meditation)

Bhagavad-Gita Eknath Easwaran Translation (basic translation and explanation for westerns)