Alan Watts ~ Are You Tired Of Playing The Social Game?

[Music] you know what occasionally happens on the street when two people are walking down the sidewalk straight at each other and they both decide to move to the right together and then to the left together and they somehow get stuck and they can't pass each other Zen teachers will pull just exactly that sort of stunts when going down a path and meet one of their students to see if they can get him in a tangle and can he escape from it and you will find in everyday life that there is a very clear distinction between people who always seem to be self possessed and people who are littering and nervous and don't quite know how to react in any given situation or was getting embarrassed because they have their life to strongly programmed you said I mean this is a common marriage argument you said you would do such and such a thing at such and such a time and now you've changed your plans not that they rid of the change of plans really caused any inconvenience but just the feeling that when you say you will do something at a certain time you ought to do it at that time come hell or high water well that's being very unadaptable that's being a stone kind of sticky thing if it after all doesn't matter when we do it and as if somebody is offended because the time has been change that's simply because they are attached to conch chew allottee is a fetish and this is one of the great problems this is causes many automobile accidents men rushing home to be on time for dinner when they stayed late either working or they had to stop for a drink at some bar or when the girl feels that she has to if she has a fussy husband and she feels she has to have the dinner ready at exactly a certain moment she ruins the cooking you'd rather have a faithful wife and a bad cook I hope I'm not reading on Tomatoes so you see we spend an awful lot of energy trying to make our lives fit images of what life is or should be which they could never possibly fit so Zen practice is in getting rid of these images but it's it's so explosive socially to do that and it's so wireless people they get vertigo they get dizzy they don't know which end is up there was a very interesting dinner party once where the Zen master was present and there was a geisha girl who served so beautifully and had such style that he suspected she must have some Zen training and after a while he when she paused to fill his Sakic up he bowed to her and said I'd like to give you a present and she said I would be most honored and he took the iron chopsticks that are used for the hibachi the charcoal brazier I'm moving the charcoal around he picked up a piece of red hot charcoal and gave it one well she instantly she had very long sleeves on her kimono she weld the sleeves around her hands and took the hot charcoal with through to the kitchen dump it and changed her kimono because it was burnt through then she came back into the room and after a suitable interval she stopped before the Zen master and bowed to him and said I would like to give you surpressing she said I would be very much honored of course he was wearing a kimono or something like this and so she picked up a piece of coal and offered it to him he immediately produced a cigarette and said thank you that's just what I need it now you know in the same way that we have this in our culture certain people who are comedians who know how to make jokes and gags in a completely unprepared situation face them with anything and they somehow come through so that is exactly the same thing in a special domain as then only the master of Zen does this in every life situation but the important thing is to be able to do this this is the secret you must remember you can't make a mistake [Music] now that's a very difficult thing to do because from childhood up we have had to conform to a certain social game and if you're going to conform to this game you can make mistakes or not make mistakes and so this thing is gone into us all the time you must do the right thing there's certain conduct appropriate here the certain conduct appropriate there and that sticks in us and gives us a double self all our lives long because we never grow up now I only say if that game begins to bore you and it begins to trouble you and give you answers and all kinds of things then you raise the problem of getting out of it and therefore you start to become interested in things like Zen that is simply a symptom of your growing in a certain direction where you are tired of playing a certain kind of game you are as naturally flowing in another direction as if a tree were putting out a new branch so because you say oh well we people are interested in higher things you see that depends still on the differentiation of rank between the superior and the inferior people but when you begin to see through that and grow out of that you don't think anymore of this superior and inferior classification you don't think we are spiritual people who attend to higher things as distinct from these morons are only interested in beer and television this is simply our particular form of life like there are crabs and there are spiders and there are sharks and there are sparrows and so on but remember in the process of growth the oak is not better than the Acorn because what does it do it produces a cons or you could say just I like I sometimes love to say that a chicken is one eggs way of becoming others so an oak is an acorns way of becoming other acorns where is the point of superiority the first verse of that poem I just quoted 1st verse is in the landscape of spring there is nothing superior and nothing inferior the flowering branches are naturally some short some long

Channel: Wiara

Views: 3,078,163

Rating: 4.88765 out of 5

Keywords: alan watts, alan watts spotify, zen, maya, lila, life is a game, life is a dance, taoism, tao, dao, daoism, universe, wiara, consciousness, wats, geisha girl, alan watts social game, alan watt brainwashing, alan watts zen, conformity, courage, change of plans, time, alan watts music, tanui justus, justtanui, dinner, faithful wife, bad cook, life, zen master, sake cup, iron chopsticks, charcoal brassiere, kimono, cigarette, coal, comedians, life of zen, no mistakes, conduct, self possessed

Id: LXVrNRo1Zj8

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/LeCookie]

But the social game is fun af and it sucks to be antisocial. It's depressing without it.

[u/mrupperbody]

Like heaps of these vids I much prefer Alan without the music behind him... creates too much of a vibe aside from his lecture.

[u/PostNationalism]

by watching a clickbait youtube vid? mmm