Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life by Alan W. Watts.

Watts wrote and anchored two seasons of the Eastern Wisdom and Modern life public television series, in which he explored the growing influence of Far Eastern ways of liberation in contemporary western culture. This fascinating 18-part series stands unequaled in its brilliant analysis of modern civilization.

Table of Contents

1. Things and Thinks
2. Time
3. The Void
4. Death
5. Queries & Sources
6. Law & Order
7. Omnipotence
8. Zen Life
9. Mind Over Mind

2. Things and Thinks

Each one experiences himself as a peculiarly separate being. Every man things of this world as a collection of objects.

3. Time

3.1 Illusion of Time

An old optical illusion, the length of lines of perspective vision. An illusion we are so used and so easily fooled. MAYA : a word of indian philosophy, basicly meaning “illusion”, or rather illusion brought about : “By the exceptions of certain conventions.” when we are not aware certain things we are token for grounded, when we are not aware this is a matter of convention, we are about to be fooled. Time is the convention more easier to fool us.

Humane “A time binding animal”: a creature who is vivdly aware that his life as it was along a line from the past, through the present, and into the future. While animals tend to live moment by moment. Which gives us the ability to better plan the future (which is ofcourse, very important for us). While we miss the truth that : The true reality that we live, is the present moment “now”.

We spend a lot living in time, which is not here, in else-where, which is not concrete real. So much so, that although we are quiet satisfied about our current circumstances. If there is not a guarantee or a promise that a good time coming tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow, we are once unhappy, even we are in the mid of pleasure. So we develop a chronic anxiety about time. we want asure more and more, beause our feelings’ sensitivity of time. As a consequence, the future becomes more important for some people than the present.

We live so much in the future. School to college to work to etc… You are always living in somewhere, where you aren’t.

Planning for future is useful, while if we always live in the future, one can never enjoy the fruit of actions. Plan for the goodness for the future where you will never “be”, is futile. You cannot live at all, unless you can live fully now !

3.2 The dream of life

And because now is never satisfied as we are never living in it, we get more and more abid to go on, and pursuit the future. We develop our technologies to fulfill our desire for the future. If you can fulfill every wish you are wishing for : The dream of life . There is no real fulfillment without delay.

Brahma (梵天) the world creator, but he is like our dreamer to dream the existence of the world forgetting his identity. KALPA (劫), a period of 4,320,000 years, a day of Brahma.

• Western world, linear thought of time, or even upping line (getting better).
• While other culture, as a CIRCLE (watch) . And in Hinduism thought, it gets worse after each KALPA (consist of YUGA).

As YUGA goes, time becomes faster and more chaotic. As we are more and more conscious of time, we tend more and more to pursuit the future. And as we keep pursuit the future, present life becomes more and more unsatisfactory, and we feel we have to chase happiness at greater and greater speed.

“The spring does not become the summer. The summer does not become the autumn. There is spring. Then there is summer. When you burn wood there are ashes. But the wood does not become the ashes. There is wood. And then there are ashes. “ – Dogen 《有時》, the Zen philosopher, living around 1200 AD.

春有百花秋有月，夏有凉风冬有雪。若无闲事挂心头，便是人间好时节。 (“闲事”: illusionary thought of pursuiting the future.)

The present is the only place in which we live, the past and the future are no more than “useful illusion”. But uesful only when one lives in the present.

4. The Void

“禅” (Zen in Japanese, Chan in Chinese), “DHYANA” in Indian Sanskrit word, which represents a kind of experience of circle, which is a form of “SUNYA”, The Void. The basic of Buddism and Daoism, as The way of expericening a way of feeling (different from the wastern regilions, which is mainly concerned with briefs).

4.1 悟

The Void rather represents complete spiritual freedom. “悟” in quiet a sudden, you became totally convinced that the way everything is in the universe and at this moment is absolutly right. A sudden feeling that everything is right the way it is now, however appalling, however terrible, and you know it beyond a shadow of doubt.

• Feeling that everything just as it is so right that you could say of it : this is why I’am alive, this is what life is all about.
• Everything you see and feel seems to come to life in an extraorindary way that you feel the world as you’ve seen it before, but seen almost in a dream. But it is just the ordinary things that were confronting you, suddenly went to alive.
• You no longer feel yourself and what you are experiencing to be seperated. Although you don’t lose the feeling of the outline of your skin, you don’t forget your name, nevertheless the suddenly seems to you that you skin is no longer what divides you from the world, it’s what joins you to it. What you see outside you is also you.

We ordinary think as ourself the controlling center, while in this experience, the center were suddenly enlarged to include the whole universe. You almost feel as if you were God, except that in Eastern thought, one doesn’t think of God as a kind of omnipotent person. It is this feeling that you and this whole world are one. And in this experience of oneness and the sudden coming alive of everything, the profound rightness of this moment however far it may seem to be short of one’s ideals of perfection. This is it.

Freedom is dangerious. This experience is risky. Nirvana.

4.2 One

You cannot in complete control of your whole life situation. You cannot in other words, fundamentally posses yourself. So the problem is set, to try to find out who you are, who is knower behind your experience, who is the experiencer, who is the ego the eye. And make you search for it, search for it, search for it. That is to ask you to show the real basic original self and this means perform an absolutely 100 percent genuiue and sincere act.

While when you try to be natural you know very well your trying and that everything you do is a fake. So, we found that we cannot act 100 percent genuinely with this whole deal. So he try again and again and again, while the teacher rejects every attempt he makes to show him his real self.

Until the moment comes when he suddenly realizes not just an idea but something he knows in his whole body, he knows that from his very bones, that it can’t be done. You cannot intentionally be natural and he gives up. While in that moment there comes upon us this experience of the void of complete freedom or being free form blocking.

6. Death

6.1 The Wheel of Life

The Wheel of Life (轮回) : the wheel of stages of existence through which being pass, clutched by the great demon of impermanence (无常).

• Human world. 人道.
• The world of Devas (angels). 天道.
• The world of Anmials. 畜生道.
• The world of Purgatory. 地狱道.
• Pretas. 饿鬼道. (frustrated spirits, with large stomachs and ting mouths, to show enormous appetite and small means to satisfy)

Transmigration/Reincarnation : you can never stop anywhere. You may come to heaven, but what comes up must go down. You may descend to hell, but what goes down eventually come up. So one goes on and on, moving through these various worlds until you become sufficiently awakened, to become a Buddha, one who is released from the wheel, enter the eternal state of Nirvana.

The Twelve Fold Chain of Dependent Origination (十二緣起). 「依此有故彼有，此生故彼生」. A schematic diagram of the force of the process that keeps this wheel rotating. “佛言，云何名“緣起初義”？謂：依此有故彼有，此生故彼生。所謂：無明緣行，行緣識，識緣名色，名色緣六處，六處緣觸，觸緣受，受緣愛，愛緣取，取緣有，有緣生，生緣老死，起愁、歎、苦、憂、惱，是名為純大苦蘊集，如是名為緣起初義。”

• 無明. Ignorance.
• 行. Potentialisties of life. “身行、語行、意行，是名為行”.
• 識. Consciousness. “一者、眼識，二者、耳識，三者、鼻識，四者、舌識，五者、身識，六者、意識”
• 名色. A name in a boat, ‘the combination of name and form’. “四無色蘊：一者、受蘊，二者、想蘊，三者、行蘊，四者、識蘊”
• 六處. Sense consciousness. “一、眼內處，二、耳內處，三、鼻內處，四、舌內處，五、身內處，六、意內處，是謂六處”
• 觸. Contact a pair of lovers. “一者、眼觸，二者、耳觸，三者、鼻觸，四者、舌觸，五者、身觸，六者、意觸，是名為觸”
• 受. Perceptions. ‘A man with arrow in his eye’, showing the pain involved in the perception of the world. “受有三種，謂：樂受，苦受，不苦不樂受，是名為受”
• 愛. Desire. ‘A woman with twins’. “愛有三種，謂：欲愛、色愛、無色愛，是名為愛”
• 取. Grasping. “謂四取：一者、欲取，二者、見取，三者、戒禁取，四者、我語取，是名為取”
• 有. Growth. the fullness of life. “有有三種，謂：欲有、色有、無色有，是名為有”
• 生. Birth. “彼彼有情，於彼彼有情類，諸生，等生，趣，起，出現，蘊得，界得，處得，諸蘊生起，命根出現，是名為生。”
• 老死. Old age and death.
• 愁、歎、苦、憂、惱.

Buddhists do not think of these various realms of the wheel ar literal worlds, but they represents various phases of life.

6.2 Karma

The process of KARMA. comes from the root ‘KRI-‘, to act to do. The action is always involves the necessity for other actions. “This arises that becomes.”

Mainly the idea of linkage. Life and Death invlove each other, in the same way that the two ends of the brush, lifting up on involves lifting up the other. Death and Life imply each other. Karma also involves the idea of continuity of patterns.

The interdependence of being and not being, of death and life. The demon of change is really a disguise of the very source of life. Death without which life is impossible, change without which life is totally boring.

8. Queries & Sources

8.1 Questions

First point, Alan is not to say eastern culture is better. And the philosphy ideas that had been talked are held by only quiet a minority of people in Asia. These are ideas from another part of the world, from a minority of people in that other part of the world, which are of possible use to us.

Second question, “death and rebirth” as their found in Hinduism and Buddhism. You will go to the same blankness, out of which you came.Although death involves the destruction of the memory, and therefore of what we call our ‘I’ or ‘ego’. Nevertheless there isn’t just a blank after death. But rather that nature fills the vacuum created by unconsciousness, with a new consciousness.

Third question. The eastern idea, came from Hinduism Buddhism Taoism or so, that all life is fundamental one, and the height of wisdom, consists in some way, to experience the unity of life. But it seems undetectable, but then how can you talk about there being an experience of it? The answer is that, there is knowledge obtained by participation (“如眼能看不自看”), other than the knowledge by standing by.

For an example, when you listening to a concert. You don’t realize that you are “listening” to the music. You as it was, become the music, in listening to it. And in this moment you are one with your experience. The same thing happening through your life. So to ‘grasp’ the oneness of life, you mustn’t try to get it by thinking, you have to get it by going right into your life as it happens.

8.2 Books

• “Philosphies of India”, notes from Heinrich Zimmer, edited by Joseph Campbell.
• “Upanishads” (《奥义书》)
• “The Bhagavad-Gita” (《薄伽梵歌》)
• “Man And His Becoming According To The Vedanta (吠檀多)” by René Guénon.
• “The Dance of Shiva”, by Ananda Coomaraswamy.
• “The Wisdom of Laotse” , by Yutang (《老子的智慧》林语堂 ).
• “Buddhism” by Christmas Humphreys.
• “The Way of Zen”, Alan W.Watts.
• “Nature, Man and Woman” , Alan W.Watts. As a meun of this whole series.

12. Law & Order

12.1 Introduction

Divination “The book of Change” (《易经》)

wikipedia

• 阴/阳
• The eight principle elements involved in every life situtaion.

先天八卦：太极生两仪，两仪生四象，四象生八卦。

(后天八卦，乾卦在西北)

12.2 Objection

From our modern scientific point of view, that flipping coins to come to the great descisions of life is the stupidest thing we could possibly do. After all, it neglects all rational cogitation about our situations.

However, when you estimate the data, when you consider the facts that are involved in any particular decision, How do you know exactly what facts are involved? Something that out of your thought may enter into the situation and change it utterly. And how do you know that you get enough data? After all, the data, the causes, the problems involved in any particular situation are virtually infinite. A matter of fact you stop getting data, stop getting problems involved, either when you are tired of it, or when the time comes to act and you haven’t time to collect any more data. That is just as irrational as flipping coins because you decide when to stop investigating in a very arbitrary way.

How about probabilistics. If you toss a coin, you may collect the tests for 1000 tosses, while this data may various among different people (e.g. 400-600, 401-599, etc), and the actually probability of the next toss is always half-to-half.

Alan puts that : we can never prove whether any method of coming to decisions really work. We can never know the outcome of a decision is a failure or a success, because only the unknown that comes next will show whether it is good or not, and the unknown stretches infinitely into the future.

12.3 View

• Negative side : the acient chinese relied too meticulously upon the classification of world and events based on these symbols.
• Positive side : the book is founded in a view of life, which see not too much on the causal relationship between events as the pattern of events.

Instead of understanding events by relation to past causes, it understands events by relation to their present pattern. In other words, it comprehends them by taking a total view instead of what we might call a linear view (of cause-result relation, the causality).

To undertand events in its present context, (chaine of Markov?)

• The western way of looking at things : by the order of words, determined by what went before them. As a result, we will see the world governed by Laws (則), the law of nature.
• The order of design. The two circles in differen context have quiet different meanings. But you see their relations to their meanings all at once. The meaning of each part of the design is relative to the rest of it as you see it now at this moment.

The idea of the I Ching , is to reveal through its symbols that total pattern of the moment when the question is asked on the supposition that the pattern of this moment governes even the tossing of coins.

12.4 Law

則(Law)，義，理(organic pattern). The order of nature, the order of justice, the order of beauty are things which we can know in ourselves, but we cannot write down in black and white. Therefore the superior man is one who has the sensibility for these things in himself.

13 Omnipotence

Understanding the world.

• The way of description. The way of understanding things in words and in terms. The linear view.
• The way of seeing. The way of understanding through seeing and looking a field or a subject totally all at once. The total view.

In western view, we may see things as being constructed or made, as we linearly understanding it, by a step by step process (parts are all apart, then assampled).

While in eastern view, the world is grown, it grows itself. It expands constellations its own parts from within itself, coming into being altogether once.

14 Zen Life

Dharma dhatu A world, where everything is related to everything else (~ A spider Net, vertices and edges). The world is so closely related to each other, one thing can only exist, which inter-related to others. (In other words, I don’t know what is empty hand, unless I know a hand with some. I don’t know motion, unless I see something moving.)

无为 (from this point of view) : nothing acts of itself, no such a thing as a agent, for action is the nature of the whole thing. As it appears in one place, in relation with a stillness or others.

Deceptions (which do not exist, while human invent them to make standards for society):

• THINGS to talk about the world, we have to ‘divide’ it into verious different units, pretend things are separable (as is talked in Lecture 2 Things and think).
• AGENTS that human individual is a separated thing, orginating actions, and responds for it. In this inter-connection view, actions do not start at any particular spot, it is a property of the whole field. While for running human socity, we treat everyone a responsable agents.
• REWARDS & PUNISHMENTS. We act as a fully responsable agent, act according to it, to obatin the future “rewards”. There are advantages in planning the future, while we are living fully now.

These creative deceptions are made to make our sciety more organized, and easier to contorl. They are like rafts, it help to cross the river. while if keep it all the way after, it will become a burden. Zen is to free people from these burdens, to recover the view of the world with ful connectivities. (there is no agent ego to “do” with it, nor “not do” with it.)

What does the wind say, Where is the cloud going?

Mind Over Mind

Vicious Circle

The Buddha said that wisdom must come only from the abandoment of selfish craving or desire. One who abandons that desire attains Nirvana (涅槃), which is superme peace, liberation. Nirvana means in Sanskrit “blow out”, that is exhale the breath, the opposite, desire is to breath in. If you breathe in and hold it, you lose your breath. But if you breath out, it comes back to you. If you want life, don’t cling to it, let go.

But the problem is, if we desire not to desire, is that already a desire? How can I surrender myself when myself is precisely an urge to hold on, to cling.

Improve Yourself?

The person who is going to do the improving is the one who needs to be improved.

上德不德，是以有德；下德不失德，是以无德。

The highest virtue is not virtue and therefore really is virtue. But inferior virtue cannot let go of being virtuous and therefore is not virtuous. The highest virtue is not conscious of itself as virtue and therefore really is virtue. Lower virtue is so self-conscious that it’s not virtue. In other words, when you breathe you don’t cingratulate yourself on being virtuous, but breathing is a great virtue, it’s living.

If you are really aware of your own inner workings, you will realize there’s nothing you can do to improve yourself. Because you don’t know that better is, in any case. And you, who do the improving are the one who needs to be improved. (It also goes for societies.)

If you see that you can’t outwit yourself, you can’t be unselfconscious on purpose, you can’t be designedly spontaneous, and you can’t be genuinely loving by intending to love.

Supposing we can’t do anything to change ourselves.

Why come to school? A: you’re interested in something, you don’t come to improve yourself. But the trouble is the schools got the wrong idea, they give people honors for learning. The reward for studying French (for an example) should be the ability to speak and enjoying reading and having fun with french people. While now the degree becomes the point.

The whole idea of self-imprvement is will of the wisp and a hoax

Just watch, and don’t be in a hurry to think you know what it is. When you select an authority (“authority” is just your opponion) who will help you to improve yourself. It’s like hiring the police out of your tax money and putting them in charge of seeing that you obey the law.

Your idea of GOD is your idea of GOD, the “authority” is the one we brought.