Alan Watts has made my weirdest ponderings feel like the most normal, natural things in the world. I was first introduced to him when I found a yellow-aged copy of The Meaning of Happiness in a tiny give-take library while sailing around rural Southeast Alaska in 2015 (okay, mostly motoring, but sailing sounds cooler). From the title, I figured the book would be either insightful or at least entertaining, and by some strange stroke of luck, it was both. I went on to read a couple other books and listen to many lectures from Watts. He primarily focused on translating - literally & figuratively - Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions for Western audiences.
A couple weeks ago, I found myself in a bookstore looking for two specific science fiction novels…and I walked out with three random philosophy books. One was another yellow-aged, hand-sized paperback by Alan Watts: Psychotherapy East & West. This one was published over twenty years after Happiness and oozes with the insightful synthesis of deep philosophy & accessible language that can only come from years of intentional interaction.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t finished reading Psychotherapy yet, but the section I got to this morning… How do the kids say it? “Read me for filth”? Wait, what does that mean exactly…?
(Nope, nevermind. Just looked it up, and it’s yet another phrase that’s been appropriated from black queer culture, likely ballroom culture specifically. Not unpacking this here, but also not going to ignore it. Anyhoodle…)
What’s a better way to put this? I started hearing my beliefs and seeing myself in the text to an extent that truly caught me off guard.
For context, from a lecture I heard many years ago, Watts spoke of the difference between the layman’s and the scholar’s understanding/interpretation of God. He was like, ‘religious scholars do not conceive of God as a literal man on a literal throne in the literal sky’. And in that description, I felt less alone. Growing up non-religious, I never had anyone to discuss metaphysics with, and so all my curious calculations over the years were confined entirely to my internal world.
And then in this book, Psychotherapy East & West, Watts is outlining how no guru/scholar of these philosophies containing reincarnation believes in a literal person-to-person reincarnation:
“[T]he Buddha…was concerned with man’s liberation not from the physical world but from the egocentric style of consciousness…[which involves being trapped in a web of social constructs]… Whether such liberation did or did not terminate the continuity of individual existence as a physical organism…was quite beside the point.” (77)
This was news to me but immediately rang true, for whatever that’s worth. Do I believe in literal reincarnation (or any sort of afterlife)? Well, I’m rather obnoxiously agnostic on the subject, intending to remain aware of not knowing what I don’t know. I’ve tended to find myself in the position of being too woo-oriented for the science folks and too science-oriented for the woo-folks. I take no issue with this aside from it being a little lonely. So I just continue to invite kind people like you to join me here in this Goldilocks zone, once you realize you don’t need delusion to reach fulfillment.
“In the Buddha’s original doctrine all metaphysical speculations and all interest in miraculous controls of the physical world are considered not only as beside the point but also as positive hindrances to liberation. … What of the claim that liberation confers supernormal powers over the world (siddhi)?” (78)
Watts explains that they’re taken as symbolic. They’re specifically not to be taken too seriously or literally. I know I have certainly struggled with explaining this to folks. This journey-experience of Know Thyself is not the process of attaining wild psychic powers, nor are those abilities discussed because they’re mere vacuous euphemisms for shit you already know.
“It should be noted that when anyone has a reputation for extraordinary power or skill of any kind, people will go out of their way to discover it in the ordinary coincidences of the life that go on around him, and to interpret perfectly normal events in a supernormal way.” (78-9)
He goes on to compare this to the comedian who garners rippling laughter from “quite ordinary remarks”. So ‘magickal powers’ is a teaching tool to transmit lessons indirectly. Our modern American society is extremely direct, explicit, and struggling with comprehending the subtle & implicit these days — but coming back to balance is not impossible. If you cut out all the magick: life is torturous, dull, disconnected. If you lean too hard into magick: life is confusing, delusional, disconnected. Finding the Goldilocks zone is truly plugging into life, as I understand it.
And going back to Watts talking about the guru-student relationship, it sounds like it relies on a witty, subversive use of confirmation bias:
“The genuine guru uses this situation [of presuming the comedian to be funny, the authority figure to be correct, etc.] not to make fools of his students, but to increase their zeal to dominate the physical world or their own feelings, to act consistently on the false premise that there is a contest between the ego and its experience. … [I]n Buddhism, liberation is called awakening…because it is release from social hypnosis.” (79)
The whole confirmation-bias-leading-someone-to-come-full-circle thing reminds me of how a lot of folks who’ve deconstructed from high control organizations were deeply devout believers. That is, they were the one’s with the strongest confirmation bias. It was the following of their faith to its logical conclusion that put them on the path to deconstruct from the social hypnosis of the cult. And thinking about ‘awakening’ as “release from social hypnosis” reminds me of that clip of an economist on some late night talk show where he says that humans created capitalism and therefore we have the power to totally recreate it if we need to.
Like, hey wait yeah, what are we doing?
“In sum…the Buddhist discipline is to realize that anguish or conflict (duhkha) arises from the grasping (trishna) of entities singled out from the world by ignore-ance (avidya) — grasping in the sense of acting or feeling toward them as if they were actually independent of context. This sets in motion the samsara or vicious circle of trying to solve the false problem of wresting life from death, pleasure from pain, good from evil, and self from not-self — in short, to get one’s ego permanently “one up” on life.” (82)
Similar to me going off about how people trying to separate faces from asses are delusional. You can identify different parts but, as Watts says elsewhere, “differentiation is not separation”. Faces come with asses like day comes with night and mountains come with valleys and inhales come with exhales. You can identify good & bad, right & wrong — but you can’t delete one side of a coin.
Also, how silly does it finally seem when you realize some of your behavior patterns are aimed at getting “one up” on life? Reminds me of my favorite advice from Watts: Don’t be neurotic water. Imagine water beginning to run down a small hill. It branches off in many directions. One branch reaches equilibrium with gravity as the terrain slopes upward, causing that bit of water to roll back where it came from and slide in a different direction. Does the water feel bad about it? Does the water feel shame about retracing its steps? Does the water treat itself like it’s a failure? No. Don’t be neurotic water. Mistakes and success are two sides of the same coin.
“But through the meditation discipline the student finds out that he cannot stop this grasping so long as he thinks of himself as the ego which can either act or refrain from action. The attempt not to grasp rests upon the same false premise as the grasping: that thinking and doing, intending and choosing, are caused by an ego, that physical events flow from a social fiction. The unreality of the ego is discovered in finding out that there is nothing which it can either do or not do to stop grasping.” (82-3)
The longer you fight the straight jacket, the longer it will take you to realize you’re not wearing one. Isn’t this fun? Are you having fun? Or are you totally lost? Are you angry with me, wondering where we’re going? What did you expect when you started reading this article?
“This insight (prajna) brings about nirvana, release from the false problem. But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything - including “my” thoughts and actions - were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that “I make them”; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites.” (83)
Although the feeling had been building for pages, this is where I felt caught off guard by the clarity of my reflection in the text. Have I experienced…nirvana?
But the curiosity doesn’t hold my attention for long, because it is extinguished by something like fear. Trepidation? There’s so much room for being misunderstood here. Telling people I resonate with this paragraph feels incredibly vulnerable.
But I’m here to play with my truth, offer it to others, and experience what happens. So I’m leaving it in.
“By seeing through the social institution of the separate ego and finding out that my apparent independence was a social convention, I feel all the more one with society.” (83-4)
This is entangled with my motivation to come out of hiding, to leave my hermitage, to dialogue with others, to enigmatically point at the Know Thyself sign over the doorway. I spent a handful of years living off-grid, feeling pitifully separate, and looking forward to dying swiftly that I may be rid of y’all. I did not feel one with society. Embarrassment aside, it was a fun dance. Did you know you can changes dances? That you can study a different style? Practice with different preferences? Did you know that??
“…Buddhism sees the fully liberated man as a Boddhisattva, as one completely free to take part in the cosmic and social game. When it is said that he is in the world but not of it, that he returns to join in all its activities without attachment, this means that he no longer confuses his identity with his social role — that he plays his role instead of taking it seriously. He is the Joker or “wild” man who can play any card in the pack.” (84)
Do you feel seen by Alan Watts in any of this? I’ve never considered myself a Buddhist, and my studies of it have been quite scattered. But this man fuckin’ gets me. And no, I don’t mean to imply that I’m some fully liberated Boddhisattva — but I have taken an adjusted version of the vow:
Beings are numberless,
I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible,
I vow to exhaust them.
Thresholds are boundless,
I vow to pass through them.
The Way of Paradox is supreme,
I vow to embody it.
And part of that vow, I’ll embody & embed right here at KALEIDOSCOPIC.
Hope you join me. <3
Watts, Alan. The Meaning of Happiness: The Quest for Freedom of the Spirit in Modern Psychology and the Wisdom of the East. 1940.
Watts, Alan. Psychotherapy East & West. 1961.
Greene, Liz; Sharman-Burke, Juliet. Mythic Tarot. 1989.