It Will Give You Goosebumps - Alan Watts On The End

change and everything is changed nothing can be held onto to the degree that you go with a stream you are still but to the degree you resist the stream then you notice that the current is rushing past you and fighting with you so swim with it and you're there you're at rest and this is of course particularly true when it comes to those moments when life really seems to be going to take us away and the stream of change is going to swallow us completely the moment of death and we think this is the end not yet please i'm not saying you ought to be willing to die and that you should muscle up your courage when the terrible thing comes the point is that you can only die well if you understand that your disappearance as the form your disappearance as this particular organism is simply seasonal it sounds terrible you see that everything is going to die and here you are thinking that happiness sanity and security consists in clinging on to things but as soon as you really stop clinging to change it becomes amazing and not only do all your senses become wide awake not only do you feel almost that you're walking on air but you see finally that there is no duality no difference between the ordinary world and the nirvana world and if you keep identifying yourself with some sort of stable entity you don't acknowledge your inseparability from everything else that there is now let's get practical you say okay i understand what you are saying theoretically but i know that i would be terrified if somebody was going to tell me that i'm going to die this panic to live is in us in an uncontrollable way and this is part of the reason why we say we have an instinct to survive a lot of people are afraid that when they die they're going to be locked up in a dark room forever well try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up and if you think long enough about that it'll pose a next question to you what was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep that was when you were born you see you you can't have an experience of nothing so after you're dead the only thing that can happen is the same sort of experience as when you were born in other words we all know very well that after people die other people are born and they're all you only you can only experience it one at a time you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to know how to shine the sun you just do it like you breathe isn't it doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education in how to do it you never learned but you're this miracle it's one of the great wonders of life so when it comes be absolutely willing to die go over that waterfall just as you go to sleep at night i was talking a great deal yesterday afternoon about the buddhist attitude to change to death to the transience of the world and we're showing that preachers of all kinds stir people up in the beginning by alarming them about change that's like somebody you know actually raising an alarm uh just in the same way as if i want to pay you a visit and then we can come in and i don't need to raise an alarm anymore so uh in the same way it sounds terrible you see that everything is going to die and pass away and here you are thinking that happiness sanity and security consist in clinging onto things which can't be clung to and in any case there isn't anybody to cling to them the whole thing is a weaving of smoke so that's the initial standpoint but as soon as you really discover this and you stop clinging to change [Music] then everything is quite different it becomes amazing and not only do all your senses become more wide awake not only do you feel almost that you're walking on air but you see finally that there is no duality no difference between the ordinary world and the nirvana world they are the same world but what makes the difference is the point of view and of course if you keep identifying yourself with some sort of stable entity that sits and watches the world go by you don't acknowledge your union your inseparability from everything else that there is you go by with all the rest of the things but if you insist on trying to take a permanent stand on trying to be a permanent witness of the flux then it grates against you and you feel very uncomfortable but it is a fundamental feeling in most of us that we are such witnesses [Music] we feel that behind the stream of our thoughts of our feelings and our experiences there is something which is the thinker the feeler and the experience not recognizing that that is itself a thought feeling or experience and it belongs within and not outside the changing panorama of experience it to find out what is eternal uh you can't make an image of it you can't hold on to it and so it's psychologically more conducive to liberation to remember that the thinker or the feeler or the experiencer and the experiences are all together they're all one [Music] you

Channel: T&H - Inspiration & Motivation

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Id: IGUmhe9O5eI

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021