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Alan Watts - The Fear Show
Much as I would like to post a political thread, I will restrain myself. Still, I hope someone else will step up and do it as we live in extraordinary times.
But I feel no restraint in peeling the onion. Because underneath the gnashing of teeth is something much more fundamental. Indeed, much more intimate. Today was a day of struggle for me. Needless struggle. What better time to remember Alan Watts.
Comments
What a nice surprise . Thank you. greenie
It’s so sad that someone who had pierced the veil and revealed so much for us was consumed by his own self indicted demons. Just goes to show the frailty of existence even when some one has seen the top of the mountain that there is always a price to be paid.
We must learn from the suffering of others or else we are bound to repeat them.
I guess this is what true Wisdom is at the end of the day. To battle and battle, learn and teach and spread the light before the fire goes out. 🙏🏼💕🔥
To Suffer also means ,to Allow and it was the latter, that Watts was referring to in his works.
Thanks for this little reminder today.
Peace is a choice we all have available to us in any moment if we want it.
It's easy to forget this. I know I do.
By the way...I'm struggling with that question to God as well..I think I'd just do what the dude did when he met the Zen master....so, following on with this logic, if I can just treat each person I meet as a potential Zen master....
Would loved to have spent a day in his presence. So much wisedom it overflows.
On a dark note some Cruise company is using his voice in an advert to sell holidays. I doubt if he were alive he would have given his permission.
I love Alan, I really do. Listen to him all the time. But it's so much better without the godawful "inspirational" music. Had to turn this off after a couple of minutes ....
Hope you're feeling better today @LinearLineman
Peace
Totally agree @Kashi! Has anyone found a source of his recordings without the music?
Maybe here:
https://alanwatts.org/
Or here:
https://archive.org/details/02.theessentiallecturesofalanwattsego
To start with?
Thank you!
Indeed, enjoy the journey, the fire may burn again
I never heard about Watts’ drinking “problem”. He died from cardiac problems, in his sleep, at 58. Having smoked pot daily for forty years (stopped about 15 years ago) I don’t know how to assess this issue (did I have a pot problem?) or if Watts thought it was a problem. I don’t think his philosophy would have classified it as such and certainly, IMO, wouldn’t have considered it sad. We can, of course, feel the loss of a brilliant mind, but it is all part of the show Watts thought carefully about, and, I think, loved.
@echoopera, I'm curious what you are referring to when you mention Watts’ “self-indicted demons”…Maybe he did see it as a problem. That wouldbe interesting, indeed.
I remember when I was “diagnosed” in adulthood with ADHD I started reading up on it out of curiosity. The “symptoms” were really things that all people experience to varying degrees and combinations.
Basically the “literature” acknowledges this but suggests that more or less universal symptoms like these become a “syndrome” or “malady” or “maladaptive behaviour” etc to the extent that they have a destructive impact on your life that wouldnt be there otherwise. If you experience a decline in productivity or mastery/potential, fulfilment of commitments and responsibilities and it starts causing problems like job loss, divorce, serious floundering or stagnation then these issues become a problem.
If one doesn't care and no one is hurt by it, then maybe not so much…
We all carry our burdens throughout life and our hope is that they do not take others down with us.
When I found out that Alan Watts essentially died from his alcoholism, it stunned me, because as a youth based on what I was ingesting from him, I assumed he had it all figured out. It wasn't until adulthood and maturity set in that I realized how broken we are as a species at times.
These moments of the holy, enlightenment, the infinite are still important to rescue us from our demons...whatever they may be. We must see beyond our senses to truly know what is possible in this life.
Peace be with you all.
I get the sense that in the audio linked above he is freestyling without a script. Amazing talent.
It is worth keeping in mind that alcoholism and depression are not failures of will -- even if some people succeed in keeping them under control. Alcoholism and other drug addictions are often the result of untreated or ineffectively treated depression -- which is a brain chemistry imbalance. We often treat death from these as failures of will in a way that we don't deaths from other diseases. Drug addiction/alcoholism are often, unbeknownst to the person, an attempt escape from clinical depression (which, for those who don't know is not simply a matter of feeling sad or down).
When we talk about alcoholism or depression or schizophrenia or whatever as one of someone's demons, we slip out of being compassionate and subtly slip into victim-blaming. On one hand, yes, people have responsibility for their actions -- and on another hand bad luck (such as inheriting sucky genes) may get in the way of someone being able to make good decisions.
I, personally, was fortunate. My “addiction” didn’t seem to hurt me in any way. Ran a successful biz for 20 years, wrote musicals, played Blue Note and Birdland and recorded a bunch of jazz cds. Was Watts’ career or performance impacted by his alcoholism? I certainly agree we are a fucked up species and few avoid our imperfections or being damaged. I just don’t think Watts would want us feeling sorry for him. That wasn’t his philosophy. Doing that is anthropomorphic irony, IMO.
Here’s my take on Alan Watts for todays track. Hope it’s cool to add it here @LinearLineman if not i can remove it:
Damn nice.
That’s good @echoopera. Alan would like it for a change.
Thanks @BirbHope @LinearLineman It's how I hear Alan in my head and incorporate his teachings in to my life...
Trungpa R and Maezumi Roshi were both highly influential teachers and both were advanced-stage alcoholics who’s addictions basically led to their death.
There were others.
Very few people, even the most “enlightened” among us fully escape their karma (in the technical Buddhist sense of the word), delusion and suffering. It could be argued that the more clued-in and awake you are, the more likely you are to absorb and empathize with the suffering of others, notice the degeneracy and futility of the status-quo more and expect more from yourself. Often you burn yourself out being of service to others.
Its a lot.
Agreed. Good post. Also, see my response above.
Beautiful thoughts. I don’t know what they all mean (to me) but I’m different having heard them.
Thank you, @LinearLineman
I just wanted to say one thing, and I know that the comment will either get ignored or whatever, but I don't understand why a message of such positivity and potential lightness gets turned into a discussion about depression and battles. WTF? Didn't anybody else laugh while listening to this? OK, got that off my chest...I know where the door is, I'll let myself out.🚶♂️🙂🙃🙂
@Mountain_Hamlet, your comment is totally valid, IMO. It disturbs me, too, that a person’s work or understanding cannot be left to stand on its own but must be seen through a lens of human weakness. I think the comments here are well intended and empathetic, but it does deflect from the point of getting something positive and useful from Watts’ deep understanding.
Fwiw, ymmv, take with a grain of salt etc…
Without suffering (or dissatisfaction or longing if one prefers) we wouldn't seek or come to know enlightenment in the first place. The very notion of enlightenment or liberation is incoherent without something to be liberated from.
Spiritual seekers tend to experience a more than average amount of suffering or oversensitivity, which is what drives them to actively embark on a spiritual path. The thing is the teacher or guru (should we look to one) is then someone we really hope can walk the walk and help us overcome our own ‘demons’, depression, yearning, trauma or whatever the case may be.
No one wants to take investment advice from a man who lives in van by the river. No one wants spiritual advice from a seeming fuck up who only talks a good game. It brings the effectiveness or profundityinto doubt.
I think it might depend on how much skin one has in the game.
I love Alan Watts and all that matters to me is what I hear him say in the moment.
I don't see enlightenment as some puzzle that once solved remains locked in forever like an immovable fact. Maybe there are some individuals in some cultures with deeply rooted traditions that can get there and hold it for their whole life but I imagine for most in the world it can only ever be as fleeting as happiness. It likely comes and goes.
Nice post. True enough. But then Buddhism’s Noble Truths 3 &4 state ‘there is an end to suffering and a way to end it’. For some people thats their lifeline, rightly or wrongly. Might some people show up to a dharma center who might be much better off in therapy or on meds? Sure. Maybe some are already.
In any event my only point has been to maybe shed possible light on why someone might say “great wisdom, shame about the drinking himself to death” while others might just appreciate it at face value. Usually in dharma circles it comes up regarding Trungpa at least a couple times a year.
Like any of life’s most important aspects it’s nuanced. Theres a light hearted way and a heavy hearted way to approach most things.
Enlightenment is as fleeting as the wind...it's only in brief moments in which we allow ourselves to dissolve into the infinite that we are able to capture the wind.
Once we've tasted it though...it can be accessed...but the journey of life will always be in the way.
I am of the view that the journey of life is the way. This is it. There is no over there. This moment is everything and to me the guru, although seemingly quite elusive, can be found staring you in the face if we only take the time to open our eyes.
Being enlightened? who knows...I don't think there is a way to describe that state in words without losing it at the same time.
It seems a little silly really that we try to capture and understand a feeling with our minds.
I really liked this clip. It gave me a bit of a lift and a chuckle. I think the message in it is very important and it's nice to have this stuff shared around.
In the end, what are we actually afraid of? Through my own research I have found that the only place I could find the source of fear has been within my own mind. Worry and fear, concepts that are based on potentials created in our minds that take us into the future that appear to be based on things that happened in the past. In a world that is always changing, it does appear on the surface to be a very strange way to deal with things in this present moment.
@Mountain_Hamlet, maybe a way to think about it is this…. We didn’t come on this planet in order to think. At the very fundament of our being is the instinctual need to reproduce. It’s the only biological imperative. Thinking is not a biological imperative. And when we came at first there wasn’t much extra thinking going on. Sustenance and sex was about it.
As our brains got bigger (cause bigger brains survived better?) there was surplus cerebral activity… a crime looking for a motive, so to speak. Our amygdalae contributed the instinctive fight or flight…. Which, coupled with random pointless thought, combined into concepts of greed and fear. The existential abyss was filled with primitive notions of animus or gods which led to our modern primitive notions of god.
Evolving minds realized these primitive “religious” notions did not relieve us from suffering. Guys like Buddha and Jesus were game changers that power brokers resented until they incorporated their philosophies into their own political agendas. Thus we have our modern, hypocritical, world. Spirituality, as a reaction to war, inhumanity and pain inevitably turned into spiritual materialism in society and thus we spiritual seekers became the ouroboros, swallowing our own tails. Watts tried (and succeeded to whatever extent, realizing success/failure was an empty vessel) to describe the “show” to us. And, I imagine, he lived by that Koanic feeling as best he could (which was good enough).
The zen thought, that many, including Shunryu Suzuki, described as “a finger pointing at the moon” revealed the relevance of too much thinking. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon.
Watts’ description and, indeed, his life were not the show we tend to criticize/analyze. We can only experience the show. We can’t analyze it. Any description diminishes it, but communication is the best we have and Watts used it well (just as I struggle to be elegant)…. But he thought of himself as an entertainer, as I understand. He didn’t take himself too seriously because he understood that is the ouroborotic trap. I hypothesize his “weaknesses” were seen by him in (or out of) context as just part of the fun.
It’s like trying to see something at the very edge of our peripheral vision. The more we struggle to see it without moving our eyes the fainter the object gets.