The Simpler Your Pleasures, The Richer You’ll Be - Alan Watts' Insights on Feeling and Control

people are always asking is it necessary that to know yoga breathing is it necessary to do tai chi is it necessary to uh I don't know what the hell to be psychoanalyzed [Music] and I would ask necessary for what are you going what do you want yeah sure if you want to get to New York it's necessary to take the highway but where are you going what do you mean necessary well is it necessary for becoming a Buddha anybody want to be a Buddha [Music] [Laughter] you know what it means to be a Buddha how do you know you want to be a Buddha if you don't know what a Buddha is [Music] people think well it would be nice to be have peace of mind be Serene to be calm be understood by this that and the other but you see so long as you make all those things objects of Desire you are defining yourself as lacking and a person who's looking for peace is obviously in turmoil the person who is looking to end conflict is in conflict [Music] and so the more you strive to stop the interior commotion because the more you are stirring them up you're smoothing the waters with flat eyes so then we might that then comes up the people who say all right now if you are going to tell us that meditation is not necessary that it's all Here and Now then why do you meditate why do you have uh religion at all why do you have rights why do you charm why do you do this that and the other why do you even talk about it and my answer to that is there is no good reason for it whatsoever [Music] this is a form of joyous energy [Music] and it's a form of Dance it's a groovy thing to do there are all kinds of groovy things to do and to everybody according to his taste you can make anything whatsoever any human activity into meditation simply by being with it and doing it completely to do it [Music] in other words when you're saying swim if you really enjoy swimming you're not swimming to get to the other side of a river or a to swim so many yards or any competing with yourself or with other people like that you're swimming to experience the water Rippling past you the floating sensation uh to lie on your back and look at the Blue Sky and the goals circling [Music] you are doing that every moment of it you are simply absorbed in this ripply luminous world looking at the patterns and the shifting net of sunlight underneath the sand way down that's what it's about that's what swimming's about [Music] so you're not going anywhere getting together and uh chanting together is what a lot of people do when they don't have television to look at in the jungles on the steps and Mountain communities since as long as anyone can remember people got together and do a thing I call digging sound [Music] and played with the Sonic energy of the universe in just the same way as I described somebody playing with the water whilst swimming and these people when they do that they don't worry about where they're going or what their Destiny is or any nonsense of that kind because they're completely alive so to understand all that I'm trying to say I would like to see if you could change on basic Notions of economics and I mean the economics of energy we are always scripting and saving because our economics are based on scarcity rather than exuberance but notice that the economics of nature are allegedly wasteful they're based on exuberance many more scenes than are necessary for trees many more spermatozoa than are necessary for people many more stars than anybody could conceivably want galaxies Galore [Music] nature is a vast celebration of energy but if you complain about this and say oh dear me it's all running out that means you see that you are looking for fulfillment in time and you say if there is not enough future we won't get the golden goody we're looking for at the end of the line see there is that feeling there is the great golden goody but that flower the golden goody isn't that the end of the line you're in it [Music] the radiating petals the mandala the great circle of the flower is the Galaxy in which you live [Music] it is the whole universe radiating around you and which you are and this radiation is also cycling it's the dance in which you're involved if you'd only realize that the purpose of life is not in the future and if you think it is you'll go on and on and on looking for it there and never find it because the future in its own way Fades out in the same way as the past Fades up you will get older and older and older and if you don't come crash you just Peter up it wasn't there you may feel vaguely cheated about the whole thing you were given the comma that there was something coming but was that thing at the end of the line the golden hoodie but you've been sitting in the middle of a golden goody all the time foreign [Music]

Channel: T&H - Inspiration & Motivation

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Id: JQ9uHmBni5U

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2023