The Knowledge of Alan Watts in 4 Thoughts-Increasing Animations

Per­haps no sin­gle per­son did extra to pop­u­lar­ize Zen Bud­dhism within the West than Alan Watts. In a way, Watts pre­pared U.S. cul­ture for extra tra­di­tion­al­ly Zen train­ers like Soto priest Suzu­ki Roshi, whose lin­eage con­tin­ues right this moment, however Watts didn’t con­sid­er him­self a Zen Bud­dhist. Or not less than that’s what he tells us within the speak above, ani­mat­ed by Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, the cre­ators of South Park. “I’m not a Zen Bud­dhist,” he says, “I’m not advo­cat­ing Zen Bud­dhism, I’m not attempt­ing to con­vert any­one to it. I’ve noth­ing to promote.” As a substitute, he calls him­self “an enter­tain­er.” Is he pulling our leg?

In spite of everything, Watts was the creator of such books as The Spir­it of Zen (1936—his first), The Method of Zen (1957), and ”This Is It” and Oth­er Essays on Zen and Spir­i­tu­al Expe­ri­ence (1960). Then once more, he additionally wrote books on Chris­tian­i­ty, on “Erot­ic Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and on all man­ner of mys­ti­cism from close to­ly each main world reli­gion.

And he was ordained an Epis­co­pal priest in 1945 and served as such till 1950. Watts was a difficult character—a strict anti-dog­ma­tist who discovered all inflexible doc­trine irri­tat­ing at greatest, deeply oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing at worst.

Whereas Watts could not have been any type of doc­tri­naire Zen priest, he realized—and taught—a terrific deal from Japan­ese Bud­dhist con­cepts, which he dis­tills within the video on the prime. He gleaned very sim­i­lar insights—concerning the uni­ty and inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all issues—from Dao­ism. Simply above, see a really brief ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Eddie Rosas, from The Simp­sons, wherein Watts makes use of a sim­ple para­ble to illus­trate “Dao­ism in per­fec­tion.”

The con­cepts Watts elu­ci­dates from var­i­ous tra­di­tions are prompt­ly applic­a­ble to eco­log­i­cal con­cerns and to our rela­tion­ship to the nat­ur­al world. “The entire strategy of nature,” he says above in a para­ble ani­mat­ed by Steve Agnos, “is an inte­grat­ed strategy of immense com­plex­i­ty.” On this case, how­ev­er, fairly than supply­ing a les­son in uni­ty, he sug­gests that nature, and actual­i­ty, is ulti­mate­ly unknow­ready, that “it’s actual­ly impos­si­ble to inform whether or not any­factor that hap­pens in it’s good or dangerous.” Essentially the most rea­son­ready atti­tude then, it appears, is to chorus from mak­ing judg­ments both approach.

It’s that ten­den­cy of the human thoughts to make hasty, erro­neous judg­ments that is available in for cri­tique within the Watts speak above, ani­mat­ed by Tim McCourt and Wes­ley Louis of West­min­ster Arts & Movie Lon­don. Right here, he attain­es even deep­er, inves­ti­gat­ing concepts of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and the exis­tence of the ego as an enti­ty sep­a­charge from the remainder of actual­i­ty. Return­ing to his grand theme of inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Watts assures us it’s “impos­si­ble to chop our­selves off from the social envi­ron­ment, and in addition fur­ther­extra from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. We’re that; there’s no clear approach of draw­ing the certain­ary between this organ­ism and each­factor that sur­rounds it.” However as a way to dis­cov­er this essen­tial fact, says Watts, we should change into “deep lis­ten­ers” and let go of embar­rass­ment, shy­ness, and anx­i­ety.

If you happen to take pleasure in these excerpts from Alan Watts’ lec­tures, you will discover many hours of his talks on-line. What Watts would have considered this, I have no idea, however I’m cer­tain he’d be glad that a lot of his work—hours of lec­tures, in reality—is avail­ready freed from cost on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nice­est Hits of Alan Watts: Stream a Care­ful­ly-Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Alan Watts Wis­dom

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy: Watch the 1960 TV Present, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Ideas on the Artwork of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets and techniques of Aldous Hux­ley and His Artwork of Dying

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Actual­i­ty

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness