Alan Watts ~ Be Comfortable Under Any Circumstances

I was trying in the brief space of 50 minutes to give you a basic introduction to Mahayana Buddhism the kind of Buddhism that is found in China and Japan and the kind of Buddhism of which Zen Buddhism in particular is a subject and we are rather particularly concerned with Zen since it has had such a fundamental influence in the shaping of Japanese culture and the arts of Japan and since we are in the course of this informal tour going to be visiting a good deal of Zen monasteries and seeing a great deal of Zen formed works of art architecture and so on so I want to lead now tonight from Buddhism in general or Mahayana Buddhism in general to Zen in particular now because then it plays a little game with you whenever anybody like myself or dr. Suzuki talks about Zen all the other people say because they talk about it they don't understand it those in the words of loud sir who no do not say those who say do not know and yet he said that you wrote a book of several 80 chapters or so to explain the Tao and the dairy its power and nobody could help themselves they've got to talk human beings are a bunch of chatterboxes and when we've got something in our minds that we want to talk about we talk now poetry though is the great language because poetry is the art of saying what can't be said every poet knows this they're trying to describe the indescribable and every poet also knows that nothing is describable whether you take some sort of ineffable mystical experience at one extreme or whether you take an ordinary rusty nail at the other nothing is really describable in the words of the famous count Kurbsky whatever you say something is it isn't we used to have a professor at Northwestern who would produce a match booklet in front of his class and would say to them what is it and they would say match booklet you'd say no no no match booklet is a noise is this a noise what is it and so to answer this he'd throw it at them that's what it is so in this way you see nothing can really be described and yet on the other hand we all know perfectly mean well what we mean when we talk if you know if you shared an experience with somebody else then of course you can talk about it we can all talk about fire and air and water and wood because we know what it is and there's no mystery so in the same way when it comes to discussing something so esoteric is Zen it can be discussed only then people play games with each other they play little tricks they test each other out by saying to somebody I remember when I met Paul reps for the first time who wrote that lovely book Zen flash and Zen bones and he said to me well he said you've written quite a number of books by now you must think you're pretty fancy I said I haven't said a word oh this is Sept is in-game and people sort of feel each other out there's a poem which says when two zen masters meet each other on the road they need no introduction thieves recognize one another instantaneously so now having got that out of my chest it's a save and if I were to give you a really proper and really didn't truly educated talk about Zen I would gather you round here and sit here in silence for five minutes and leave and in a way this would be a much more direct exposition of it than what I'm going to do instead which talk about it only I have a feeling that you would feel that you were disappointed and somewhat cheated by this kind of behavior by just left and five minute silence so then this word Zen is Japanese Way of pronouncing the Chinese word Chung which in turn is the Chinese Way of pronouncing the Sanskrit word Gianna and Gianna is a very difficult word to translate into English if not impossible it's been called meditation meditation in English generally means sitting quietly and thinking about something and that's not what Sam is contemplation might come a little nearer if you use the word in a very technical sense the sense that it was used or still is used among Catholic mystics perhaps that's something a bit like sin but again contemplation as we normally use the word has a sense of inactivity a sense of not doing anything of being completely still and passive whereas then is something highly active so we really don't have an English word for Jana Qian Zhen but I would say that we do know what it is because we do all sorts of things every day of our lives in this spirit when for example you drive a car most Americans at any rate drive car since they were teenagers and are very expert drivers and when they drive a car they don't think about it they're one with the car or when a rider of a horse is one being with the horse when you watch a good cowboy or cavalry rider he's glued to the horse he's like a centaur almost as the horse moves he moved which is in control is the horse riding the man or the man riding the horse you practically don't know same way when you have an excellent dancing partner who leads who follows it seems as if you are one body and you move together that is then that is Gianna and so in the in a wider sense when a person doesn't react to life on the one hand or try to dominate it on the other but when the internal world of one's own organism and the external world of other people and other things move together as if they were and indeed are one and the same motion that is then so you could say very very simple way that the real concern of Zen is to realize not merely to think but to know in your bones that the inside world inside your skin and the outside world outside your skin going out as far as anything can go into galaxies beyond galaxies is all one world and all one being oneself and you're it and once you know that then you have completely abolished all the problems that arise as a result of feeling that you are a stranger in the world that you are set down in the middle of a hostile and alien domain of nature or people who are not you this whole sense strange man foreigners - the world is overcome in them now let me illustrate this little before we go into Zen in any kind of technical way by a few raba superficial but nevertheless significant facts out of Japanese culture and the place of Zen in Japanese culture Japanese culture is as you may have noticed or was as you may have noticed extraordinarily ritualistic there is a right way of doing everything a good form a proper style and though where is this more apparent than in such practices as the tea ceremony or arranging flowers or knowing how to dress on knowing how to organize a formal dinner the punctilious nests the skill of these people in doing these things is quite remarkable but in the same measure as they are very skillful of doing this thing they are very worried about it the whole question for example of bringing presents to somebody else have they given us more than we've given them did we remember this occasion did we remember that occasion these weigh very heavily on the Japanese soul the debt which you owe to your parents the debt which you owe to your country into your Emperor immeasurable infinite debt never can be paid all these weigh very heavily and therefore in Japan until the sort of break away of modern youth with its westernized ideals this is a very nervous culture concerned about whether one is playing the ritual corrector a culture like that needs an outlet needs a safety valve needs a way out of this thing and then provides just that and so by contrast when you meet a Japanese who is thoroughly trained in Zen he is a different kind of personality altogether from ordinary Japanese he is in manners not studiedly courteous nor is he brusque but he simply a-teams he gives you his whole attention so long as you give him your whole attention if you start wandering and frittering he's got work to do and he promptly leaves but so long as you are wanting to talk to him he is there for you and for nobody else and he sits down and he really sits you know he don't worry about whether he ought to be somewhere else and so unable to sit with complete serenity in one place you know if you have half an idea that you ought to be worrying about something out in the garden or that you ought to be cooking dinner or you ought to be done in your office or something you can't sit where you are you're not really there you're kind of gas balloon that keeps wanting to wander up but these people when you'll see as you meet people connected with Zen even they sometimes the most neophyte novice of a priest is as this atmosphere of knowing how to live in the present and not to be fidgety and giggly and worrying about whether he's done the right thing that's very much Zen style even though at the same time the Zen people do have a very exacting and demanding disciplined the function of this discipline is rather curious is to enable you to be comfortable it's an aid to enable you for example to sleep on a concrete sidewalk on a cold wet night and enjoy it to relax completely under any situation of hardship you see ordinarily when you sit on a you're out in the cold you start shivering why because you're resisting the cold you're tightening your muscles against the cold and you get the staggers but you were taught if you'd learn Zen discipline not to do that take it easy go with the cold relax and all those monks in those monasteries here there's cold hell in winter and they simply sit there most of the time and there we would be frozen to death and miserable and have a influenza and the great Siberian it but they simply relax and learn how to take the cold so there's nothing about Zen discipline which is masochistic it isn't to beach your body because your body is bad and there's the creation of the devil or something has nothing to do with that it is how to be comfortable under all circumstances ental to the main question of Zen I said these end people as you meet them and as you get to know their style of personality are at ease in a culture that is not at ease in a culture that is chronically concerned with protocol and is it just right that is indeed a terribly self-conscious culture where everybody is always watching and having therefore second thoughts about everything and so the discipline of Zen is to enable you to act without watching yourself we would say unselfconsciously the Japanese are as terrified of this as we are they think and we think if I don't watch myself I'll make a mistake I don't hold a table over myself I'll cease to be civilized and become a barbarian if I don't discipline myself with all sorts of down on Tom's passions of yours you will become like the month of Siberia who burst from his cell and devoured the father superior so this is basic mistrust and so on in one's own spontaneity makes it makes us wonder that if the Zen people are really spontaneous and they don't plan and premeditate and hold clubs over themselves well they become very very dangerous people socially when they go out and rape their mothers and daughters and murder their grandmothers to inherit their fortunes and so on and so forth and then people just don't do that and yet they are perfectly spontaneous so then let me try then and indicate how this discipline called Zen actually works this will involve a little bit of letting the cat out of the bag but can be helped let's go back to what I told you was fundamental to Buddhism Buddhism is unlike other religions in that it does not tell you anything it doesn't require you to believe in anything Buddhism is a dialogue and what I call the teachings of Buddhism are nothing more than the opening phrases or opening exchanges in the dialogue Buddhism is a dialogue between a Buddha and an ordinary man or rather someone who insists on defining himself as an ordinary man and thereby create the problem I quoted you this morning our saying that anybody who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined and in exactly the same way in this culture anybody who goes to a guru a spiritual teacher or a Zen master or whatever ought to have his head examined or as the old Chinese master toklas on put it if you ask any question you get thirty blows with my stick if you don't ask any question you get thirty blows does the same in other words what the hell are you doing around here defining yourself as a student and defining me as a teacher in other words you have to raise the problem and in the way of training of Zen this is very clearly emphasized if you go to a Zen teacher and you approach him in the traditional way the first thing he will do is to say I haven't anything to teach go away well you say what are these people doing around here aren't they your students you say well there were with me but unfortunately we're very poor these days we don't have enough rice really to go round and make ends meet and and we can't take on anybody else in this community so you have to insist to be taken in every postulant has n training assumes immediately that the teacher has given him the brush-off in order to test his sincerity in other words if you really want this thing you've got to work for it that isn't the real point the point is that you've got to make such a fuss to get in that you cannot withdraw gracefully after having made such a fast to get in because you put yourself on the spot and you define yourself as somebody needing help or somebody with a problem who needs a master in order to be helped out of the problem so then when you've done this in the old days of course and it's still the formal rule among the Zen monasteries here that when you are a postulant and want to come in you have to sit outside of the gate for a week or maybe only five days in a position of supplication with your head honest bow down on the steps and they let you in at night because they must give hospitality to any wandering monk but you expect not to go to sleep any of those five nights but to sit there in meditation and they give you food but are you sit and you sit and you sit there and you make a damn fool of yourself saying I insist on getting into this thing I insist on learning I want to know what the secret of this master here is and he's told you from the start that he doesn't have a secret of it he doesn't teach anything but you insist that he does see that is the situation of everybody who feels that life is a problem to be solved whether you want psychoanalysis whether you want integration whether you want salvation whether you want Buddhahood whatever it is you define yourself as wanted you created the problem what is the real problem that everybody brings to these teachers what is it all about it's basically this isn't the teacher I want to get one up on the universe I feel a stranger in this world I feel that it's a problem in that having a body means that I am subject to disease and change and death having emotions and passions means that I am tormented by feelings which I can't help having and yet it's not reasonable to act on those feelings without creating trouble I feel trapped by this world and so I want to get the better of it and is there some wise man around who is a master of light and who can teach me to cope with all this so that's what everybody is looking for in a teacher the man who is the Saviour and we can show you how to cope with the Zen teacher says I don't have any answers nobody believes that because he seems to be so confident when you look at it you can't believe that he has no answers and yet that's the consistent teaching of them that it has nothing to say and nothing to tea a great Chinese master of the Tong dynasty called dingy in Chinese or RINs I and Japanese said Zen is like using a yellow leaf to stop a child crying a child is crying for gold and the father takes an autumn leaf with yellow and says go or he said it's like using an empty fist to deceive a child see you've got a closed fist and you say to the child that I got here and the child says let me see-oh which of his behind your back and the child becomes more and more excited to know what the devil's in that first and fights and fights and fights and finally isn't practically in tears and then suddenly you finally opened the fist and there's nothing inside so in exactly the same way the person who is under the impression that there is something that we ought to get see all this is dressed up in a big way to be a Buddha to know the answer to finally solve the problem to get the message to get the word or however you put it in other words to be in control of your fate and of the world would you like it if you could have it and so all these powers are projected upon the Zen master he is a Buddha he is a master of life and if he is the reason why he is is that he has discovered the unreality of the whole problem and so all these powers are projected upon the Zen master he is a Buddha he is a master of life and if he is the reason why he is is that he has discovered the unreality of the whole problem there is not life on the one hand and you on the other it's all the same but you see you can't tell people that and just by telling get them to see it adjusting in exactly this way you the people who know that the earth is flat can't be reasoned with people who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God absolutely impossible to reason with them at all because they know it is so so in the same way we tend to know that we are all separate poor little mean and that we are in need of salvation or something and we know this so and so somebody says well you are not really that you know that that feeling of separateness is an illusion well that's all very nice and theory of it I don't feel it so what will you do hopefully do with the person who is convinced that the earth is flat no way of reasoning with him if it's for some reason important that he discovered that the earth is round you've got to play a game with him you got to play a trick on him you tell him great the earth is flat let's go and look over the edge wouldn't that be fun of course if we're going to look over the edge of the earth we must be very very careful that we don't go round in circles or we'll never get to the edge so we've got to along consistently along a certain line of latitude westwards and then we're going to come to the edge of the earth just so long as we're consistent in other words in order to convince a flat artist that the world is round you've got to make him act consistently on his own proposition and go consistently westwards to find the edge of the world now at last when he by going consistently westwards he comes back to the place where he started he's been convinced that the earth is at least cylindrical and he may believe you then take it on faith that if he goes along a line of longitude the same thing will happen but you see what you did was to make him persist in his folly now that's the whole method of Zen to make people become perfect egotist and so explode the illusion of the separate ego so what happens in effect then in the in the discipline of Zen when you finally convinced the marklar that you are stupid enough to be accepted as a student because you've persisted and because you've defined yourself as someone having a property he has warned you well in advance that he has nothing to teach but he says now I will ask you a question in many ways of asking this question but they all boil down to one common theme and that is who are you you say you have a problem you say you would like to get out of the sufferings of life you say you would like to get one up on the universe I want to know who's asking this question show me you and only they put it in such ways 'as before your father and mother conceived you what was your original nature questions like that and they'll say now look I want that I want to be shown I don't want a lot of ideas about who you are I don't want to know who you are in terms of a social role you know that you have such degrees or you have such professional qualifications and such a name and such a family well that's the past I want to see you genuinely now it's like saying to a person now don't be self-conscious see I want you right this minute to be completely sincere come on now well nothing is better calculated to make a person incapable of sincerity because when relatives come and aunts and uncles and with a little child and they want to review this child and see it and the parent side with child darling come on now and play first see and the poor child is completely nonplussed doesn't know what to do because you cannot play on demand now what is the Zen teacher doing in saying to a person you must answer this question by coming before me in in fact a rather formal situation the use the kind of context in which a Zen master interviews his students he's very formal and there he sits sort of enthroned tiger he's definitely in this culture a sensei a authority figure and so the last kind of person you can be content-neutral because you feel that he knows him through and through and that do you know ever read that story of von Kleist about a man who has a fight with a bear the bear is a mind reader and always knows what moves he's going to make so the demand can never conquer the bear unless he makes a move which he doesn't think about further how will you do that and they'll get the same feeling with relationship to a Zen master you feel that he is absolutely aware of everything phony about you that he reads you like a book but that you can't find a way of being not funny think about this a little you see it's we can arrange a group session and this is a little game that's being played by lots of people it's a kind of psychotherapy we can arrange a group session in which the gimmick is this that when anybody says anything or does anything the group or some section of the truth of the group challenges its sincerity and says why are you coming on so strong are you trying to dominate us and you see anything that you deem can be interpreted in that way because the moment of group of people becomes starts making comments on its own behavior it is setting up a situation within the beam which is America's say in a TV studio - turning the camera on the monitor when we start thinking about thinking being aware of being where this is what is called in Japanese the observing self I watch myself all the time think you're in hopeless mess but this is the price that human beings pay for having become self-conscious anxiety and cool anxiety because and I sure that I thought this out submission to carefully when I left the house did I turn off the gas stove and incidentally I remember turning it off but can I trust my memory I don't to think about memory now and I wonder if I can trust it maybe I better go back and look I went back and I looked but did I really see I'm thinking about my site and whether whether this is quite authentic did I did I look properly because you know how the unconscious can alter your senses and so I better go and look again see you soon now I've got into a sort of vicious circle where I'll never get away from the house this you always sort of getting mixed up is the penalty we pay for the advantageous gift of being able to know that we know it was a young man who said though it seems that I 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 and so this is the Zen trick it's to put you into this situation in a very crucial way to think about thinking about thinking about thinking about or just the same thing to make a very strong effort not to think that's zazen sit let your senses operate and be responsive to whatever they may be around but don't think about it but now this is already thinking I'm thinking about not thinking how will I stop thinking about not thinking so there you are see you're all caught up it's like somebody came to you and they put tar in one hand molasses feathers in the other slap the two hands together rub them around said now pick off the feathers so you see what happens the teacher is well aware that he's played this trick on you and he's going to see what will happen if you act and he's going to help you to act consistently on this foolishness now you see what he's done is he simply made a special case of what society does to us all anyhow and this is true of most cultures the high cultures of the world whether they're of the East are whether they're of the West play a game on every new member they don't know they're playing this game because their forefathers played it on them and they are still it's hopeless victims the game is called the double bind and the formula under which under whose auspices everybody comes into this world is as follows you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily you must love me you must go to sleep you must be natural you must be free listen to that you must be free now what happens you see society the community into which every child enters defines the child we know who we are as other people reactors so the other people say to us you're an independent agent you're responsible you are a freely acting individual but this is a commandment and we obey it because we can't help it child has no way of criticizing us or of seeing something phony about it so the child has to be free because he is commanded to be so by the community now then the community sets itself the problem having defined the child as an independent agent and having got the child to believe that he's an independent agent because he isn't in other words he wouldn't believe this if he were independent it then has trouble getting him to behave as the community wants him to thank you so they feel and there's something ordinary about all children they're born in original sin and they're there refractions and so on of course they are because they've been defined in a self-contradictory way so when the who says to a person you must be free or when we are in the family relationship in which the members of the family are saying to each other you must love me it's your duty to love me what a bunch of rot supposing you're one day you get up and you say to your wife darling do you really love me and she replies but I'm trying my very best to do so is that the answer you wanted no you wanted her to say darling I can't help loving you I love you so much I could eat you you don't want her to try to love you but yet that is what you put on people in almost any marriage ceremony that you shall love this person thou shalt love the Lord thy God thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself this is a double bind and anybody who lives under the dominance of a double bind lives in a state of chronic frustration because he is devoting his whole life to solving a meaningless nonsensical problem let's take the double bind that is the deepest of all you must go on living now living is a spontaneous process and to say to it you must happen is exactly the same thing as saying to any kind of creative artist you must come through with good tonight you must give the superb performance and above all you must be unselfish well this is being done to us all the time and the object of the Zen discipline is that instead of doing this to people unconsciously as parents to it and as teachers do it to children and as the children's peers do it to their own peer members in Zen the double bind is put on you deliberately knowing how skillfully did the teacher is well aware of everything he's doing and what tricks he's playing on you because he has behind it all the compassionate intent of getting you into such a fierce double bind that you will see how stupid it is so then what happens is this he gives you the double bond be genuine I want to see you do something that is the real I had a friend who was studying Zen and he was given some cohen like this to work on and when he was one day going for his interview he walked through the garden that connected the SoDo or the monks study quarters with the masters place and there was a big bullfrog bullfrogs in this country a rather tame people don't eat them and so he swept up the bullfrog and dropped it into the sleeve of his kimono and when he got in front of the teacher to answer the cone that is to say to do spontaneously produce his genuine self he produced the bullfrog the teacher looked at it and shook his head and said mmm too intellectual first we fight say two contrived - studied that's not yet you how do you see the bind in this it's like being told that everything is alright at this moment so long as you don't think of a green elephant so try not to think of a green elephant now as he works at this as he tries to produce the genuine you the teacher really strings him out on this and makes him work and work and work over a period of many months until he comes to the point of seeing this there is nothing you can do to be genuine the more you do the phonier you are but at the opposite extreme there is nothing you can not do that is to say you cannot give up trying to be genuine you can't relax you know and be completely patted and say well let's forget about it let's think about practical matters and forget all these spiritual concerns the moment you do that your abandonment of trying is itself an insidious form of trying for example it was a very interesting hindu teacher by the name of krishna moti that many of you may know about and he tells people you know that all their religious inquiry their yoga practices they're reading religious books and so on he is nothing but a form of perpetuating one's egocentricity but on a very refined and highbrow level so he gets a kind of disciple who studiously avoids reading any kind of philosophical or edifying book they are reduced to reading mystery stories and they become devoted non disciples see what a clever bind that is it's the same as the Zen technique you can't in other words let go of you we've seen you see my point was at the beginning we saw that the way of Buddhism is to let go of yourself to see that you live in a universe which in which nothing can be grasped therefore stop grasping so here's the problem I come and say to the teacher teach me not to grab you say why do you want to know and he shows you the reason why you want to stop grasping is that it's a new form of grasping you feel that you will beat the game by being unattached it's horrible to grieve when somebody you love dies there may be by being unattached to that person I can avoid grief but it : maybe you see by not having an ego when life comes and bangs on me if there's nobody there it'll be alright so that's why I want non ego state that's phony all this is a new way of safeguarding and protecting the ego so this is the way in which Buddhism is a dialogue so you see if you go back to fundamental primitive Buddhism people say to the Buddha I want to escape from suffering perfectly on his statement all right realize that suffering is caused by desire try not to desire so the student goes away and tries to eliminate desires by controlling his mind and practicing yoga comes back to the teacher and says it's pretty difficult but I have managed at least to get rid of some desire teacher says to him but you're still desiring to get rid of desire what about that one and then the student sees that if he tries to stop desiring to get rid of desire but then he's got to stop desiring to get rid of not desiring to derive and something he finds himself once more with molasses in one hand and feathers in the other absolutely tied up in a vicious level so he realizes there is nothing I can do about it and there's nothing I cannot do about it and this predicament in zen is called a mosquito trying to bite an iron bull a position of such cyclic extremity that nothing can be done about it now the point here is what does this situation mean when you find yourself in that kind of a trap what's the meaning of the trap why that's very simple if there's nothing you can do and also nothing you cannot do about a given situation it means that you are phony that in other words what we call a separate ego isn't there cause it can't do anything because it is not an ancient and by virtue of the fact that it can't do anything equally it can't not do anything it's completely phony so what has happened is to expose the fiction of there being a separate ego either to force its actions upon the world or to have the actions of the world forced upon it as a puppet this thing just doesn't exist except as a figment of the imagination or except as a game rule let's pretend everybody is responsible is independent is separate sure that's a great game but it's a game and so the whole object of the Zen dialogue between the teacher and the student is to carry that game of being the separate ego to its logical conclusion to its reduction ad absurdum so that as blake said the fool who persists in his folly will become wise you

Channel: What do you desire?

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Id: wPOsUYA1Auc

Length: 53min 55sec (3235 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017