Banii, materialismul și inefabilul univers inteligent

by Alan W. Watts, Mihaela-Andra Matei (Translator)

Bazată pe o serie de prelegeri înregistrate, cartea de față abordează trei probleme fascinante: banii, în contrast cu adevărata bogăție, spiritualitatea unui materialism mai profund și modul în care tehnologia și concepțiile filozofice ne ghidează spre o legătură tot mai intensă cu universul pe care îl locuim.

Vei explora numeroase alte teme pline de clarviziune, dar și de umor, mai relevante ca oricând. Ceea ce se dezvăluie este o viziune eliberatoare a umanității care se naște din posibilități și din imprevizibil, o umanitate perfectă, exact așa cum este, iar asta nu în pofida dezordinii și a imperfecțiunilor sale, ci tocmai datorită lor.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Self Help, Essays, Classics

232 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2020

About the author

Alan Wilson Watts was a British philosopher, writer and speaker, who held both a Master's in Theology and a Doctorate of Divinity. Famous for his research on comparative religion, he was best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Asian philosophies for a Western audience. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. In his books he relates his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religion and philosophy.

Reviews

[Joshua Jorgensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced."
"The people who try to explain mysteries are people who try to destroy mysteries and that is in a way to destroy life.”

Alan Watts is perhaps my favorite philosopher--not just because of his humor and sharp wit, but because he translates so effectively the ancient teachings of Asia.
This volume is a collection of thoughts and ramblings which are sometimes easily digested, and other times require deep contemplation.
There is a solid chunk in the middle of this book which deals with money and how we relate to it, view it, and destroy ourselves with it. Uselessly, even. There are a lot of exciting ideas about our society, where we are headed with our technology, and how we can best move beyond it all simply by letting go.
This book is not the first Alan Watts book I'd recommend if you are unfamiliar with him, though it isn't a bad place to begin. Instead, I'd start with THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY. Of course, many of his speeches are also available for a free listen on YouTube. Hearing his voice helps one to understand his delivery--and in my opinion, only enhances a reading of his books.
I am happy to have started off 2021 with this book first.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to read this again, perhaps once a year. Excellent book.

[Andy Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gooooood stuff right here

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced” 🔥🔥🔥

[Timothy Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the scenery of spring, there is nothing superior, nothing inferior. Flowering branches grow naturally--some short, some long."

[Zayd Shirzay]

Need I say anything

[Shane Lantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many times when I read Alan Watts, I have to set the book down, stare at the wall and go “Goddamn.”

Love this one.

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Just so, individuals and their environments exist in polar relationship as different aspects of a single energy. It isn’t correct to say that we’re all one huge being, either. Existence is composed of being and nonbeing, solid and space, crest and trough. Fundamentally, the energy of the world is vibratory — on and off — and you’ll never find one without the other. “To be or not to be” is certainly not the question because to be implies not to be, just as not to be implies to be." * "Western science is essentially the knowledge of names, and that itself is a kind of magic. Understanding the laws of nature means understanding the words underneath phenomena, which means you can change those phenomena, and that’s definitely magic." * "You might not be very conscious of doing so, but it’s the way you think that determines your basic reactions to everything you encounter and perceive." * "When we invent the laws of nature, what we are discovering is something about ourselves, namely, our own passion for regularity, for prediction, and for keeping things under control." * "In fact, the whole notion of a thing or an isolated event in nature —as well as the notion of causal relationships between different things and events —is a purely abstract idea that does not fit the facts of nature at all. In nature, there are no separate events. Nothing happens in isolation —not touching your head, not holding someone else’s hand, not looking at the stars, not breathing —nothing." * "One reason it’s difficult for us to understand that everything we are goes with the rest of the universe is that we’re given conflicting messages about who we are. On one hand, we’re supposed to be one consistent person; on the other, we’re also supposed to improve and change. For one reason or the other, we’re supposed to be different or better than we actually are. We repeat this message to one another, we get the same idea from television, and we’re bombarded with all sorts of advertisements saying the same thing. The world is full nowadays of people making a living from their systems —systems that show us how to grow, to evolve, to change in a particular direction. All for a fee, of course. They all say some version of “Look here —I’ve got this important program or school, and you really should come and study with me.”The system might not originally be theirs —it might actually belong to some famous sage or pundit or other sort of spiritual authority they know —but it doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that you realize that you’re supposed to change, which means you enact a particular course of study, which means that you pay." * "It’s your brain that turns vibrations of air into sound. It’s you that turns whatever the sun does into light. It’s you that makes the air’s activity in the sky into the color called blue. Blue doesn’t exist on its own — there’s only blue in your brain. If you hit a drum and the drum doesn’t have any skin, it won’t make any sound. It’s the skin that evokes the noise out of a moving hand or drumstick. No skin, no noise." * "Every single individual implies everything else that’s going on in the universe." * "You are not determined by the universe — you move in and with it as harmoniously as waves upon the ocean, as leaves upon a tree, as clouds in the sky." * "— a hen is, in one way, an egg’s way of becoming more hens and eggs." * "Naming those things we consider important means isolating those things as separate entities. But they are only separate in a purely theoretical way and just because we say so —they’re not actually materially or physically separate. It is immensely important that we become aware of this fact because when we aren’t aware of it we do the most stupid things. We try to solve problems by attacking the symptoms of those problems." * "We are not merely acting upon the world, and we are not simply responding to its actions upon us, and the more we become familiar with this unfolding process, the more intelligent we become and act. Intelligence is a function of the degree to which we realize that our behavior is one with the behavior of the rest of the world." * "When you stop thinking about it and are simply aware, it suddenly strikes you that everything is equally important, and that allows you to feel amazed at things you never were amazed at before —absolutely fascinated. You hear the sound of rain outside, and it sounds just as important as the most profound thing anyone has ever said, and as a Zen teacher once told me, the sound of the rain needs no translation. The distinctions we make between one thing and another are all conceptual. Cut the concepts and see them fresh, and there are no divisions —it’s all one process." * "Putting a name on a cloud doesn’t do anything to it — it doesn’t separate the cloud from the sky. Names are just socially agreed-upon divisions we use to describe the various forms of nature, but nature itself is formless in the sense that it is all one form, one process." * "We have to act without the kind of preparation we think we ought to have and without the kind of knowledge we think we ought to have, because we can’t comprehend the world in real time in verbal and mathematical patterns. As a result, we feel frustrated. We think we’re supposed to comprehend the world in symbols and manage it that way, but it should be obvious that there never will be a satisfactory explanation in terms of words because you can talk about the simplest object in the world forever and still not fully describe its attributes." * "The apparent motion of the present moment from the past to the future gives the illusion of continuity, as if there were something extended in time. The table appears to be solid, but only because it vibrates with such tremendous energy. And so what we ordinarily conceive of as the material world is not what we think it is but instead is something intensely magical and strange." * "When most adults do something wrong or make a mistake, someone else makes us feel guilty and ashamed of it, so as a consequence we run around licking the sores of our wounded ego about it. What sense does this make? The first thing to understand is that making mistakes is natural. It’s not a serious failing as a human being to do so. Everybody makes mistakes, and there’s no way out of that. In fact, you can’t learn anything unless you make mistakes." * "All of these questions — Where is it? What is reality? What is now? What is life? What is it that you want? — can’t be answered by a type of analysis that breaks things down into their components. And you won’t find the answers by labeling things in various ways, classifying, putting things in boxes, tidying up, and so on. That’s how we tidy up — we throw things in a box. Boxes inside boxes inside boxes. But when it’s all boxed up, you can’t see it anymore, so instead of putting it in boxes, let’s just look at it the way it comes. You can only find out what it is by looking at it and feeling it directly." * "Watch your thoughts in the same way you might notice the ticking of a clock, or birds chattering outside, or water dropping from a leaky faucet. All of that is part of what’s going on. Life continues to do its thing. Just watch. Because the thoughts are just chatter, they’ll eventually go away. The past disappears because we know it’s just a memory, and the future disappears because it hasn’t happened — it’s just a thought. Tomorrow never comes." * "When we look at the universe for that surprise —for that little extra something that will give it meaning —we’re looking for the wrong thing. The meaning of it isn’t separate from the thing itself. It isn’t something external that is apart, away, or different. In other words, the meaning of the dance is the dance itself, but to understand that you have to dance —you have to swing." * "The only thing you can do is let it happen. Whatever’s going on, let it happen." * "The moment is always new, always fresh, no matter what’s going on." * "Always allow for the unexpected." * "The only way to let go is to remember that you can’t hold on." * "Gorgeous things are happening all of the time by themselves. The most astounding insights and truest pleasures are in the most trivial of everyday affairs." * "Take delight in all the ordinary things you have to do. It’s supposed to be more rewarding to get your work out of the way so that you can go do something else, but the reward is right here. There’s no hurry. For the person who is a master of pleasure, everything in life is a ritual. You can realize the great life if you’re not looking for it."

[Sasha Townsend · Rating 1 out of 5]

I loved The Way of Zen, The Wisdom of Insecurity, and Psychotherapy East and West, but this book has an entirely different style. It includes none of the typical light and laughter of a Watts book.

It’s extremely negative about material things, and has bizarre references to swinging, orgies, straining, constipation, and ongoing financial hardship that are completely inconsistent in tone, style, and content from Watts’s earlier work (both his writing and his lectures).

I honestly doubt the authorship, but perhaps the book’s editors chose poorly from among his earlier lectures. The chapter titled “In Praise of Swinging” is very anti-science and inconsistent with Watts’s earlier discussions of wave / particle duality. The word choices throughout invoke sexual innuendo.

“He” also refers to curving and expanding space as “just bunk.” Alan Watts seemed very comfortable with the curvature of spacetime in other books.

I am reading the entire book just so that I can be familiar with its content, but the more I read, the more I think that this book was not written by Alan Watts.

If you’re a Watts fan, I highly recommend skipping this one.

[Chloe Filice · Rating 4 out of 5]

going nowhere except everywhere

[giovanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We live for the future mainly because our present is inadequate, and our present is inadequate because we are not seeing it fully. We see it only in terms of abstractions. That's why we're always looking into the future for something else, something more — more life, more time, more whatever it is — because one of these days it will all be all right, and the thing we’re looking for will hopefully happen. Of course, it never does. Not if you live that way. Because when you attain all your goals in life and rise to the top of your profession and have your beautiful spouse and children, you still feel the same as you've always felt. You're still looking for something in the future, and there isn't any future— not really. So only people who live in proper relationship with the material present have any use for making any plans at all, because then if the plans work out, they're actually capable of enjoying them. But if you aren't fully here and your mind is always off somewhere else, you'll remain starved and always rushing to get someplace else. And theres nowhere to go except here.”

muito bom!!

[Dylan Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You can trust your own organic skill and intelligence. Really, you can’t avoid it. If you try to avoid it and tell yourself that you can’t trust yourself, then it follows that the very idea that you cannot trust yourself is untrustworthy. After all, it’s one of your ideas.”

[David Poltorak · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.1/5
This book was published posthumously by collecting recordings of Alan Watt's talks and lectures.
For that reason, this book lacked some of the flow that his previous writings have and felt somewhat repetitive. Nonetheless, there is plenty of wisdom to be gained and perspective to be appreciated.

Quotes:

Who behaves the same way all the time? Doing so across various circumstances and in the company of various people doesn’t mean you’re consistent – it means you’ve become rigid and inflexible.
Everything depends on the context in which it is found. Anything we single out depends on its network relationship to everything else that’s going on. In fact, the whole notion of a thing or an isolated event in nature – as well as the notion of causal relationships between different things and events – is a purely abstract idea that does not fit the facts of nature at all.



The core principle I want to get across here is the idea of going with … You go with the universe in the same way that the stalk goes with the root, or the pistil with the stamen, or the North Pole with the South … Relationship underlies everything … the larger universe doesn’t control or determine the smaller individual any more than the smaller individual actuates the larger universe. It’s not a question of control; it’s a question of dancing. It’s a question of what happens rather than what makes it happen.
If you realize that everything is part of one event – that everything is a different aspect or phase of the same event – then you understand that it is simply happening.



You are not determined by the universe – you move in and with it as harmoniously as waves upon the ocean, as leaves upon a tree, as clouds in the sky.
We don’t accuse the clouds of making aesthetic mistakes. Seen in the same light, all human beings are perfect forms of nature … Anything that is part of the functioning of the whole is legitimate.



It’s funny that we can put ourselves down by saying we’re just an accident, a kind of chemical accident that has occurred on an unimportant rock that orbits a lesser star on the fringe of a minor galaxy. And that’s supposed to be us, floating around in a universe that doesn’t give a damn about us. At the same time, this wretched little chemical accident is capable of reflecting an image of the whole vast cosmos inside its tiny head – and is aware that it is doing so. So we are small in dimension but vast in comprehension. Which one of those aspects is more important?


If we are capable of seeing – that is, from a strictly scientific point of view – that an individual organism goes with its environment (bees with flowers, flowers with grubs, grubs with birds, and so on), then how can we define ourselves as merely that which occurs inside our skin? Everything that goes on within our body goes with everything happening outside of it, thereby constituting a single complex field of diversified behaviors and processes. Even when you look at it just from a physical point of view, the network becomes obvious.



If you live off animals, as most of us do, it would be wise to cherish them.



What we see out there is not merely something external – it’s in our head and our head’s in it. They mutually interpenetrate each other.



It is possible to realize that we are identical with the fundamental energy of the universe … An organism and its environment are a single process of energy expressed with great complexity as one process, one activity.


Intelligence is a function of the degree to which we realize that our behavior is one with the behavior of the rest of the world.



We have been trained to regard only certain things as important. That’s why meditation is so revealing because it helps you stop valuing and putting a price on all the various things you could be aware of … everything is equally important, and that allows you to feel amazed at things you never were amazed at before – absolutely fascinated. You hear the sound of the rain outside, and it sounds just as important as the most profound thing anyone has ever said … the sound of the rain needs no translation.



People disapprove of wiggles because wiggles are difficult to control. They’re slippery. Also, you can’t exactly count them very well. How do you count the wiggles on a cloud? …
Putting the name on a cloud doesn’t do anything to it – it doesn’t separate the cloud from the sky. Names are just socially agreed-upon divisions we use to describe the various forms of nature, but nature itself is formless in the sense that it is all one form, one process. We only break apart the great continuous wiggliness into things and events for the purpose of control, and yet all of our categorizing leaves the world undivided. It’s simply a way of being able to talk about phenomena in order to agree how we are going to control them and decide what we’re going to do with them.



I mentioned before that wu wei means something like “noninterference,” but it is also sometimes incorrectly translated as “non-action.” Wu wei is acting, but in accordance with the field of forces in which you find yourself … the organic pattern of the situation.


When you do anything skillfully, you’re expressing the total power of the field of forces, which is expressing itself in the form of skillful action through the agency of you as a human organism. It requires intelligence to do this.



Words are the claws we use to tear life to pieces and arrange it in certain ways, just as we have to bite and chew apart our food in order to break it down into digestible pieces … But there are a lot of other acts of understanding we perform that are not contained in words.



Our constructs are extensions of ourselves.



The reactions of others provide us with the mirror in which we attain self-realization. We only know who we are in terms of our relationships with others.



Until we get over our particular hang-up with the hallucination of separateness, it will be difficult to form a new relationship with money, our possessions, and the material present.



What is spiritual has nothing whatsoever to do with abstractions – it’s actually a lot closer to what we call physical reality or the material world.



We think that the real world is disintegrating and crumbling and therefore is bad, but the real reason we denigrate the world is because it is un-seizable. It is always changing, we can’t grasp it and there’s nothing to hold on to. But that’s what makes it spiritual.
When you lean on the world, it collapses. So don’t lean on it – live in it. Don’t try to hold on to it. When you embrace someone, you don’t squeeze the breath out of them and strangle them.



If you can’t wave with it – if you are rigid – you will always be resisting life. Going with wiggliness and swinging with it is fundamental to the pleasures of life, which is why we call those who cannot do so “straights” and “squares.” They do not swing. Instead, they’re always trying to square things away and get things straight. As a result, they are out of harmony with the wiggly universe.



Our universe is fluid, and so the art of faith is not in taking a stand but in learning how to swim. You don’t cling to water; you don’t try to stand on it. You breathe, relax, and learn to trust that the water will support you. This is also true for flying, gliding, and sailing – all of these arts have adapted to the fluid.



Learning to wiggle is fundamental to pleasure. We should let go and relax. But that doesn’t mean that we become droopy – relaxing means becoming supple. It means learning your weight, how to use it, and how to flow with gravity. Water always takes the course of least resistance – it flows and wiggles with gravity – and yet it possesses tremendous strength.



And the thing about guilt is that it’s a foolproof way of not doing anything about a situation. When people feel guilty, they don’t seek out practical solutions but instead resort to all sorts of symbolic methods of expiation – they go to confession, they visit psychotherapists, and so on. They do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the problem itself and everything to do with feeling okay about it. Guilt is a destructive emotion. We need to take a different attitude toward our mistakes and misdeeds.



The first principle in the art of pleasure is swinging, which simply means that you mustn’t take anything seriously. Life is a form of dancing, and dancing isn’t serious – that’s why it’s prohibited by fundamentalists of all types and other gloomy sorts. They don’t approve of dancing. It isn’t because dancing is sexy – you can dance with anyone or all by yourself – it’s because dancing is considered frivolous and undignified … When people are born they are supple and tender; when they die they are stiff and hard ... Suppleness and softness are clearly signs of life.



That rigidity of holding off life so that I can maintain my particular shape, form, and place is what makes us uptight and unable to swing through the fear of what might happen if we’d only let things wiggle.
A nonwiggly person is unadaptive in a wiggly world, and so we develop these insect-like mechanical behavior patterns that have to go on and on with regularity always the same.



You’ve got to let loose and swing and go crazy every now and then, because if you don’t go crazy at regular intervals, you’ll eventually go insane.
I should add that it won’t do to make another project out of all of this. It would be easy for us to become rigid about derigidifying ourselves.


When most people think of pleasure, they don’t have a very definite idea of what it is, and if they do have a definite idea of pleasure, it turns out when they get it that it isn’t what they actually wanted. So where are you going? And what’s the rush?
Look around. Pay attention. You may already be there – it’s just that you didn’t notice.



We don’t really want to live in a world in which everything is positive all of the time [think of Disenchament S1E1].



But if you do realize that tomorrow isn’t coming, then maybe plans will be of some use to you because you can actually enjoy the results of your plans if they happen to work out. You can only handle tomorrow if you don’t take it seriously.



If you believe that you can’t trust your brain, how can you trust whatever logic it is that underlies that belief? Finally, it does no good to say that you’re going to let go and finally trust the field of forces in which you live. Don’t do it that way. Instead, remember that you can’t hold on. The only way to let go is to remember that you can’t hold on. There’s nothing to hold on to and no one to hold it. It’s all one system, one energy.



The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.



The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

[Jake Torcasio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantasticooo. Alan Watts is the man. Blurring the line between mystic, philosopher and author with a truly refreshing way to look at life through the eastern lens. I believe these lectures were published in the late 60s and it is truly futuristic even today, hes still looking decades into even our future. I think the integration of eastern and western thought needs more love today. Synthesizing the greek ideal with the buddist detachment is difficult because the two are sometimes counterintuitive but I think the line can be walked. Living the virtuous heroic life of the homeric world with the "Go with the flow" understanding, acceptance and presence of the tao and buddist schools is the way.

Here are my favorite quotes and my annotations


1. Going with

“Over time God became the new “King of Men” A dictator that the church could control and create for the perpetuation of their own worldly power and influence” -me

SOUND = VIBRATION = GEOMETRY
In the beginning, the hindu idea is that speech is the basis of creation, but by speech they mean (vibration - sound)

LIFE AND DEATH ARE merely different rates of vibration, one is on, one is off.

“For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - Hamlet

“The only truths are what the subconscious mind believes to be true” - Nero

We somehow pick up this weird notion that death is not supposed to happen, if the sun rises and sets, the day goes from light to dark, we go from awake to asleep, everything moves in a cycle, life and death are no different.

“Would you want to live on this earth as yourself for 500 years?” - me
You would have a most difficult time convincing me that intelligent symptoms are possible in an unintelligent organization- AW
You can’t get intelligence beings inside of a non intelligent universe
You can’t get 1 in 0 ( in the simplest definition)

“What would you change if you were God? What kind of universe would you design? Really think it through sometime. I strongly believe that if you went through the trouble of modeling your own universe and seeing what comes of it, you’d eventually settle on the exact model we have now. All of these fundamental principles, vibration, energy, and the yin yang balance of positive and negative elements make up this model. Which is incredible.” - AW

YEAAAAAA god cooked on this one

“When a bruise to your ego hurts more than a bruise to the arm” -me

“When you stub your toe and you are more pissed that someone may have seen you look a fool as opposed to in pain from the stub, you know ya fucked up” -me

TREAT NOTHING LIKE MATTER BECAUSE ITS ALL ENERGY! - me

“How do we live in a culture where Philosophy is not considered the top of the intellectual mountain?” - me

REMEMBER WE ARE IDENTICAL TO THE FUNDAMENTAL ENERGY OF THE UNIVERSE - me

“The interesting thing about our own perception and context is that without it, everything has = importance. A presentation to 100 people and the accuracy of throwing an apple core into the trash can. Without the conceived importance WE ourselves give to such events, they are of no different relevance, everything is equally relevant.” - me

“We are creatures of comparison, without your friends, peers, brothers, you have no benchmark to set? They are the pole?” - me

“So as the inner world rises, the outer world rises, and whichever falls first, the other responds, BUTTT if your inner world is so excellent… So full of life, ideas, interests, stories, love, then the outside world is irrelevant. It can’t phase you. This is enlightenment. When my fourth grade self wanted to get home to finish the Half Blood Prince for the first time. It doesn't matter if I get a C on my test, a ticket, whatever “bad” thing that could happen (excluding personal tragedy obv) NONE of that could penetrate my excitement, and more importantly my FOCUS / ATTENTION / ENERGY from the Half Blood Prince, so if you have constant wheels turning in the inner world which are unrelated to the material world, love curiosity, creativity, THEN NOTHING CAN EVER FAZE YOU” - me


2. Civilizing Technology

“We need to think of entirely new political ideas that embrace the organic model of the universe” - AW

“We have been brainwashed to believe in original sin, which says that the self and unconscious cannot be trusted?” - AW Haha good one

Privacy, Artificiality, and the self
“Advancements in the electronic network are happening at an astonishing rate. Before you know it we’ll have boxes inside our homes with little screens on them that will enable us to key in a given code and access any book of our choosing in the library of congress.” -AW

“We’ll also soon have the ability to arrange lasers in a way to create a three-dimensional image in color that we can project in a certain area and even walk around inside it.” -AW

Well go figure he could see into the future, he was a man out of TIME.

“The distinction between artificial and natural is itself artificial” - AW
Yes that's why I feel like the term artificial intelligence is actually sorta dumb, is it not “Created Intelligence” Or should we say “Non human intelligence”

“Some people predict that its only a matter of time until our ordinary devices disappear and are replaced by individual devices about the size of a pocket watch, one side will have a tv screen and speaker, the other entail a set of buttons you can use to activate various functions or dial world information for any given individual. And if the person doesn't answer, it will mean that they are dead. Under such circumstances, absolutely no one can get lost anymore.”

UHH YEAH

3. Money and Materialism

“The more time you spend in this present moment, the happier you will be. Thinking about the past and future is fine, but you aren’t really living. More like abstracting” - me

“The Material is the Spiritual” -AW

“We live in a society in which we are more interested in accumulating the tokens of wealth than the actual wealth” - AW

“Money is pure abstraction. The trouble with most people is that they still think money is real, but it isn’t.” -AW

“Innovation for innovations sake in business and technology can be vanity if there is no true utility, utility deriving from true humanity not abstraction” - me

“The funny thing about guilt is that it's a foolproof way of not doing anything about a situation. When people feel guilty, they don't seek out practical solutions but instead resort to all sorts of symbolic methods of expiation - they go to confession, visit psychotherapists, and so on. They do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the problem itself and everything to do with feeling okay about it. Guilt is a destructive emotion” - AW

“^ It's actually quite selfish when you put it like that. Lets say you are walking down a street and seeing a homeless man on the ground, you can feel guilty for him, but that guilt is simple a cover up for the fact that you really don’t intend to help the man whatsoever, but if you feel sad and guilty you didn’t, while now the attention is put off of the choice to help, it's now about compensating for your choice to not help.” Either help or don’t, be confident in the way to make decisions, guilt derives when you are misaligned with your truth no?” - me

“Freedom means being able to make mistakes, it means having the freedom to be a damn fool” -AW
“You can’t figure out what is right without seeing what is wrong.” Like you need a shitty book to make a good one, or a shitty song to see what you are missing. Oh the progression is simple, oh the melody is the same in the verse and chorus, oh there's no momentum. Once you see this, then it gives you the ability to add those things to the next one.” - Me

“This means celebrating mistakes, genuinely laughing at them”

(I wrote that while sitting at the airport waiting for my flight which had been delayed 4 hours at that point. MISTAKE. FLYING FUCKING FRONTIER AIRLINES, I laughed to myself as I waited lol)

4. In Praise of Swinging

“Moral of the story: always remember to lighten up, be playful, rigidity is a curse” - me

“If you don’t go crazy at regular intervals, you’ll eventually go insane” - AW
I fucking love this quote idk y. Its very dionysian.

“Where are you going? What's the rush?” - AW

White implies black exists
Pain implies pleasure exists
Right implies left exists
Death implies life exists
Life implies death exists

Myself = ME + Self
Yourself = You + Self
Its in the damn words
-me

“Karma is simply the law of cause of effect (Correspondence in Hermetic Language) in motion” - me

“Everything is where it needs to be, where it has been caused to be, if that rock had been kicked I'd be over there. But nobody kicked it so it's right here. This is kinda like when George said, you could never complain about your situation, because it is you. YOU have allowed it all to happen.” - me

“Once you feel okay and happy today, well there you go” - me

“Present moment focus. ALL ELSE IS NOT REAL” - me

“Say how you feel, why be ashamed of being perceived as you are?” - me

“The past holds no jurisdiction in the now, unless you let it” - me

“There is no reality that is apart from you” - AW

“This makes me think of imagining what others are thinking, why try, do you think negatively about other people all day? No, I usually look at the positives and see people as great and kind, so why would you think they are thinking ALL about you, unless they are an idiot with no energy, orrrr you are SOO important that you simply can't escape the minds of everyone who has ever interacted with you. EGO driven mindset disguised as anxiety. AS ABOVE SO BELOW” - me

“Follow where the gut points you” - me

“An essential principle of swinging and the pursuit of material pleasure is the unscheduled life” -me
“The unrigid life”

5.What is so of Itself.

“Countless texts tell us that the highest knowledge is not knowledge at all.” - AW
“Its just love” - me

“TRUSTING yourself is actually a kind of discipline” - AW

“Remember to trust your most primal instincts, they are the core you, the infinitely intelligent and aware you”- me

“Even the smallest leaf is a beauty to me”- me
“Artists can see this, we hope to add to the beauty. A seat at the table of creation” - me

“True spirituality is not doing time with God once a week because you feel like you have to. It is seeing God in everything and everyone ALLways. And living out of pure Love” - me

“The Highest form of religion is presence” -me
BE here now.

[Hanapa'A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just another thought-provoking title by Sir Alan Watts

[r · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's your brain that turns vibrations of air into sound. It's you that turns whatever the sun does into light. It's you that makes the air's activity in the sky into the color called blue. Blue doesn't exist on its own-there's only blue in your brain."

"It's become obvious that there have to be ways of linking together the established departments of knowledge—physics, chemistry, history, anthropology, et cetera—which have been serving for the longest time as huge paving stones. It's always between the paving stones that the little things begin to grow, and the growing edge nowadays is in the interstices between these finite departments."

"We are not merely acting upon the world, and we are not simply responding to its actions upon us, and the more we become familiar with this unfolding process, the more intelligent we become and act. Intelligence is a function of the degree to which realize that our behavior is one with the behavior of the rest of the world."

"Words are the claws we use to tear life to pieces and arrange it in certain ways, just as we have to bite and chew apart our food in order to break it down into digestible pieces."

"The distinction between artificial and natural is itself artificial."

"We are taught that life is serious, and therefore life must be done in an efficient way. In ancient times, people sang while they worked, but hardly anybody sings anymore unless it's part of an official performance. Imagine a bank teller singing as they counted out your money. If that happened, you'd probably complain to management."

"And the thing about guilt is that it's a foolproof way of not doing anything about a situation. When people feel guilty, they don't seek out practical solutions but instead resort to all sorts of symbolic methods of expiation-they go to confession, they visit psychotherapists, and so on. They do all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the problem itself and everything to do with feeling okay about it."

"Freedom means being able to make mistakes; it means having the freedom to be a damn fool."

"It's okay to have a rough schedule as long as you don't get uptight about it. Just as the skeleton is a framework for the flesh, a schedule is simply a set of bones for wiggles. We need some bones, after all, or else everybody would be too gooey. But that doesn't mean you need to take your bones seriously. Always allow for the unexpected. This is true at the level of the most simple sensuous pleasures as well as the level of the highest mystical experiences."

"Trusting yourself is actually a kind of discipline."

"Take delight in all the ordinary things you have to do. It's supposed to be more rewarding to get your work out of the way so that you can go do something else, but the reward is right here. There's no hurry. For the person who is a master of pleasure, everything in life is a ritual. You can realize the great life if you're not looking for it."

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the time I was quite young, I've harbored this notion that past existences, past experiences, and, let's not mince words, past lives, somehow shaped me. As much as this idea was very much at the core of who I was, I would also look upon it at times as though from afar and wonder: where the hell did I get this idea? More curiously, did anyone else have this same feeling? Intuitively, I knew these were not the kinds of question one might ask of teachers or aunts or even friends, and so I did not, not ever. In a way, then, I can best describe Alan Watts as a relief - for not only do I feel he would understand these questions, but that these notions, which seemed so far removed from the staid midwestern life that surrounded me, were not perhaps as decidedly odd as I had assumed.

And that is how Watts is for me: assurance that I am not losing my mind, but allowing myself to find it. Early on he introduces the idea of the wiggly world and returns to it often. Essentially, it's like this: the universe is comprised of wiggles, which is to say the concave and the convex, the worms and snakes inching through life, the waves of wind through a field of wheat, the spirals of a snail shell. Few straight lines occur organically in nature, and as Watts continued to elaborate on the idea throughout Just So, I realized how much of the tension is my own life has derived from trying to force the squiggly and wiggly to become something straight. Eventually, like the caterpillar grown too large for its cocoon, the wiggles can simply no longer be contained and burst forth. Perhaps they've sprouted wings and colors and bear the name butterfly rather than caterpillar, but the essence remains.

Earlier this summer I read Gavin de Beck's The Gift of Fear, about the power and the value of intuition. Unfortunately, de Beck tells his reader, in most cases we've been taught to reason our intuition away. Watts makes the same argument when he writes "Your brain is capable of finding out, but if you don't trust it, you will fumble along and do silly things, and you have been habituated to not trust your brain," (p. 178). As proof he cites similar circumstances to de Beck: "when you find yourself in crisis and you just spontaneously act with intelligence when there is absolutely no time to go over options and think through various decisions. Your own being steps in and comes to your aid" (p. 180). In my own life, I am reminded of the spring 2001, when I was admitted to the business school at UM, a goal toward which I had worked for, I don't know, 10 years. And yet, as I handed over the acceptance, something deep within me surged forth, in hindsight, a crisis, and I demanded back the acceptance papers and instead submitted the papers that indicated I would decline the offer of admission to one of the top business schools in America, a school from which 22-year-old graduates even 20 years ago could often expect starting salaries in the range of 100K. At the critical moment, though, I knew this was not for me.

And how appropriate that I should remember this incident while reading a book whose subtitle begins Money, Materialism.... because it reminds me that my knowing, that is, the deeply personal intuition lodged among my core beliefs, has correctly calibrated the value - and point - of money all along. As Watts says, it "isn't practical until you spend it and, more importantly, enjoy it."

As with other of Watts's books, his treatment of technology is eerily prescient. All of our wires and cables may not have disappeared, but we are able to untether in ways that much of Watts's early audience would have found unfathomable, even if he was already fathoming it. Certainly it's the case that "everything we'd ever wish to know or learn [is] available on a screen right in front of us" (p. 64). So, too, have our "ordinary telephones disappear[ed] to be replaced by individual devices" (p.85) and if they may be a bit larger than the "size of a pocket watch" one of them is, in fact, a wristwatch. And when Watts posits that "at some point in the future, electronic communication will even take the place of air travel, because...I'll be able to re-create myself in front of my father in England, just as if I were sitting the same room with him" (p. 86), well: Zoom, much? As to his concerns about privacy, I'll say nothing more than 'Amazon Halo.' (Actually, I will say more: the Halo is really, really creepy. But don't take my word for it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/techno....)

But, as always, with Watts this is personal. It's personal when he writes of having nothing to fear once you've nothing to lose, and I see myself in my old office divulging to the one friend I had there my plan to quit and then to out our boss for being a total lecher. I remember how I'd worked out the night before I could do it - and then, less than 24 hours later, how I was offered a split position with my current job....which would only seem to support Watts notion that "there's no use in worrying about whether or not this what you're supposed to be doing...as..the most pleasurable things in life almost always happen unexpectedly" (p. 170). Well, that one landed like a ton of bricks, actually.

I can't help but compare it to the idea that if the real troubles in your life are the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday (bonus points for naming the lyric!), so too are the real joys. Enumerating those joys - from the opportunity to return to MSU nearly a decade and a half ago to many of my most rewarding friendships - I am struck again and again by this pattern. This pattern is all the more breathtaking (and I mean breath taking in the literal and original sense of the word) for my recent revelation that I actually don't need - in fact, no longer even want - the proverbial crystal ball. I have experienced too many times too recently the intermingling of positive and negative, the overwhelming gratitude that comes from situations that would appear only to offer hearthache and pain, the unbounded truth that our lives are not always peopled by those we would want in them, but always - always - by the people we need in them.

Often when I read, I find various songs going through my mind. I'd be no child of the 80s if Material Girl hadn't pulsated through my brain at least a couple of times, but really, the song I kept hearing as I read Just So was The Dance. I can hear Garth Brooks's twang: "I'm glad I didn't know | The way it all would end the way it all would go | Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain | But I'd have had to miss the dance."

Fittingly, Watts compares life to dance, argues that life is a form of dancing. I'm a terrible dancer and so I never do, but maybe I should start.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is pure synchronicity that this book was published in 2020, a year that going out of its way to show how all systems across the global community can be disrupted and everything starts to fall apart. And the prescient words spoken who knows how many decades ago (academics would be furious with the lack of citations) pinpoint so many of the problems we continue to struggle with right now: technology vs. work, wealth vs. money, religion vs. ritual, etc. etc. All that Watts means to do is point out how it doesn’t have to be looked at in such oppositional ways. Maybe give it a month and a few more days to see if the world can breathe a bit more easily or if we have started upon another terminal cycle towards misery and misunderstanding.

[Comert Vardar · Rating 2 out of 5]

İlk defa okunup, dinlenildiğinde sırf birbiriyle çelişmediği için doğru gibi gelen 'Varlık ve Gerçeğin doğası'yla ilgili önermeleri bir bağlam olmaksızın ardı ardına sıralayınca ortaya çıkan şeyin felsefe olmaması gerekiyor. Bu kitabın nesi felsefik?

Ayrıca kitabın basımından mı, Storytel'in yanlış aktarımı mıdır bilmiyorum;
tam olarak aynı cümleleri birden fazla yerde tekrar edecek kadar da özensiz.

'Ben kendi kendime yardımcı olurum kardeşim, sen hiç kafanı yorma!' diye atarlanıp, son self-help kitabım olarak kayıtlara geçelim..

[William Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book can not be explained, it needs to be experienced. Read it

[Raul Zaldaña · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty light read for when you need a breath of Zen

[Bremer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It shouldn't be about me anyway; it's about you. And you are like a dewdrop suspended on a multidimensional spider's web in the light of early morning. But if you look at that dewdrop closely, you'll see that it reflects every other dewdrop there is. And the way that one drop looks goes with the way that all the others appear, see? They each have their particular glimmer, depending on their peculiar position in the cosmos, and the reflection of the whole web in each drop of dew is slightly different. Nevertheless, the whole network - that is, all of the drops together - depends on each individual dewdrop, just as each individual dewdrop depends on all of the others."

- Alan Watts

Interconnected in the Cosmos:

At the Newtonian level, we are made up of matter. The universe that we live in is governed by cause and effect. Our bodies are subject to physical laws, all operating on a macroscopic scale ("Newton's Laws of Motion"). We interact with external forces like gravity and friction, as well as internal forces generated by our bodily processes. The molecules within us are continually transforming, converting one kind of energy into another, to keep us alive ("Physics: Newtonian Physics").

In Einstein's theory of general relativity, we are interwoven into the fabric of spacetime (a four-dimensional continuum) (Greene 10, 48). We are in motion, not just through space, but through time as well. The passage of time that we experience is relative to our motion ("General Relativity").

Our mass is not separate from energy either (as described by E=mc²). Fundamentally, the matter that makes up our bodies contains energy due to its mass. According to the law of conservation, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms (e.g., kinetic, thermal).

On the quantum scale, we are composed of subatomic particles that follow probabilistic rules. Strange behaviors, such as superposition and wave-particle duality, contribute to the atomic interactions inside our bodies (Feynman).

On a biological level, we share a common ancestry with other members of our species (99.9% of our DNA) (Crow). We depend not only on our genetic diversity, but on our environment, for survival. For millions of years in our evolutionary past, we have been in symbiotic relationships with plants (providing oxygen, food, medicine), animals (offering food, labor, companionship), and microorganisms (supporting immunity, digestion) across diverse ecosystems around the world ("Mutualistic Symbiosis") ("Symbiosis").

Sociologically, we are part of families, communities, institutions, and societies. We depend on social systems to function. Within these systems, we play various roles, such as child and parent, teacher and student, employer and employee. We are shaped by the parents we have, the jobs we work at, the schools we attend, and the religions we follow. Our beliefs and values and language develop partly through socialization. From the time that we are born, we rely on others such as our families, friends, teachers, doctors, and so on ("What Is Sociology?").

At many levels, we are interconnected. Our existence is supported by a vast number of conditions (Watts 21). But it is not only the external universe that makes us who we are. Our minds make the universe as well:

The universe around you is your outside just as much as the organs inside your skin are your inside. You go with the universe in the same way that the stalk goes with the root, or the pistil with the stamen, or the North Pole with the South. (Watts 21)

We are a part of nature. We are nature as well. Our existence is made up of relationships to our food, to our ancestors, to the trees, to the breeze. We may only have relative perspectives, but we are waves in an ocean (Watts 24).

We can't separate ourselves from what is around us. The universe depends on us just as we depend on it. Every breath that we take, every neuron that fires in our brains, changes the cosmos (Watts 30). The cosmos, in turn, changes who we are.

The elements that formed our species, and all living creatures on Earth, once came from the "interiors of collapsing stars" billions of years ago (Sagan 236). As astronomer Carl Sagan said in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff."

Without our nervous systems, we wouldn't be able to perceive the universe. Light, heat, color, weight, and shape would not exist for us (Watts 46). Our hearts wouldn't beat. There would be no breath in our lungs.

Our reality is intrinsically connected to the external universe. Yet at the same time, that reality is just a fraction of everything that is. We can only sense a narrow spectrum of light/sound out of the totality of light/sound (Watts 47). We process a small amount of information and interpret it through our symbolic systems. We categorize our experiences in terms of good and bad, black and white, past and future (Watts 49).

We have been conditioned to see ourselves as separate from other people and things. But the "self" cannot be without the "other" (Watts 154). They are intertwined aspects of the universe:

We aren't who we think we are. We aren't a separate self that's trapped inside this bag of skin. We are, instead, the entire thing - the whole vibration system, the undulation, the very pulsation we call existence. That's us, vibrating out in infinite ways. (Watts 162)

The Trap of Materialism; The Illusion of Separateness:

Many of us are not aware of the present moment. We become obsessed with abstractions such as money and status and possessions (Watts 99). We get lost in thoughts about the past and the future. Rather than enjoying the meal, we confuse "the menu with the meal" (Watts 101).

We work at jobs that we don't value just to make money (Watts 108). We make money so that we can buy things. We buy things to feel happy.

Compared with poorer countries, we should be grateful for what we have. But usually, we aren't. We're tired and disappointed, all while hoping for the next thing that will fulfill us (Watts 108).

We live under the delusion that buying more things will make us happy. But we also believe that we should save our money for a future that may never come (Watts 105). Meanwhile, we neglect what is right here.

Even when we make a large amount of money, we become attached to it. We're afraid of losing what we have. Regardless of whether we are rich or poor, there is always something to worry about when we are not at peace with ourselves (Watts 109).

It is possible to live in a society where every human being is fed and clothed and housed. But those who have a lot of money, such as politicians and businesspeople, don't want to give up what they have accumulated. They are concerned with their own short term interests at the expense of the many (Watts 124).

It is absurd to work only for money. Money is an abstraction (Watts 128). While many families are struggling to survive, some of us make enough to live comfortably and still desire more (Watts 115):

What we call greed is essentially discontent with the present. Admittedly, there are too many people in the world living in poverty or on the edge of poverty who have an inadequate material present, but it is the greed of the well taken care of that is so terrifying. People who have enough to wear and eat are still greedy, and they are the ones who exploit the earth, drag every ounce of wealth out of it, generate all this rubbish and poisoned air, and all because they can't be here, alive in the present moment. (Watts 115)

We value the symbols but not what those symbols represent (Watts 119). While our dualistic thinking can help us to categorize and make logical predictions, it also exposes our biases:

When we invent the laws of nature, what we are discovering is something about ourselves, namely, our own passion for regularity, for prediction, and for keeping things under control. (Watts 119)

We may know ourselves to a limited extent, but we don't always recognize our interconnectedness with the universe. We are a "dewdrop suspended on a multidimensional spiderweb," reflecting every other dewdrop (Watts 20).

Our existence is not separate. It is interrelated with the members of our species, with the plants, with the sun. We may see ourselves as one person, as part of a group. But what we do affects the universe. We are as small as a subatomic particle and as large as the stars. We are all relative aspects of nature:

In exactly the same way, you as an individual imply the world, and the world mutually implies you. You are a natural formation. You are not determined by the universe - you move in and with it as harmoniously as waves upon the ocean, as leaves upon a tree, as clouds in the sky. (Watts 24)

We cannot form a new relationship with our "money, possessions, and the material present" until we get over our illusion of separateness (Watts 97).

Our relationship to these things is in the present moment. Even our thoughts about the past and future are happening now (Watts 97). If we are constantly pushing to get to the next paycheck, the next title, the next bonus, we will never enjoy our fleeting existence (Watts 98).

The present moment cannot truly be defined. It is beyond words. But we are so used to comparison, measurement, classification, and so on, that we cling to our symbols without knowing what they signify (Watts 101).

We ignore the paradise that is here because we are searching for a paradise over the horizon. We may never be able to reach what we want. But that is because we already have it:

When you lean on the world, it collapses. So don't lean on it - live in it. Don't try to hold on to it. When you embrace someone, you don't squeeze the breath out of them and strangle them. You can't sense the world - you can't feel the world - if you grab hold of it. Use a light touch. Let it flow through your fingers. It's always slipping, so let it slip. And the more it runs, the more it stays, and the more it stays, the more it runs - that's the way it is. If you don't hold on to it, it's always here; if you do hold on to it, it's always running away. But if you use a light touch, you can discover the most shocking thing - the physical world right here and now, this absolutely concrete moment, is paradise. It's everything that you could ever have imagined the beatific vision to be. (Watts 208)

The Nonduality of Generosity

When we give, we receive as well. We understand that the separation between ourselves and others is an illusion. We contribute because we are aware that other living beings require the same things that we do, whether it is clean air and water, food and shelter, love and affection.

Our lives are changing. We are becoming who we already are. In the Diamond Sutra, when we give without attachment, we are witnessing ourselves in the other, and the other in ourselves (Chapter 23). We are acting like Bodhisattvas, dedicating ourselves for the liberation of all beings.

Our identities are a complex process, inseparable from the universe. When we let go of our dualistic thinking, and see our existence for what it is, we can live in unity with all beings.

---

Sources:

Crow, James. "Unequal Nature: A Geneticist's Perspective on Human Differences." Daedalus, vol. 149, no. 1, 2020, pp. 38–50. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, www.amacad.org/publication/daedalus/u....

Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Newton's Laws of Motion." Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/Ne.... Accessed 21 Dec. 2024.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Symbiosis." Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/sy.... Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

Feynman, Richard P. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Vol. 1, Basic Books, 2011, www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01..... Accessed 19 Dec. 2024.

Greene, Brian. The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Vintage. February 8, 2005.

Encyclopedia. "Physics: Newtonian Physics." Encyclopedia.com, 2024, https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/.... Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

"Mutualistic Symbiosis." Biology Online, Biology Online Dictionary, www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/mutu.... Accessed 20 Dec. 2024.

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Episode 2, "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue," directed by Adrian Malone, Carl Sagan Productions, 1980.

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, 1980.

"What Is Sociology?" Sociology Guide, www.sociologyguide.com/basic-concept

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "General Relativity." Stanford University, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ge....

The Diamond Sutra. Translated by A. F. Price and Wong Mou-Lam, Shambhala Publications, 2005.

Watts, Alan. Just So: Money, Materialism, and the Search for Meaning. Kindle ed., New World Library, 2015.

[AlexInWonderland · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Light and breezy but simultaneously deeply contemplative. There are holes to be poked in Watts's musings but I'd rather focus on what I liked.

Favorite passages:
"People are so bamboozled with symbols that they want the symbol more than they want what it signifies."

"We live in a society in which we are more interested in accumulating the tokens of wealth than the actual wealth — we'd rather eat the menu than the dinner."

"an enormous number of people attend concerts and exhibitions of paintings simply because they think they're improving their minds by doing so, that they're doing something good for themselves in much the same way that most people attend church. That's an absolutely morbid interest ... If you listen to Bach because you think it's good for you, you're not listening."

"Freedom means being able to make mistakes; it means having the freedom to be a damn fool."

"An essential principle of swinging and the pursuit of material pleasure is the unscheduled life. It's okay to have a rough schedule as long as you don't get uptight about it. Just as the skeleton is a framework for the flesh, a schedule is simply a set of bones for wiggles ... Always allow for the unexpected. This is true at the level of the most simple sensuous pleasures as well as the level of the highest mystical experiences."

"As various people has said, the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. People who try to explain mysteries are the ones who end up destroying them, and to destroy mysteries is to destroy life. May we all remain mysteries to one another."

[Thomas Noonan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little more longform with Watts. He lands closest to Zen but doesn't really conform to anything except broadly "spiritual" and thoroughly Eastern. Despite that, he has a straightforward style with a bit of wit. I'm just as likely to think something that rolls of his tongue is nonsense, but he also occasionally strikes brilliance. His book on Zen was a more concerted and beneficial effort. This is more a collection of lectures that have a wide reach.

Captivating and interesting if not always as insightful as I'd hoped, I enjoyed my time with this one.

"Loving one's country means participating in its life in a loving and considerate way, not killing off its creatures."

"I don't say mystical experience, actually; instead, I call it ecological awareness. That's a much more acceptable term in scholarly environments, and it really amounts to the same thing."

"If you take away the distance, then there is the same as here, and there's no point in going there in the first place."

"So to know that there are hermits deep in the forest is like knowing there's a world beyond the dust - a world of streams and flowers that few of us ever see."

"The preservation of the planet - the preservation of life- is not a frantic duty. It's a pleasure."

[Zach]

This charming, wonderful collection offers many layers of delightful insight. Watts is having so much fun with this material that it’s hard not to have it with him. He is definitely in full philosophical entertainer mode.

A few favorites:

That’s not to say that there isn’t an important distinction between good and evil; it just that the distinction isn’t fundamentally more important than the bigger picture. You have to learn to admit varying degrees of importance — you can’t just say that because a certain distinction isn’t absolute, it isn’t important. After all, your own physical formation isn’t absolute, but it’s clearly important.

-

All escapes lead back to whatever it was you were running away from. You can take all sorts of detours — one detour after another — but eventually they all get shorter and simply bring you back to where you started.

-

The ambition to be less egoistic than you are is an insidious form of egotism. There’s nothing more reprehensible than the ambition to be a saint.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alan Watts is always a joy. This book is a compilation of transcribed talks put together after Watts' death, so it doesn't quite flow like some of his other work. "The Book" and "Become What You Are" are Watts at his best. And many of his talks (including much of the content in this book) are on YouTube.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was what I needed right now. It is an excellent intro to Tao philosophy mixed with a rye sense of humor. He lost me a few times towards the end but for most of the book, I was engaged. It was refreshing to get a practical take on Eastern philosophy. I recommend it to anyone interested in Buddhism or looking for an alternative to Judeo-Christian concepts.

[Rares Cristea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poate cartea care mi-a sucit cel mai puternic mintea.

[Sam Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I finished this it was good

[Erika Pemberton]

one of andrew garfield’s recs

[Parisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5? some interesting ideas and takes on life… some parts I couldn’t help but glaze over. I do think his writing style just didn’t speaking to me — I can see how it might be a better read for others