Alan Watts was my first encounter with the concepts you listed. It started a colliding, cascading investigation of why we struggle, where beliefs arise, thoughts condemn and what might be an alternative. Into the mix add religious indoctrination and it makes an interesting ride.
Thank you, Meno, most enjoyable. Alan Watts presenced being that impacted those he was with. After spending time with Alan, Werner Erhard, driving across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco, had his 'epiphany.' Sydney Banks, attending a weekend marriage encounter, listened to Alan speak and afterward had his 'epiphany.' Reading "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" always opens the clearing for me.
In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, a lighting… Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are. - Martin Heidegger
Such a thoughtful post, thank you. I am grateful for learning more about Alan Watts, and felt welcomed in by what I felt as your inviting tone, clarity and flow, and how you bring in your personal take and examples.
Watts' letters are great. They and his journey with Christianity influenced me a lot: https://www.christianwebsite.com/was-alan-watts-christian/ he was an Anglican priest for a while, and his letters and journey are quite interesting.
Thanks to Alan and his book "On the Taboo" which I read in 69 weeks after my mother died, I have become sort of a Zen/ Methodist.
Apples & Oranges
Consider the apple
An apple grows on an apple tree.
As Alan Watts says "an apple tree apples."
The history of that apple recedes infinitely into past biologies, enzymes, atoms, radiation. /°
The future will accumulate in a similar way in a reverse direction. \°
Such is the way with people.
This earth peoples in a similar way.
Oranges pretty much the same.
From the point of view of the apple, it is the center of the universe.
A gaze outward, yes other apples, plus infinitely more beyond an apple's perceptions.
An apple falls from a tree. Would a resulting bruise be real? It could be perceived as an area change in the distribution of water, whereas the lack of connection to the tree would be an absolute disconnect to the flow.
Same for an orange.
What about the peopling of the earth by the earth?
Similar to the fruit.
Yet we have so many connections to activities that penetrate our apparent conception that we each exist at the center of all..
Some say that we observe the world, but the pure awareness that lights the content of our mind is similar to the movie screen. This pure awareness does not have any attributes that can be pointed to.
Our observations are skin to watching a movie.
However our physical sensations are very much props in the movie.
The statement "I cut myself shaving" is not real, but the pain and the bleeding is.
All of our senses, those that are enhanced, average or stunted, connect us to that we can touch.
So the history of a person recedes infinitely into past biologies, enzymes, atoms, radiation.
The future will accumulate in a similar way in a reverse direction.
However, our actions, based on our perceptions plus a small but significant percentage of quantum like uncertainty, will instantly and perhaps infinately, affect our common movies, and our posterity.
the library of his work is so extensive. I don't know that I've experienced 25%. Thanks for distilling these subjects :)
Alan Watts was my first encounter with the concepts you listed. It started a colliding, cascading investigation of why we struggle, where beliefs arise, thoughts condemn and what might be an alternative. Into the mix add religious indoctrination and it makes an interesting ride.
Enjoyed your post thank you.
Thank you, Meno, most enjoyable. Alan Watts presenced being that impacted those he was with. After spending time with Alan, Werner Erhard, driving across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco, had his 'epiphany.' Sydney Banks, attending a weekend marriage encounter, listened to Alan speak and afterward had his 'epiphany.' Reading "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" always opens the clearing for me.
In the midst of beings as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing, a lighting… Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are. - Martin Heidegger
Such a thoughtful post, thank you. I am grateful for learning more about Alan Watts, and felt welcomed in by what I felt as your inviting tone, clarity and flow, and how you bring in your personal take and examples.
Great breakdown
Watts' letters are great. They and his journey with Christianity influenced me a lot: https://www.christianwebsite.com/was-alan-watts-christian/ he was an Anglican priest for a while, and his letters and journey are quite interesting.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. ICYMI, TS Eliot's *Four Quartets* is much to do with the intersection of the timelss with time.
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.
That said, we are left with what Einstein called the stubborn illusion of time's flow.
Well done and thank you!
“This is one of the mysteries of time. The moment is wedded to eternity.”
[The Glass Bees, Ernst Jünger, translated by Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Mayer (NY: Noonday Press, 1960) 148]
Thanks to Alan and his book "On the Taboo" which I read in 69 weeks after my mother died, I have become sort of a Zen/ Methodist.
Apples & Oranges
Consider the apple
An apple grows on an apple tree.
As Alan Watts says "an apple tree apples."
The history of that apple recedes infinitely into past biologies, enzymes, atoms, radiation. /°
The future will accumulate in a similar way in a reverse direction. \°
Such is the way with people.
This earth peoples in a similar way.
Oranges pretty much the same.
From the point of view of the apple, it is the center of the universe.
A gaze outward, yes other apples, plus infinitely more beyond an apple's perceptions.
An apple falls from a tree. Would a resulting bruise be real? It could be perceived as an area change in the distribution of water, whereas the lack of connection to the tree would be an absolute disconnect to the flow.
Same for an orange.
What about the peopling of the earth by the earth?
Similar to the fruit.
Yet we have so many connections to activities that penetrate our apparent conception that we each exist at the center of all..
Some say that we observe the world, but the pure awareness that lights the content of our mind is similar to the movie screen. This pure awareness does not have any attributes that can be pointed to.
Our observations are skin to watching a movie.
However our physical sensations are very much props in the movie.
The statement "I cut myself shaving" is not real, but the pain and the bleeding is.
All of our senses, those that are enhanced, average or stunted, connect us to that we can touch.
So the history of a person recedes infinitely into past biologies, enzymes, atoms, radiation.
The future will accumulate in a similar way in a reverse direction.
However, our actions, based on our perceptions plus a small but significant percentage of quantum like uncertainty, will instantly and perhaps infinately, affect our common movies, and our posterity.
The dance of yinyang.