Alan Watts - how to see through the game - the secret to life :: happiness

the only way to handle danger is to face it if you start getting frightened of it [Music] then you make it work because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all whenever you meet a ghost don't run away because the ghost will capture the substance of your fear and materialize itself out of your own substance and will kill you eventually because it will take over all your own vitality so then whenever I'm confronted with the ghost walk straight into it and it will disappear we got to survive you must survive that's the great thing we're all working on that and pounding it out day after day and gladly because this is a description of anxiety anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other forever and if by any chance by any means you find out that that is not so you have an entirely new attitude to what human beings are doing which may be very creative but which also may be very dangerous you see through the game game you are only just kidding that you're just too little me see the function of a guru that is to say a spiritual teacher in India is to look giving you a funny look in the eye because you come to him and say mr. guru I have problems I I suffer and it's a mess and I can't control my mind and I am miserable and depressed he's on he gives you a funny look can you feel a bit nervous about the way he looks at you because he think no he is reading your thoughts this man is a great magician he can read everything within you he knows right down into your unconscious and you know all the dreadful thing you thought and all the awful desires you have and you are rather embarrassed that this man looks right through you and sees them all that's not what he's looking at he's giving you a funny look for quite another reason altogether because he sees in you the Brahma the Godhead just claiming it for little me that's why it gives you a funny look why seems to see right through you as if to say Shiva oh boy don't kid me I know who you are you're coming on beautifully in this act that you're somebody else altogether I congratulate you you're doing a wonderful job playing this part which you call the person my person so it's all very well anybody can have ecstasy anybody as a matter of fact can become aware that he is one with the eternal ground of the universe but since that what's what you are anyway I'm going to ask so what when a hero goes on an adventure and he leaves his people and it's going to a strange land he can go away and just hide himself around the corner and obscure house and then appear a year later and say I've been on at your journey until all sorts of tales and they say prove it because they expect him to bring back something something which nobody has seen before then they believe you clear on the journey so in the same way exactly anybody who goes on a spiritual journey must bring something back because if you just say oh man it was a gas they often say that now this is why in the doctrines of Buddhism there is a differentiation between two kinds of enlightened beings they are both forms of Buddha which is to say the word Buddha means somebody who has awakened who has discovered the secret behind all this in other words all this thing we call life with its frantic concerns is it big act which you in your unconscious deaths are deliberately setting up so you can do one of two things when you discover this you can become what's called a happy acre Buddha that means the private buddha who doesn't tell anything or you can become a bodhisattva Trottier buddha goes off into his ecstasy and never is seen again bodhisattva is come one comes back and appears in the everyday world and plays the game of the everyday world by the rules of the everyday world but he brings with him GU paya he brings with in some way of showing that he's been on the journey that he's come back and he's going to let you in on the secret to if you if you will play it cool and also come back to join in the everyday life of everyday people [Music] the first thing then is to discover what indeed you do love if anything and you will find there is something and then go into the nature of that now it said that selfish people love themselves is something which you thought with other than yourself even if it be very ordinary things such as ice cream or booze in the conventional sense booze is not you nor is ice cream it certainly it turns into you in a manner of speaking when you consume it but then you don't have it anymore and so you look around some more in order to love it once again but so long as you love it you see it's never you when you love people either however selfishly you love them because of the pleasant sensations they give to you still it is somebody else that you love and as you inquire into this as you follow honestly your own selfishness many interesting transformations begin to come about in you one of the most interesting transformations of being directly and honestly selfish in the same way that for example cats are is that you stop deceiving people if what you define as you is inseparable from everything which you defines not you just as front is inseparable from back then you realize that deep down between self and other that is some sort of conspiracy if these things always occur in combination and look very different from each other and feel quite different nevertheless the feeling of difference between them allows each one to exist and so underneath the opposition or the polarity between self and other or between any other pair of opposites you can thing up there is something in common as there is for example between figure and background you can't see a figure without a background you can't have an organism without an environment equally you can't have a background without a figure or an environment without organisms in it or without things you can't have space which is unoccupied by any solid you cannot cannot have solids not occupying some space this is absolutely elementary and yet we don't realize it because for example the average person thinks that space is something this is just sort of not their nastain and we are slightly afraid that not their Nassim is that darkness that the negative poles of all these opposition's will win that they will eventually swallow up every kind of being in every kind of them but when you catch on to the game you realize that that won't happen because what is called not existing is quite incapable of being there without the contrast of something called existing it's like the crest and the tropical wave Li you can't have a way that's all trough or no credit just as you can't have a wave which is all crest and motronic such a thing has never been manifested in the physical universe they go together and that is the secret [Music] there really is no other secret than that that is the secret [Music]

Channel: Infinite Wisdom

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Keywords: alan watts, philosophy, seeing through the game, the secret to life, happiness, how to see through the game, facing danger, buddah, anxiety, fear, love, guru, brahman

Id: _h-FswIACKE

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2017