Stop thinking, Stay centered │ Alan Watts

well I have a sort of suggestion and that is this that before we decide either to save the planet or to destroy it we pause for a moment of silence I don't mean that kind of grim silence which one observes when somebody says uh such and such a famous person has just died and we'll observe a moment of silence in his honor and everybody frowns and thinks very serious thoughts that's not silence at all I mean real silence in which we stop thinking and experience reality as reality is because after all if I talk all the time I can't hear what anyone else has to say and if I think all the time and by that I mean specifically talking to yourself subvocally inside your skull if I think all the time I have nothing to think about except thoughts and so I'm never in touch with the real world now what is the real world some people have the theory that the real world is material or physical I say it's made of kind of a stuff other people have the theory that the real world is spiritual or mental but I want you to point out that both those theories of the world are Concepts their construction of words and the real world is not an idea it is not words reality [Music] is you'll find therefore that if you get with reality all sorts of Illusions disappear and I will mention several illusions that have not this kind of existence let's begin with some very downto Earth ones like money money is a very useful method of accounting it is a measure of wealth in the same way as inches are measures of length and grams measures of weight you cannot eat money you could have a fantastic quantity of dollar bills and uh stock certificates on a desert island and they would be useless to you what you would need would be food and uh animals and companions money simply represents wealth in rather the same way that the Manu represents to dinner only we are psychologically perverted in such a way that we would some of us would rather have money than real wealth but you know you cannot drive in five cars at once even though they be Cadillacs you cannot live simultaneously in six houses or eat 12 roasts of beef at one meal there is a limit to what one can consume so that's one of the sort of confusions I'm talking about I once talked to a woman who came to me and said she was afraid of death and uh we went into it in a long conversation as said what are you really afraid of and she thought it over and thought it over and he said do you know what I'm going to be afraid of is what other people are going to say they're going to say poor old G she couldn't last it through because you see who you think you are is entirely dependent on who people have told you you are you're not that then another thing that bothers bothers us is time most people nowadays say I have no time of course you don't because you not aware of the present you know the present is represented on your watch by a hairline that is as thin as possible as is consistent with visibility and so everybody thinks the present is instead of now the present is the only real time there is no past and there isn't a future and there never will be we think ordinarily of the present as an infinitesimal point at which the future changes into the past and we also do a terrible thing we imagine ourselves to be results of the past and we always passing the buck over our shoulders like uh when God approached Adam in the Garden of Eden and said hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou shouldst not eat and Adam said this woman thou gavest me she tempted me and I did eat and God looked at Eve and said hast thou eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I told thee thou should not eat and she said the serpent beguiled me and I did eat and God out of the corner of his eye looked at the serpent serpent said nothing so you see we're always passing the buck don't realize that the past is caused by the present as the wake of a ship flows back from the prow now the Wake doesn't drive the ship any more than the tail wags the dog but we've all got excuses and my mother had a fit while she was carrying me in the womb uh they didn't bring me up right and then they go to the mother and say how is it that you could have been so irresponsible with your children and she says well it was my parents didn't bring me up right either and so everybody passes the buck but the truth of the matter is it all begins here this is where the creation begins and you're doing it and won't admit it because of course you're all God in Disguise Jesus found that out and they crucified him for saying so because the Jewish people had a sense of God as the cosmic King the boss it was modeled on Pharaoh on Cyrus of Persia the king of kings Kings and the Lord of lords was Cyrus's title Kiron means Cyrus have mercy on us but you don't have to think of God in that image when modern Protestant theologians of the sort of liberal type are saying God is dead they mean not that literally they mean a certain image of God is dead outworn because it was after all an idol and when it says Thou shalt not make to thyself any Graven image it doesn't mean merely images of wood and stone which nobody took seriously anyway it means above all images made of imagination images made of Concepts and that one had feet of clay but it doesn't mean that God is dead that life is nothing more than a trip from the Maternity Ward to the crematorium it's much more spooky than that much more wonderful but you see you can't conceive reality we could say God is reality but if I call this the sound of a Gong it isn't the same as this you see the sound of a Gong is a different sound from that sound the sound of a Gong the sound of a Gong the sound of a Gong the sound of gong is not so then there is practiced throughout the world rather more in Asia than here although Always by a minority of people a discipline called meditation which is to get in touch with reality the word meditation in English doesn't have quite the same meaning because when we talk of someone meditating we think of deeply pondering about something when the orientals are asked what do meditate on they look slightly puzzled we don't meditate on anything we just meditate in Sanskrit it is called Jan in Chinese it is called Chan in Japanese it is called Zen and it means very simply to stop thinking temporar not again that thinking is something bad but if you don't you have to stop thinking at certain times once you get The Knack of that you can do it even while you're thinking so you can be a scholar and practice meditation this is not an anti-intellectual point of view I imagine that most of you here are uh either in college or college educated and the foundation of the intellectual life good scholarship requires that you meditate but in saying that I have got myself into a linguistic trap because you see I seem to be pitching it to you as as if it was something good for you as if it would give you a better future as if it would improve you now so long as such motivations and considerations exist you're not meditating we talk sometimes about the practice of meditation as if it were like practicing the piano preparing for a concert it's much more like the practice of medicine as when you say well I practice medicine means you do it every day it's your way of life so you would this is a very odd thing for westerners to understand and particularly for Americans because we are so fixated on the future when we say want to put something down we say it has no future well do you much better to have a present because if you don't it's useless to make plans because when they work out you won't be there to enjoy them you'll be thinking of something else so this is one activity which is curiously different from all others it has no purpose it's rather like music or dancing in that respect why do you listen to music supposing there would be a culture with no music would you consider that a high culture but why do you do it well some people say well we go to the concert to improve our minds well if you do it that you're not listening as you see music is peculiar in that it is a marvelous pattern of sounds that doesn't mean anything there is some inferior music that means something uh what we call program music like the chikosi 1812 Overture or some of uh deuses perpetrations such as the uted cathedral where it's creating visual pictures or imitating natural noises the beat of H's Hooves or Rollings of military drums and uh the sound of the Waves Etc just imitation now great music as composed by Bak or mozat or uh the Hindu music uh or some of the great contemporary composers doesn't mean anything except itself it isn't going anywhere otherwise the fastest orchestras would be considered the best so we in music becomes centered we come into the present not a hairline present mind you it's an expanded present because if you had a hairline present you wouldn't be able to hear one note after another you wouldn't know what note You' heard before so you couldn't hear Melody but in this you are released into reality that's why it is said that the angels in heaven have Harps and why they Circle The Throne of God and sing Allelujah Allelujah Allelujah which although it does mean Hail to the Lord doesn't really mean anything when you really get Swinging with an Allelujah uh it's just [Laughter] Hallelujah uh you don't think of the meaning of it you see cuz you can't think of the meaning of God what does God mean what is God useful for and so in the same way you've been ask what does a tree mean what does a cloud mean what does a fern mean what's it all about we've gotten all kinds of weird theories that ferns exist in a certain way in order to propagate themselves like birds do all this thing in order to lay eggs so more birds come out and the whole point of that is that there should be more birds still this is a purely engineering approach to life uh which is completely senseless things don't mean anything birds don't mean anything trees don't mean anything words mean something yes because they point to something Beyond themselves they are signs but if you take words too seriously or like a person who climbs a signpost instead of going where it points and so if you suddenly say but my life has no meaning you're identifying yourself with a word that's what we do when we are when if I would identify myself with Alan Watts that would be identifying myself with a concept with words a rather complicated mess of words to be sure but still I would have made that mistake so then it has to be understood about meditation that it's not an exercise it's not a gymnastic it's not the ordinary sort of self-improvement procedure and one does it not to be good for you but just because you dig it because at last you find yourself in the center the Eternal now in which past and future drop away in which divisions created by words drop away can you point to the division between my four by five fingers can you in other words touch the difference between them can't be done because the difference is conceptual true they can all move independently but only because they are one with the body and the body is one with its [Music] environment you cannot separate those like bees and flowers where there are no flowers there are no Bees where there are no Bees there are no flowers they look very different but they are essentially one organism the head and the feet look very different but they are parts of one organism not really parts parts is a mechanical word like gotten a spare parts the organism doesn't have Parts it has um features now there's not very much point in merely talking about this you can understand it only by doing it

Channel: Sacred Seedlings

Views: 399,317

Keywords: alanwatts, spirituality, enlightenment, consciousness, awakening, meditation, wisdom

Id: PGD0a_JTvpw

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023