Seeing Through the Net

Sleeping Blog

2008-08-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I have not contributed to this blog in quite some time. I have been focusing on my newer blog, Truth a Paradox. I haven't been reading as much Alan Watts lately, which is evident by the lack of new material on this site. I'll do my best to put some new material up here. Until then, I invite you to check out my other page.

Thanks to anyone who might still stop by this page every now and then.

Jackson

Light My Fire

2007-12-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

I found a noteworthy passage in the Dammapada this morning...

Like herdsmand driving their cows into
the fields,
Old age and death will drive you
before them.

But the fool is his mischief forgets
And he lights the fire
Wherein one day he must burn.

This second part of this early passage clearly illustrates my own personal view of karma. Meaning, "Action," karma is a way of saying that we often (if not always) create our own problems. Saying to someone, "It's your karma," is just like saying, "It's your own doing." Like the fool who lights the fire that later burns him, so too all of our actions have an equal and opposite reaction.

Interactive Buddha

2007-11-21T23:09:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled upon Daniel Ingram's site entitled Interactive Buddha. Ingram is one of the few practitioners/meditation teachers that I know of who claims to be an Arahat. His no-frills approach to Buddhist practice is very appealing to me, as I am also a fan of Stephen Batchelor. I would like to invite you to check out Interactive Buddha and let me know what you think.

Also, I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all who will be celebrating tomorrow.

-Jackson

The Five Remembrances

2007-09-09T20:06:00.000-07:00

In Thich Nhat Hanh's book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, he writes, "The Buddha recommends that we recite the 'Five Remembrances' every day." They are...

(1) I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

(2) I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape having ill-health.

(3) I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

(4) All that is dear to me and everyone that I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

(5) My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.

The Five Remembrances are an excellent example of the relative truths taught by the Buddha*. When we read these Five Remembrances they are understood right away. This is true because it is common sense. Any one of us would come to the same conclusions if we looked honestly at our age, bodies, friends, lives and the world around us. But so often we kid ourselves in to forget these truths. Instead of forgetting, which brings suffering to ourselves and others, why not make an effort to remember? When we remember we are less likely to be surprised or disappointed when these truths arise in our lives.

My friendly challenge to all of you is to write the Five Remembrances down and keep them somewhere where they will be seen every day. Read them and take a moment to let it sink in. Examine deeply how it makes you feel and what arises in your mind. You will find that you will become more at ease with your life and world around you.

*Relative truths work as a kind of opening dialogue to the Buddha's teachings. The deeper/universal truths (such as non-self, non-duality, etc...) are realized as one continues in the practice. I can see why the Buddha liked to start with the relative truths, being that they influenced his listeners to put in to practice the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Noble Path - which will lead to a deeper knowing of the universal truths than one would achieve by simply being told about them.

Updated "About" Post ::: Also, "Do No Harm"

2007-08-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I have updated the post titled, "About this Blog". I am planning on writing some good strong posts in the near future, and I am looking forward to the conversations that ensue.

Also, if you haven't already, visit the Do No Harm website at www.donoharm.us and get a free wrist-band. This simple message has the capacity to make a serious impact in our communities.

-jackson

The 'Yana'

2007-02-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

The Buddha, Siddartha Guatama, likened his teaching to a 'yana', or 'vehicle'. The picture that best describes this is that of a boat that is used to get from one riverbank to another. Once one has safely crossed to the other side of the river, they can leave the raft behind them and carry on with their journey. This is much like the way a good Medical Doctor treats his/her patients. The good Doctor hopes to fully heal his patients so that they will not have to continue to receive care from him. In doing so, his/her former patients will say to their friends, "If you need to become well, you should see the doctor that helped me to heal."

Sadly, the majority of spiritual teachers (which happen to be Christian Ministers in my neck of the woods) do everything they can to keep people within the doors of the particular house of worship. They rely on the continual donations, because without them they would go broke. But what if they were to adopt the method of the Buddha? What if they preached the gospel and then said, "Now that you have heard the good news, go and live your life without fear! Tell everyone you know about this good news." This would create, as our old friend Alan Watts puts it, a vacuum effect. People would poor in to churches to be set free, and then send others to do the same. But no one would be bound to the church. People would not have to "work out their salvation", but rather, REALIZE it.

Swirling Illusion

2006-12-31T00:40:00.000-08:00

According to Watts, our "ego" - how we define ourselves as a distinct mind-consciousness locked up in a bag of skin - is an illusion. The human ego is like the a firey circle appears when one swirls a lit cigarette in the dark. We know that the circle is an impression left on the memory of the eye. We can also know that the ego - which consists of past memories, future predictions, likes and dislikes, etc... - is also an illusion. Connecting with this reality is essential in discovering who you really are.

Who are you? Well, in the same way that a wave is not a wave in its own right, but something that the entire ocean is doing, YOU are not YOU in your own right, but rather something that the entire universe is doing.

Mysterious Spontaneity

2006-12-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

"[A]s living organisms grow from within outwards, and do not fashion themselves by standing outside themselves like architects or mechanics, they move according to inner spontaneity rather than objective principle. Inwardness is therefore mysterious and inscrutable but not chaotic and capricious."

From, "Nature, Man and Woman".

A Thought About Eternity

2006-12-21T20:55:00.000-08:00

I was laying in bed the other night with my wife, thinking about what I would like to become when I die. I thought to myself, "I would like to live out the rest of eternity as water." And than I realized that my body is already composed mostly of water. So in a sense, I am currently what I want to be in the future. I am already water. I don't know why, exactly... but I found peace in that.

Nature, Man and Woman

2006-12-17T21:30:00.000-08:00

I just purchased a used copy of Alan Watts' book "Nature, Man and Woman."In the preface of the book, he compares writing this book to thinking out loud. If you ask me, that is the best way that he could have gone about writing a book like this - seamlessly moving from one thought to another, all the while writing about the seamless interconnection of nature, man and woman.

I'll try and post about what I've learned. Work and school have be pretty busy lately.

On Helping Others

2006-10-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

"You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."

The Double Bind

2006-10-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

In the series of lectures from AlanWattsPodcast.com called "Buddhism as Dialogue," Alan Watts talks about the Psychological term "Double Bind". He states that every high society, whether in the East or in the West, tells each of its new members that, "you are required to do something which will be acceptable only if you do it voluntarily" (Buddhism as Diaglogue #4). For example, when I was young I went to an Evangelical church and youth group regularly. I was often told that I was free to choose God or not choose God. And yet, I was also told that I MUST choose God. This is like telling a woman, "You are free to love any person you wish to love, " and at the same time, "You can only love a man." This is a Double Bind.

He spends a great deal of time talking about how a Zen Master will intentionally put a Double Bind on each of his pupils. He will ask them, "Show me who you really are, but you have to be genuine." Or he'll hold up a feather and say, "What is this?" And when the student answers with, "A feather," the Master says, "No! Feather is a sound. What is this really?" In doing this, he is setting up the student with a Double Bind in order to show him (rather expediently) how ridiculous the problem really is. In doing so, he is showing the student that this is the reason that he is in conflict with himself. This is how the Zen Master helps the student experience Satori - or sudden Enlightenment.

Alan Watts on "God"

2006-09-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

"The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. When we look through our telescopes and microscopes, or when we just look at nature, we have a problem. Somehow the idea of God we get from the holy scriptures doesn't seem to fit the world around us, just as you wouldn't ascribe a composition by Stravinsky to Bach. The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. It's hard to conceive of the author of one as the author of the other."

-exerpt from www.alanwatts.com

3 Models of the Universe

2006-09-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

I once heard a recorded lecture by Alan Watts where he explained the two dominant Myths of Western culture involving the nature of the Universe. He then described a Chinese model of the Universe to contrast the other two. Here is a brief summary of each of the models...

1.) The Ceramic Model - The world as an Artifact

This is the model that has carried over from the Judeo-Christian tradition. In this model, one sees the world as constructed or made- particularly by a supreme God, be it an Intelligent designer or Yahweh himself. The Biblical Narrative in the first few chapters of Genesis describes how the world came in to being. When God made man, he formed him out of the earth and breathed life 'in' to him. This idea has left many westerners with the idea that the world was manufactured by God, and our essential being (soul, spirit, atman, etc...) was brought 'in to' the world.

2.) The Fully-Automatic Model - The world as random cause & effect, lead by dumb energy.

When science began to take precedence over religion, it became harder for people to believe in the God of the Ceramic Model. They saw no evidence of his craftsmanship, because the signs were pointing to natural selection and evolution. Intelligent design became too hard to believe. Charles Darwin, one of the key thinkers for this model of the Universe, had this to say about Intelligent design:

"I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design.... There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."(The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 8:224)

The fully-automatic model that Darwin endorsed suggests that the evolutionary process is push along by a dumb energy, not an intelligent designer.

3.) The Organic Model - The World as an Organism

This is the view that Alan Watts pulled from a Chinese worldview. Watts usually starts his discussion on this model by saying that the Chinese don't see their lives/souls as coming 'in to' the world, but rather 'out of' the world. For example, a common question that a western child will ask her parents is, "Mommy, how was I made?" A Chinese child would not ask, "How was I made?" But, she might as her mother, "How was I grown?" This is the view that I believe Alan Watts held for a majority of his later years.

Watts would say that the same way an apple tree "apples" (as a verb), the universe "peoples". Everything we see, hear, touch and taste has come out of the world - not in to it. It is assumed that when people believe that their 'self' was cast in to a human body on this earth, they see the unsatisfactory events in life as being unfair. They didn't choose this life. Nobody asked them if they wanted to be born. But when if we believe that we are in fact a part of the world, coming forth from it, we are motivated to work with the ways of the world (what the Taoist calls establishing Wu-Wei). Realizing the interdependence of the whole Universe, we are able to see where we fit in it and how to work with it.

The Attitude of Faith

2006-09-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be."

-excerpt from http://www.alanwatts.com/essential_aw2.html

About this blog - Revised

2006-09-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

This blog started out as a tribute to the late Alan Watts, whose lectures on Eastern Wisdom have intrigued listeners for decades. He has certainly inspired me to continue to investigate the nature of the self, existence, right & wrong, and what it means to be 'realized' or 'enlightened' or 'free'.

My course of study has led me to some new territory. Where I still partially rely on Watts to keep my intellectual and existential inquires grounded, I have also learned a great deal from other sources as well. I have decided to incorporate what I have learned from others into the format of my posts. I imagine I may also contribute some of my own unique understanding - if there is such a thing. Thank you for dropping by.

-awouldbehipster

::: Original Post :::

I began listening to lectures by Alan Watts at the start of this year. Since then I have been fascinated with the ideas that he so effortlessly conveys. He never claimed to be enlightened, nor did he claim to be a Guru that could lead a person to spiritual fulfillment. He simply taught his listeners to consider another perspective (or two... or three) in order to better understand their own perspective.

I formed this blog as a tribute to the late Alan Watts and his creative teachings. I will be posting quotes, links to audio lectures, and my own commentary on his ideas. Please feel free to comment. I would love to engage in some good dialogue about Watts and what he had to say.