This is one of my favourite clips by him on the subject, from a talk called "Limits of Language".
Musical background- "Love" by John Coltrane from the album "Meditations", why- because no other music other than jazz really does Alan Watts justice.
Images from flickr.com
My second favourite clip and such a better video from youtube, both audios though pretty much sum up everything we need to understand about the subject. Thank you Alan Watts!
ReplyDeleteBTW- sorry about the poor quality of the video, it seems every time the upload changes something. Not that I don't find it very apt of course. Like Watts says as well- everything interferes with everything if looked from some point of view. A quantum world indeed. :)
ReplyDeletethese videos are priceless. This man dispenses such great wisdom with such beautiful clarity and that is a truly awesome gift in my mind.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing these Hille. These two videos were a perfect way to start my day. Hugs Michael
ReplyDeleteYour very welcome Michael, I agree about Watts completely. Hugs!
ReplyDeleteI discovered this a couple of weeks back which you'll really enjoy if you haven't seen it already... Alan Watts reading and discussing a passage from a talk by Jung... first part here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Top_n68MjEM
I remember posting that animation once on Buddhist Travellers, though I still don't completely get it... well obviously I can't, doh! "the mosquito trying to bite the iron bull" I think is a metaphor he used. The chauffeur principle seems so reasonable on the face of it... a metaphysical soul, but science can't find any "place" for such a soul to exist, and nor can the spiritual masters for different reasons, and yet for the ordinary person on the street it seems the most reasonable thing ever that the reason we are not like computers and pure robots is because of a "something else"... that makes us ALIVE!
ReplyDeleteThe video above is also explained in this article which really struck me at the time, so I should re-read it sometime...
http://roulette404.multiply.com/journal/item/6232/Alan_Watts_-_The_Paradox_of_Self-Denial
Sorry for bombarding you with links... all in your own time :) but what's time? Aaaaa...
I can't thank you enough for sharing this jewel okei, wow!! I lapped it up like a desert dog, the only similar feeling that I recall was when I heard Watts interviewing Aldous Huxley, if you're interested its here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Top_n68MjEM.
ReplyDeleteWatts, Huxley and Jung are without doubt for me 3 favourite minds in history, GIANTS, not even human when you compare to the general population, no :) ? If you hear even two of your idols coming together its like coming to paradise, thats what I personally imagine as paradise- a dinner table with all my favourite giants. Who would you invite? :)
The funniest thing for me was- Watts for me has undeniably always been the calming force, a terminator of any sort of anxiety and internal turmoil, while for me reading Jung has been a celebration of the hidden and a loving, understanding, fueling, supporting force for all the passion of soul and its rocking yet transformative unease. To hear Watts say that he always found Jung a balancing influence to him who calmed his own imbalances- so strangely wonderful!! It brings to mind I Ching for me, the different energy patterns and how individual is their movement.
Hugs and Much Metta!
Cool, I'll check it out! I was just writing on your other blog about Huxley, so maybe Huxley *did* know about Jung's Red Book when he wrote Chrome Yellow.
ReplyDelete"Who would you invite? :)" It's funny because I asked a friend that the other day and got no answer, and it's so hard to answer myself. As a child, this is a much easier question, but I don't know if I'm jaded from over-exposure to the great minds through books etc., but there's no-one I "hero-worship"... maybe I somehow imagine that I have "enough on my plate" as it is... and I just wouldn't know what to ask or get from the experience... It would be cool to have those guys as friends, for sure!!! Like a guiding influence... But I have such great minds as you! :^) What more could I want? I wish I had the same kind of friendships from great minds in my academic studies. I would love the mathematician Paul Erdös to come back to life and get me back on track! But it would take more than one dinner, lol.
I agree with hero-worship, I don't feel like that, I have in fact since childhood had a big difficulty with respecting anyone of age, of knowledge, of status- just because of that, even if I'm told- here is a wise and important person, I always asked- why are they more important than any other and more wise than my loved ones- unknown common people. I get a high of talking to anyone who shares mystical and philosophical tendencies, its so rare to find that though in real life, thats why multiply has been great, and meeting souls like yourself a balm for the soul. But gratitude is another matter- minds like Watts, Huxley, Jung have helped me, have guided me, they have been like friends in some way that real-life friends haven't been interested in. To find similar soul energies, its not about heros, its about common ground and love, and there are no barriers, be it death, be it pages of a book. It would be like a dream- to share in full these passions with people who you've felt such gratitude for.
ReplyDeleteAh, I see! I have felt massive admiration, but not really gratitude and love. I don't know why? I'm somehow more grateful for the great musicians! Maybe, it's because I know I could never make music like that, and because music bypasses the mind. I remember reading bits of Aldous Huxley when younger, and I only liked some of his books, more the earlier stuff. Brave New World was perhaps the only book as a child which I started but didn't finish I was so bored with it. Oh no, Moonstone was another...both books supposed to be classics and by authors I like.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Tintin books as a child, I loved the Matrix first movie, and Zazie dans le metro and films by Rohmer, I loved the way Henin played tennis, I love Bob Marley's music and message, I can't imagine classical music without Beethoven and yet I've always taken the creators of the things I love for granted. Somehow I see the work apart from the author also. Hmmm... By the way did you know that Machiavelli every day after work would dress up and hold counsel with all the great minds of history? He claimed to have the most wonderful conversations and inspiration from them!
ReplyDeleteCorrected link... I'll come back to this! www.youtube.com/watch?v=oInatjbMkw4
ReplyDeleteInteresting how seemingly different are the experiences. But in fact the same. You write poetry and deal in mathematics (in a way a different kind of poetry, symbolics that bypass the everyday yet point to the utter unexplainable truths) and you feel grateful for others who are of similar mind-energy. The only thing is to realise you are a common spirit to the musicians? Just my intuition here.
ReplyDeleteI need to think;-) and sleep and dream!
ReplyDeleteNo, I feel grateful for opposite mind-energy:) like Watts for Jung!
ReplyDeleteI can't live without music, and I try to catch live shows as often as I can, few days ago I saw Bob Marley's son Ziggy here in Dublin and it was an affirmation and such a wonderful boost of love and truth and the fight for love and truth. Music for me is like swimming in the sea, its surrender, and giving up self. Yet its not the same experience for me as reading great minds, even if the goal is no self we are all looking for self I feel.
ReplyDeleteSleep well! Metta!
Cool!
ReplyDelete"even if the goal is no self we are all looking for self I feel" ...like Watts said about Jung's balancing influence, to not throw oneself into Eastern no-self and thus lose the Western ego which might be our best tool for the same result.
I think we are grateful for people who are the same in some ways, and yet opposite in others, and so open up new avenues for us without throwing us completely.
I read that when the people believe in the permanence of things (e.g. that they are the same person that they were twenty years ago), then the sage teaches them impermanence. And when the people believe in impermanence, then the sage teaches them permanence (past, present and future eternally present). So the truth is that which transcends the opposites!
Back to gratefulness, I think I'm grateful for many things and people, but I wouldn't want to feel indebted by that. I also wouldn't ever want others to be grateful to me. The story of Nasruddin who kept on being taunted by the guy who saved him from falling into the river springs to mind. Finally, fed up, Nasruddin wishes that the guy had never done him the good turn and throws himself into the river! :)
I do have some list in my mind of "enlightened beings" whose works I would like to read more of in time, but there's no one or two people whom I've gone and read everything they wrote. This is the cult of the personality in a good sense, developing an intellectual friendship with the person through the work, and the idea has occurred to me only recently to approach things this way. For the moment, I use a much more subject-oriented approach, which I guess is the way we are subconsciously taught in schools... the author as merely an avenue to get at the subject of enquiry. I read whoever it is has written about the subject I am looking into, and if that's an original work, notes, textbook, whatever, so be it... I think I'm veering more towards the personality-approach recently, but not to the depth of feeling friendship. I can see advantages historically if we were taught this way in schools, but I can also see drawbacks, because psychology is taught like this and the result it a personality-bias: Freudian, Jungian etc. ... and this kind of thing simply doesn't exist in mathematics, where the history of development can be almost re-written in an imaginary way if some new cleaner approach to the final result is later discovered. This is good for teaching people quickly, but the problem with this is that the source of motivation can be lost (the footsteps in the sand covered up).