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the Hunt for Truth

Tag Archives: Alan Watts

Christ & Christianity { Alan Watts }

01 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Heaven, Inner peace, Inspiration, Lecture, Lessons, Mindful, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality

≈ 1 Comment

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Alan Watts, Christianity, Jesus Christ

“I am a son of God, well there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”

 

Some years ago I had just given a talk on television in Canada when one of the announcers came up to me and said “You know, if one can believe that this universe is in charge of an intelligent and beneficent God, don’t you think he would naturally have provided us with an infallible guide to behavior and to the truth about the universe?” And of course I knew he meant the Bible. I said “No, I think nothing of the kind. Because I think a loving God would not do something to His children that would rot their brains.”

Because if we had an infallible guide we would never think for ourselves, and therefore our minds would become atrophied. It is as if my grandfather left me a million dollars: I’m glad he didn’t.” And we have therefore to begin any discussion of the meaning of the life and teaching of Jesus with a look at this thorny question of “authority.” And especially the authority of Holy Scripture. Because in this country in particular [the USA] there are an enormous number of people who seem to believe that the Bible descended from Heaven with an angel in the year sixteen-hundred and eleven, which was when the so-called King James – or more correctly Authorized – version of the Bible was translated into English.

I had a crazy uncle who believed that every word of the Bible was literally true including the marginal notes. And so whatever date it said in the marginal notes, that the world was created in 4004, B.C., and he believed it as the Word of God. Until one day he was reading – I think – a passage in the book of Proverbs and found a naughty word in the Bible. And from that time on he was through with it. You know, how Protestant can you get?

Now, the question of “authority” needs to be understood, because I am not going to claim any authority in what I say to you, except the authority – such as it is – of history. And that’s a pretty uncertain authority. But from my point of view the four Gospels are I think to be regarded on the whole as historical documents. I’ll even grant the miracles. Because, speaking as one heavily influenced by Buddhism, we’re not very impressed with miracles! The traditions of Asia – Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and so forth – are full of miraculous stories. And we take them in our stride. We don’t think that they’re any sign of anything in particular except psychic power. And we in the West have by scientific technology accomplished things of a very startling nature. We could blow up the whole planet, and Tibetan magicians have never promised to do anything like that.

And I’m really a little scared of the growing interest in psychic power because that’s what I call “psycho-technics.” And we’ve made such a mess of things with ordinary technics that Heaven only knows what we might do if we got hold of psycho-technics and started raising people from the dead, and prolonging life insufferably, and doing everything we wished.

The whole answer to the story of miracles is simply imagine that you’re God and that you can have anything you want. Well you’d have it for quite a long time. And then after awhile you’d say “This is getting pretty dull because I know in advance everything that’s going to happen.” And so you would wish for a surprise. And you would find yourself this evening in this church as a Human being.

So, I mean, that is the miracle thing. I think miracles are probably possible. That doesn’t bother me. And as a matter of fact when you read the writings of the early fathers of the church – the great theologians like Saint Clement, Gregory of Nissa, Saint John of Damascus, even Thomas Aquinas – they’re not interested in the historicity of the Bible. They take that sort of for granted but forget it. They’re interested in its deeper meaning. And therefore they always interpret all the tales like Jonah and the whale. They don’t bother even to doubt whether Jonah was or wasn’t swallowed by a whale or other big fish. But they see in the story of Jonah and the whale as a prefiguration of the resurrection of Christ. And even when it comes to the Resurrection of Christ they’re not worrying about the chemistry or the physics of a risen body. What they’re interested in is that the idea of the resurrection of the body has something to say about the meaning of the physical body in the eyes of God. That the physical body – in other words – is not something worthless and unspiritual, but something which is an object of the Divine Love.

Now, as a matter of fact, in the text of the Gospel of Saint John the local color, his knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem, and his knowledge of the Jewish calendar is more accurate than that of the other three writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it seems to me perfectly simple to assume that John recorded the inner teaching which He gave to His disciples and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the more exoteric teaching which He gave to people-at-large.

Now, what about them, the authority of these scriptures? We could take this problem in two steps. A lot of people don’t know how we got the Bible at all. We Westerners got the Bible thanks to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church and members of the church wrote the books of the New Testament. And they took over the books of the Old Testament which even by the time of Christ had not been finally decided upon by the Jews. The Jews did not close the canon of the Old Testament until the year 100 A.D. – or thereabouts – at the Synod of Jamnia. And then they finally decided which were the canonical books of the Hebrew Scriptures and embodied them in the Masoretic Text, the earliest copy of which dates from the tenth century – early in the tenth century A.D.. The books to be included in the New Testament were not finally decided upon until the year three hundred and eighty-two – A.D. again – at the Synod of Rome under Pope Damasus. So it was the church – the Catholic Church – that promulgated the Bible and said “we are giving you these scriptures on our authority and the authority of the informal tradition that has existed among us from the beginning, inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

So you receive historically the Bible on the church’s say-so. And the Catholic Church insists, therefore, that the church collectively, speaking under the presumed guidance of the Holy Spirit, has the authority to interpret the Bible. And you can take that or leave it. Because obviously the authority of the Bible is not first of all based on the Bible itself. I can write a bible and state within that book that it is indeed the Word of God which I have received. And you’re at liberty to believe me or not. Hindus believe that the Vedas are divinely revealed and inspired with just as much fervor as any Christian or any Jew. Muslims believe that the Koran is divinely inspired. And some Buddhists believe that their Sutras are of divine – or rather Buddhic – origin. The Japanese believe that the ancient texts of Shinto are likewise of divine origin. And who is to be judge?

“If we are going to argue about this – as to which version of the Truth is the correct one – we will always end up in an argument in which the judge and the advocate are the same person. And you wouldn’t want that if you were brought into a court of law, would you? Because if I say that, “Well, thinking it all over I find that Jesus Christ is the greatest being who ever came onto this Earth,” by what standards do I judge? Why obviously, I judge by the sort of moral standards that have been given to me as somebody brought up in a Christian culture. There is nobody impartial who can decide between all the religions because more or less everybody has been in one way or another influenced by one of them.

So if the church says the Bible is true it finally comes down to you. Are you going to believe the church or aren’t you? If nobody believes the church it will be perfectly plain, won’t it, that the church has no authority. Because the people is always the source of authority. That’s why de Tocqueville said that the people gets what government it deserves. And so you may say “Well, God Himself is the authority!” Well, how are we to show that? That’s your opinion. Well you say “Well, you wait and see. The Day of Judgment is coming, and then you’ll find out who is the authority!” Yes, but at the moment there is no evidence for the Day of Judgment, and it remains until there is evidence simply your opinion that the Day of Judgment is coming. And there is nothing else to go on except the opinion of other people who hold the same view and whose opinions you bought.

So really, I won’t deny anybody’s right to hold these opinions. You may indeed believe that the Bible is literally true and that it was actually dictated by God to Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles. That may be your opinion and you are at liberty to hold it. I don’t agree with you.

I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a sense in which the Bible is divinely inspired. But I mean by “inspiration” something utterly different from dictation, receiving a dictated message from an omniscient authority. I think inspiration comes very seldom in words. In fact almost all the words written down by automatic writing from psychic input that I’ve ever read strike me as a bit thin. When a psychic tries to write of deep mysteries instead of telling you what your sickness is or who your grandmother was, he begins to get superficial. And psychically communicated philosophy is never as interesting as philosophy carefully thought out.

But divine inspiration isn’t that kind of communication. Divine inspiration is, for example, to feel – for reasons that you can’t really understand – that you love people. Divine inspiration is a wisdom which it’s very difficult to put into words. Like mystical experience. That’s divine inspiration. And a person who writes out of that experience could be said to be divinely inspired. Or it might come through dreams. Through archetypal messages from the collective unconscious, through which the Holy Spirit could be said to work. But since inspiration always comes through a Human vehicle it is liable to be distorted by that vehicle. In other words, I’m talking to you through a sound system. And it’s the only one now available. Now if there’s something wrong with this sound system whatever truths I might utter to you will be distorted. My voice will be distorted. And you might mistake the meaning of what I said.

Now so therefore everybody who receives divine inspiration – and I’m using that in a very loose way – you could mean anything you like by “divine” – that’s your option – but anybody who receives it will express it within the limits of what language he knows. And by language here I don’t only mean English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit. I mean language in the sense of what sort of terms are available to you; what kind of religion were you brought up with.

Now you see, if you were brought up in the Bible Belt – you came out of Arkansas somewhere – and that’s all the religion you knew, and you had a mystical experience of the type where you suddenly discover that you are one with God, then you’re liable to get up and say “I’m Jesus Christ!” And lots of people do. Well the culture that we live in just can’t allow that. There is only one Jesus Christ. And so if you don’t look like you’re Jesus Christ coming back again – because it said in the scriptures that when He comes back there’ll be no doubt about it: He’ll appear in the Heavens with legions of angels, and you’re not doing that; you’re just old Joe Dokes we knew years ago. Well now you say you’re Jesus Christ. Well, he says that when Jesus Christ said he was God nobody believed him and you don’t believe again. You know you can’t answer that argument. (laughter)

But you see, he says it that way because he is trying to express what happened to him in terms of the religious language which is circumscribed by the Holy Bible. He’s never read the Upanishads. He’s never read the Diamond Sutra. He’s never read The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the I-Ching or the Lao-Tsu, and therefore there is no other way in which he can say this.

But if he had read the Upanishads he would have had no difficulty, and nor would the culture – the society in which he was talking – have any difficulty. Because it says in the Upanishads we are all incarnations of God. Only they don’t mean by the word “God” – in fact they don’t use that word; they use “Brahman” – they don’t mean the same thing that a Hebrew meant by “God.” Because the Brahman is not personal. Brahman is – we would say – supra-personal. Not impersonal, because that is a negation. But I would say supra-personal.

Brahman is not he or she, has no sex. Brahman is not the creator of the world – as something underneath and subject to Brahman – but the actor of the world, the player of all the parts, so that everyone is a mask (which is the meaning of the word “person”) in which the Brahman plays a role. And like an absorbed actor the divine spirit gets so absorbed in playing the role as to become it, and to be bewitched. And this is all part of the game, hereto believing that I am that role. When you were babies you knew who you were. Psychoanalysts refer to that as the oceanic feeling. They don’t really like it, but they admit that it exists. Where the baby cannot distinguish between the world and the way it acts upon the world. It’s all one process. Which is of course the way things are.

But we learn very quickly because we are taught very quickly what is you and what is not-you, what is voluntary, what is involuntary, because you can be punished for the voluntary but not for the involuntary. And so we unlearn what we knew in the beginning. And in the course of life if we are fortunate we discover again what we really are, that each one of us is what would be called in Arabic or Hebrew “a son of God.” And the word “son of” means “of the nature of” as when you call someone a “son of a bitch,” or in Arabic you say “Ibn-kalb” which means “son of a dog,” “Ibn al-Himar”: “son of a donkey.” So, “a son of Belial” means “an evil person.” “Son of God” means “a divine person,” a Human being who has realized union with God.

Now my assumption – and my opinion – is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Human being like Buddha, like Sri Rama Krishna, like Ramana Maharshi, etc., who early in life had a colossal experience of what we call “cosmic consciousness.” Now you don’t have to be any particular kind of religion to get this experience. It can hit anyone anytime, like falling in love. There are obviously a number of you in this building who’ve had it in greater or lesser degree. But it’s found all over the world. And when it hits you, you know it. Sometimes it comes after long practice of meditations and spiritual discipline.

Sometimes it comes for no reason that anybody can determine. We say it’s the “Grace of God,” that there comes this overwhelming conviction that you have mistaken your identity, that what you thought, what I thought was just old Alan Watts – who I know very well is just a big act and a show – but what I thought was, you know, “me!” – was only completely superficial, that I am an expression of an eternal something-or-other: “X,” a name that can’t be named, as the name of God was taboo among the Hebrews; “I am.”; and that I suddenly understand why – exactly why – everything is the way it is. It’s perfectly clear.

Furthermore I no longer feel any boundary between what I do and what happens to me. I feel that everything that’s going on is my doing, just as my breathing is. Is your breathing voluntary or involuntary? Do you do it or does it happen to you? So you can feel it both ways. But you feel everything like breathing. And it isn’t as if you had become a puppet. There is no longer any separate “you.” There is just this great Happening going on. And if you have The Name in your background you will say “This happening is God,” or “the Will of God,” or “the Doing of God.” Or if you don’t have that word in your background you will say with the Chinese “it is the flowing of the Tao.” Or if you’re a Hindu you will say “it is the Maya of Brahman.” “The Maya” means “the magical power,” “the creative illusion,” “the play.”

So you can very well understand how people to whom this happens feel genuinely inspired. Because very often there goes along with it an extremely warm feeling. Because you see the Divine in everybody else’s eyes. When Kabir, a great Hindu Muslim mystic, was a very old man he used to look around at people and say “To whom shall I preach?” Because he saw the Beloved in all eyes, and could see – sometimes I look into people’s eyes, and I can look right down, and I can see that Beloved in the depths of those pools, and yet the expression on the face is saying “What, me?!” Ha ha ha ha, it’s the funniest thing! But there is everybody, in his own peculiar way, playing out an essential part in this colossal cosmic drama. And it’s so strange, but one can even feel it in people you thoroughly dislike.

So, let’s suppose then that Jesus had such an experience. But you see, Jesus has a limitation that he doesn’t know of any religion other than those of the immediate Near-East. He might know something about Egyptian religion, a little bit maybe about Greek religion, but mostly about Hebrew. There is no evidence whatsoever that he knew anything about India or China. And we – people who think that, you know, Jesus was God assume that he must have known because he would have been omniscient. No! Saint Paul makes it perfectly clear in the Epistle to the Phillipians that Jesus renounced his divine powers so as to be Man. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought not equality with God a thing to be hung onto, but humbled himself and made himself of no reputation and was found in fashion as a man and became obedient to death.” Theologians call that “kenosis,” which means “self-emptying.”

So obviously an omnipotent and omniscient man would not really be a man. So even if you take the very orthodox Catholic doctrine of the nature of Christ, that he was both true God and true Man, you must say that for true God to be united with true Man, true God has to make a voluntary renunciation – for the time-being – of omniscience and omnipotence… and omnipresence for that matter. Now therefore if Jesus were to come right out and say “I am the son of God” that’s like saying “I’m the boss’s son,” or “I AM the boss,” and everybody immediately says that is blasphemy. That is subversion. That is trying to introduce Democracy into the Kingdom of Heaven. That is –– you are a usurper of the throne. No man has seen God.

Now, Jesus in his exoteric teaching – as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels – was pretty cagey about this. He didn’t come right out there and say “I and the Father are one.” Instead he identified himself with the Messiah described in the second part of the prophet Isaiah, “the suffering servant who was despised and rejected by men.” And this man is the non-political Messiah, in other words. It was convenient to make that identification even though it would get him into trouble.

But to his elect disciples as recorded in Saint John, he came right out “Before Abraham was, I am.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “I am the living bread that comes down from Heaven.” “I and the Father are one, and he who has seen me has seen the Father.” And there can be no mistaking that language.

So the Jews found out and they put him to death – or had him put to death – for blasphemy. This is no cause for any special antagonism toward the Jews. We would do exactly the same thing. It’s always done. It happened to one of the great Sufi mystics in Persia who had the same experience. Now, what happened? The Apostles didn’t quite get the point. They were awed by the miracles of Jesus. They worshipped him as people do worship gurus, and as you know to what lengths that can go if you’ve been around guru-land. And so the Christians said “Okay, okay: Jesus of Nazareth was the son of God but let it stop right there! Nobody else.” So what happened was that Jesus was pedestalized. He was put in a position that was safely upstairs so that his troublesome experience of cosmic consciousness would not come and cause other people to be a nuisance. And those who have had this experience and expressed it during those times when the church had political power were almost invariably persecuted. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake. John Scotus Eriugena was excommunicated. Meister Eckhardt’s theses were condemned. And so on, and so on. A few mystics got away with it because they used cautious language.

But you see what happens. If you pedestalize Jesus you strangle the Gospel at birth. And it has been the tradition in both the Catholic Church and in Protestantism to pass off what I will call an emasculated Gospel. Gospel means “good news,” and I cannot for the life of me think what is the good news about the Gospel as ordinarily handed down. Because, look here – here is the revelation of God in Christ, in Jesus, and we are supposed to follow his life and example without having the unique advantage of being the boss’s son. Now, the tradition – both Catholic and Protestant Fundamentalist – represents Jesus to us as a freak! Born of a virgin, knowing he is the son of God, having the power of miracles, knowing that basically it’s impossible to kill him, that he’s going to rise again in the end. And we are asked to take up our cross and follow him when we don’t know that about ourselves at all! So what happens is this: we are delivered, therefore, a Gospel which is in fact an impossible religion. It’s impossible to follow the Way of Christ. Alright. Many a Christian has admitted it. “I am a miserable sinner. I fall far short of the example of Christ.” But do you realize the more you say that the better you are? Because what happened was that Christianity institutionalized guilt as a virtue. (enthusiastic applause) You see, you can never come up to it. Never.

And therefore you will always be aware of your shortcomings, and so the more shortcomings you feel the more – in other words – you are aware of the vast abyss between Christ and yourself.

[Audience member]
“You are just setting up straw men and knocking them down!”
You will have your opportunity to speak during the question period, madam. So, you go to confession…. (laughter and applause) … and if you’ve got a nice dear understanding confessor he won’t get angry with-at you. He’ll say, “My child, you know you’ve sinned very grievously but you must realize that the love of God and of Our Lord is infinite and that naturally you are forgiven. As a token of thanks-giving say three ‘Hail Mary’s.” And you know, you’ve committed a murder and robbed a bank and fornicated around and so on, but the priest is perfectly patient and quiet. Well you feel awful! “I have done that to the love of God? I have wounded Jesus, grieved the Holy Spirit,” and so on. But you know in the back of your mind that you’re going to do it all over again. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll try. But there’s always a greater and greater sense of guilt.

Now, the lady objected that I was putting up a straw man and knocking it down. This is the Christianity of most people. Now there is a much more subtle Christianity of the theologians, the mystics, and the philosophers. But it’s not what gets preached from the pulpit, grant you. But the message of Billy Graham is approximately what I’ve given you, and of all – what I will call – fundamentalist forms of Catholicism and Protestantism.

What would the real Gospel be? The real Good News is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth was THE son of God, but that he was a powerful son of God who came to open everybody’s eyes to the fact that you are too. Now this is perfectly plain. If you will go to the tenth chapter of Saint John, verse 30, there is the passage where Jesus says “I and the Father are one.” And this is – there are some people who aren’t intimate disciples around, and they are horrified! And they immediately pick up stones to stone him. He says “Many good works I have shown you from the Father, and for which of these do you stone me?” And they said, “For a good work we stone you not, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God.” And he replied “Isn’t it written in your law ‘I have said you are gods’?” (He’s quoting the 82nd Psalm.) “Isn’t it written in your law ‘I have said you are gods’? If God called them those to whom he gave his word ‘gods’ – and you can’t deny the scriptures – how can you say I blaspheme because I said I am a son of God?” Well there’s the whole thing in a nutshell.

Of course if you read the King James Bible that descended with the angel you will see in italics in front of these words “son of God,” “The son of God” – “…because I said I am The son of God.” And most people think the italics are for emphasis. They’re not. The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators. You will not find that in the Greek. The Greek says “a son of God.” So it seems to me here perfectly plain that Jesus has got it in the back of his mind that this isn’t something peculiar to himself.

So when he says “I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by ME,” this “I am,” this “me” is the divine in us which in Hebrew would be called the “Ruach Adonai.” This – a great deal is made of this by the esoteric Jews, Kabbalists and the Hasidim. The Ruach is the breath that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. It is differing from the soul. The individual soul in Hebrew is called “Nephesh.” And so we translate the “Ruach” into the Greek “pneuma” into “psyche” [see´kay] or “psyche” [sy´kee]. The spirit – and you ask the theologian what’s the difference between the soul and the spirit and he won’t be able to tell you – but it’s very clear in Saint Paul’s writings.

So the point is that the Ruach is the divine in the creature by virtue of which we are sons of, or of the nature of God: manifestations of the divine. This discovery is the Gospel. That is, the Good News. But this has been perpetually repressed throughout the history of Western religion because all Western religions have taken the form of celestial monarchies, and therefore have discouraged Democracy in the Kingdom of Heaven. Until, as a consequence of the teachings of the German and Flemish mystics in the Fifteenth Century there began to be such movements as the Anabaptists, the Brothers of the Free Spirit, and the Levelers, and the Quakers. A spiritual movement which came to this country and founded a republic and not a monarchy.

And how could you say that a republic is the best form of government if you think that the Universe is a monarchy? Obviously, if God is top on a monarchy, monarchy is the best form of government. But you see, ever so many citizens of this republic think they ought to believe that the Universe is a monarchy, and therefore they are always at odds with the republic.

It is from, principally, white racist Christians that we have the threat of Fascism in this country. Because you see, they have a religion which is militant, which is not the religion of Jesus – which was the realization of divine son-ship – but the religion ABOUT Jesus which pedestalizes him and which says “Only this man – of all the sons of woman – is divine, and you had better recognize it.” And so it speaks of itself as The Church Militant, the onward Christian soldiers marching as to war. Utterly exclusive. Convinced, in advance of examining the doctrines of any other religion that it is the top religion. And so it becomes a freak religion, just as it has made a freak of Jesus, an unnatural man. It claims uniqueness, not realizing that what it does teach would be far more credible if it were truly “Catholic” – that is to say: restated again, the truths which have been known from time immemorial, which have appeared in all the great cultures of the world.

But even very liberal Protestants still want to say, somehow – so as, I suppose to keep the mission effort going or to pay off the mortgage – “Yes, these other religions are very good. God has no doubt revealed himself through Buddha and Lao-Tsu. But…!”

Now, obviously, it is a matter of temperament. You could be loyal to Jesus just as you’re loyal to your own country, but you are not serving your country if you think that it’s necessarily the best of all possible countries. That is doing a disservice to your country. It is refusing to be critical where criticism is proper. So of religion. Every religion should be self-critical. Otherwise it soon degenerates into a self-righteous hypocrisy. If then we can see this, that Jesus speaks not from the situation of a historical deus-ex-machina [god from the machine] – a kind of a weird, extraordinary event – but he is a voice which joins with other voices that have said in every place and time “Wake up, Man. Wake up and realize who you are.”

Now I don’t think, you see, until churches get with that that they’re going to have very much relevance. You see, popular Protestantism and popular Catholicism will tell you nothing about mystical religion. The message of the preacher, fifty-two Sundays a year, is “Dear people, be good.” We’ve heard it ad-nausea-um! Or: “Believe in this.” He may occasionally give us a sermon on what happens after death or the nature of God, but basically the sermon is “Be good.” But how? As Saint Paul said, “To will is present with me, but how to do that which is good I find not; for the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” How are we going to be changed?

Obviously, there cannot be a vitality of religion without vital religious experience. And that’s something much more than emoting over singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”
But you see what happens in our ecclesiastical goings-on is that we run a talking shop. We pray. We tell God what to do, or give advice as if He didn’t know. We read the scriptures, and remember: talking of the Bible Jesus said “You search the scriptures daily, for in them you think you have life.” Saint Paul made some rather funny references about the spirit which giveth life and the letter which kills. I think the Bible should be ceremoniously and reverently burned every Easter. We need it no more because the Spirit is with us. It’s a dangerous book. And to worship it is of course a far more dangerous idolatry than bowing down to images of wood and stone. Because you can –– nobody’s senses can confuse a wooden image with God, but you can very easily confuse a set of ideas with God, because concepts are more rarefied and abstract.

So with this endless talking in church we can preach, but by-and-large preaching does nothing but excite a sense of anxiety and guilt. And you can’t love out of that. No scolding, no rational demonstration of the right way to behave is going to inspire people with love. Something else must happen. But we will say “What are you going to do about it?” Do about it? You have no faith? Be quiet. Even Quakers aren’t quiet.

They sit in meeting and think. At least some of them do. But supposing we get really quiet; we don’t think; be absolutely silent through-and-through? We say “Well, you’ll just fall into a blank.” Oh? Ever tried?

I feel then, you see, that it’s enormously important that churches stop being talking shops, they become centers of contemplation. What is contemplation? “Con-temp-lum” – It’s what you do in the temple. You don’t come to the temple to chatter, but to be still and know that “I am God.” And this is why, if the Christian religion – if the Gospel of Christ – is to mean anything at all instead of just being one of the forgotten religions along with Osiris and Mithra we must see Christ as the Great Mystic. In the proper sense of the word “mystic,” not someone who has all sorts of magical powers and understands spirits and so on. A mystic – strictly speaking – is one who realizes union with God, by whatever name. This seems to me the crux and message of the Gospel, summed up in the prayer of Jesus which Saint John records as he speaks over his disciples praying that “they may be one even as you, Father, and I are one.” That they may be all one. All realize this divine son-ship, all oneness, basic identity with the eternal energy of the universe and the love that moves the Sun and other stars.

I’m On Facebook (every day)
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Is there a science of consciousness?

Thanks for visiting with me.

  Eric

See also:

  • Empath Support
  • morning Meditation
  • Happiness: Self-acceptance
  • Looking at yourself honestly – Respect
  • Looking at yourself honestly – Gratitude
  • The World As Emptiness, and Being Let Go
  • Mindfulness – it is improving us
  • we exchange energy – always
  • listen with compassion
  • your eMotion matters

.

 

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The World As Emptiness, and Being Let Go

16 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Happiness, Inner peace, Lecture, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Spirituality

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Alan Watts, Buddhism, Eight-fold path, Samadhi, The World As Emptiness

Alan Watts… “I warn you, that by explaining these things to you, I shall subject you to a very serious hoax.”

Here we have a video and transcript (Part 1, Being Let Go; Samadhi):

The World As Emptiness, Alan Watts 

This particular weekend seminar is devoted to Buddhism, and it should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export. Last week, when I discussed Hinduism, I discussed many things to do with the organization of a Hindu society because Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion; it’s a whole culture. It’s a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. But you see, when a religion and a culture are inseparable, it’s very difficult to export a culture, because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.

So the question arises, what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that approximately, you’ll get Buddhism. As I explained, the essential of Hinduism, the real, deep root, isn’t any kind of doctrine, it isn’t really any special kind of discipline, although of course disciplines are involved.

The center of Hinduism is an experience called moksha, liberation, in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, in a way, on one level an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call ‘the self,’ the one self, which is all that there is.

The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays ‘hide,’ it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don’t know it because it’s playing ‘hide.’ But when it plays ‘seek,’ it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one’s eyes.

Alan Watts – The World As Emptiness, Part 1

Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism, the only really important thing about Buddhism is the experience which they call ‘awakening.’ Buddha is a title, and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root, ‘bheudh,’ and that sometimes means ‘to know,’ but better, ‘waking.’ And so you get from this root ‘bodhih.’ That is the state of being awakened. And so ‘Buddha,’ ‘the awakened one,’ ‘the awakened person.’ And so there can of course in Buddhist ideas, be very many Buddhas.

The person called the Buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that Buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes, you see, there comes into the world what you might call a ‘big Buddha.’ A very important one. And such a one is said to have been Guatama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in a part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date, like 564, which some people think it was, but I give you a vague date–just after 600 BC is probably right.

Most of you, I’m sure, know the story of his life. Is there anyone who doesn’t, I mean roughly? OK. So I won’t bother too much with that. But the point is, that when, in India, a man was called a Buddha, or THE BUDDHA, this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is first of all necessary for a Buddha to be human. He can’t be any other kind of being, whether in the Hindu scale of beings he’s above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods or angels–angels are probably a better name for them than gods–all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma–that is action that requires more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They’re still, according to popular ideas, going ’round the wheel from life after life after life after life, because they still have the thirst for existence, or to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the self is still playing the game of not being itself.

But the Buddha’s doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occurred after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism, fasting, doing all sort of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But Buddha found that all that was futile; that was not The Way. And one day he broke is ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish.

So long as you think, and feel, that you are a someone contained in your bag of skin, and that’s all, there is no way whatsoever of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you’re still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehavior.

So, you know how people are when they get spiritually proud. They belong to some kind of a church group, or an occult group, and say ‘Of course we’re the ones who have the right teaching. We’re the in-group, we’re the elect, and everyone else outside.’ It is really off the track. But then comes along someone who one-ups THEM, by saying ‘Well, in our circles, we’re very tolerant. We accept all religions and all ways as leading to The One.’ But what they’re doing is they’re playing the game called ‘We’re More Tolerant Than You Are.’ And in this way the egocentric being is always in his own trap.

So Buddha saw that all his yoga exercises and ascetic disciplines had just been ways of trying to get himself out of the trap in order to save his own skin, in order to find peace for himself. And he realized that that is an impossible thing to do, because the motivation ruins the project. He found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. Trap and trapped are one, and when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left. I’m going to explain that of course more carefully.

So, as a result of this experience, he formulated what is called the dharma, that is the Sanskrit word for ‘method.’ You will get a certain confusion when you read books on Buddhism, because they switch between Sanskrit and Pali words.

The earliest Buddhist scriptures that we know of are written the Pali language, and Pali is a softened form of Sanskrit. So that, for example, the doctrine of the Buddha is called in Sanskrit the ‘dharma,’ we must in pronouncing Sanskrit be aware that an ‘A’ is almost pronounced as we pronounce ‘U’ in the word ‘but.’ So they don’t say ‘darmuh,’ they say ‘durmuh.’ And so also this double ‘D’ you say ‘budduh’ and so on. But in Pali, and in many books of Buddhism, you’ll find the Buddhist doctrine described as the ‘dhama.’ And so the same way ‘karma’ in Sanskrit, in Pali becomes ‘kama.’ ‘Buddha’ remains the same. The dharma, then, is the method.

Now, the method of Buddhism, and this is absolutely important to remember, is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn’t teach a doctrine. You cannot anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialog.

So the concern of the Buddha as a young man—the problem he wanted to solve—was the problem of human suffering. And so he formulated his teaching in a very easy way to remember. All those Buddhist scriptures are full of what you might call mnemonic tricks, sort of numbering things in such a way that they’re easy to remember. And so he summed up his teaching in what are called the Four Noble Truths. And the first one, because it was his main concern, was the truth about duhkha. Duhkha, ‘suffering, pain, frustration, chronic dis-ease.’ It is the opposite of sukha, which means ‘sweet, pleasure, etc.’

So, insofar as the problem posed in Buddhism is duhkha, ‘I don’t want to suffer, and I want to find someone or something that can cure me of suffering.’ That’s the problem. Now if there’s a person who solves the problem, a buddha, people come to him and say ‘Master, how do we get out of this problem?’ So what he does is to propose certain things to them. First of all, he points out that with duhkha go two other things. These are respectively called anitya and anātman. Nnitya means permanant, so anitya is impermanance. Flux, change, is characteristic of everything whatsoever. There isn’t anything at all in the whole world, in the material world, in the psychic world, in the spiritual world, there is nothing you can catch hold of and hang on to for safely. Nuttin’ … not only is there nothing you can hang on to, but by the teaching of anātman, there is no you to hang on to it. In other words, all clinging to life is an illusory hand grasping at smoke. If you can get that into your head and see that is so, nobody needs to tell you that you ought not to grasp. Because you see, you can’t.

Buddhism is not essentially moralistic. The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Because what happens is he simply sweeps the dust under the carpet, and it all comes back again somehow. But in this case, it involves a complete realization that this is the case. So that’s what the teacher puts across to begin with.

The next thing that comes up, the second of the noble truths, is about the cause of suffering, and this in Sanskrit is called trishna. Trishna is related to our word ‘thirst.’ It’s very often translated ‘desire.’ That will do. Better, perhaps, is ‘craving, clinging, grasping,’ or even, to use our modern psychological word, ‘blocking.’ When, for example, somebody is blocked, and dithers and hesitates, and doesn’t know what to do, he is in the strictest Buddhist sense attached, he’s stuck. But a buddha can’t be stuck, he cannot be phased. He always flows, just as water always flows, even if you dam it, the water just keeps on getting higher and higher and higher until it flows over the dam. It’s unstoppable.

Now, Buddha said, then, duhkha comes from trishna. You all suffer because you cling to the world, and you don’t recognize that the world is anitya and anātman. So then, try, if you can, not to grasp. Well, do you see that that immediately poses a problem? Because the student who has started off this dialog with the buddha then makes various efforts to give up desire. Upon which he very rapidly discovers that he is desiring not to desire, and he takes that back to the teacher, who says ‘Well, well, well.’ He said, ‘Of course. You are desiring not to desire, and that’s of course excessive.

All I want you to do is to give up desiring as much as you can. Don’t want to go beyond the point of which you’re capable.’ And for this reason Buddhism is called the Middle Way. Not only is it the middle way between the extremes of ascetic discipline and pleasure seeking, but it’s also the middle way in a very subtle sense. Don’t desire to give up more desire than you can. And if you find that a problem, don’t desire to be successful in giving up more desire than you can. You see what’s happening? Every time he’s returned to the middle way, he’s moved out of an extreme situation.

Now then, we’ll go on; we’ll cut out what happens in the pursuit of that method until a little later. The next truth in the list is concerned with the nature of release from duhkha. And so number three is nirvana. Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism; it’s the state of liberation corresponding to what the Hindus call moksha. The word means ‘blow out,’ and it comes from the root ‘nir vritti.’ Now some people think that what it means is blowing out the flame of desire. I don’t believe this. I believe that it means ‘breathe out,’ rather than ‘blow out,’ because if you try to hold your breath, and in Indian thought, breath–prana–is the life principle. If you try to hold on to life, you lose it. You can’t hold your breath and stay alive; it becomes extremely uncomfortable to hold onto your breath [moksha: release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma… a transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth].

And so in exactly the same way, it becomes extremely uncomfortable to spend all your time holding on to your life. What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do. They spend enormous efforts on maintaining a certain standard of living, which is a great deal of trouble. You know, you get a nice house in the suburbs, and the first thing you do is you plant a lawn. You’ve gotta get out and mow the damn thing all the time, and you buy expensive this-that and soon you’re all involved in mortgages, and instead of being able to walk out into the garden and enjoy, you sit at your desk and look at your books, filling out this and that and the other and paying bills and answering letters. What a lot of rot! But you see, that is holding onto life. So, translated into colloquial American, nirvana is ‘whew!’ because if you let your breath go, it’ll come back. So nirvana is not annihilation, it’s not disappearance into a sort of undifferentiated void. Nirvana is the state of being let go. It is a state of consciousness, and a state of, you might call it, being, here and now in this life.

We now come to the most complicated of all, number four and magha. Magha in Sanskrit means ‘past,’ and the Buddha taught an eight-fold path for the realization of nirvana. This always reminds me of a story about Dr Suzuki, who is a very, very great Buddhist scholar. Many years ago, he was giving a fundamental lecture on Buddhism at the University of Hawaii, and he’d been going through these four truths, and he said ‘Ah, fourth Noble Truth is Noble Eightfold Path. First step of Noble Eightfold Path is called shoken. Shoken in Japanese means ‘right view.’ For Buddhism, fundamentally, is the right way of viewing this world. Second step of Noble Eightfold Path is—oh, I forget second step, you look it up in the book.’

Well, I’m going to do rather the same thing. What is important is this: the eight-fold path has really got three divisions in it. The first are concerned with understanding, the second division is concerned with conduct, and the third division is concerned with meditation. And every step in the path is preceded with the Sanskrit word _samyak_. In which you remember we ran into _samadhi_ last week, ‘sam’ is the key word. And so, the first step, _samyak- drishti_, which mean–‘drishti’ means a view, a way of looking at things, a vision, an attitude, something like that. But this word samyak is in ordinary texts on Buddhism almost invariably translated ‘right.’ This is a very bad translation. The word IS used in certain contexts in Sanskrit to mean ‘right, correct,’ but it has other and wider meanings. ‘Sam’ means, like our word ‘sum,’ which is derived from it, ‘complete, total, all-embracing.’ It also has the meaning of ‘middle wade,’ representing as it were the fulcrum, the center, the point of balance in a totality. Middle wade way of looking at things. Middle wade way of understanding the dharma. Middle wade way of speech, of conduct, of livelihood, and so on.

Now this is particularly cogent when it comes to Buddhist ideas of behavior. Every Buddhist in all the world, practically, as a layman–he’s not a monk–undertakes what are called pancasila, the Five Good Conducts. ‘Sila’ is sometimes translated ‘precept.’ But it’s not a precept because it’s not a commandment.

When Buddhists priests chant the precepts, you know: pranatipada: ‘prana (life) tipada (taking away) I promise to abstain from.’ So the first is that one undertakes not to destroy life. Second, not to take what is not given. Third—this is usually translated ‘not to commit adultry’. It doesn’t say anything of the kind. In Sanskrit, it means ‘I undertake the precept to abstain from exploiting my passions.’ Buddhism has no doctrine about adultery; you may have as many wives as you like.

But the point is this: when you’re feeling blue, and bored, it’s not a good idea to have a drink, because you may become dependent on alcohol whenever you feel unhappy. So in the same way, when you’re feeling blue and bored, it’s not a good idea to say ‘Let’s go out and get some chicks and have some sex fun.’ That’s exploiting the passions. But it’s not exploiting the passions, you see, when drinking, say, expresses the vitality and friendship of the group sitting around the dinner table, or when sex expresses the spontaneous delight of two people in each other. 

Then, the fourth precept, Musavada, ‘to abstain from false speech.’ It doesn’t simply mean lying. It means, abusing people. It means using speech in a phony way, like saying ‘all niggers are thus and so.’ Or ‘the attitude of America to this situation is thus and thus.’ See, that’s phony kind of talking. Anybody who studies general semantics will be helped in avoiding musavada, false speech.

The final precept is a very complicated one, and nobody’s quite sure exactly what it means. It mentions three kinds of drugs and drinks: sura[?], mariya[?], maja[?]. We don’t know what they are. But at any rate, it’s generally classed as narcotics and liquors. Now, there are two ways of translating this precept. One says to abstain from narcotics and liquors; the other liberal translation favored by the great scholar Dr Malanesecreta[?] is ‘I abstain from being intoxicated by these things.’ So if you drink and don’t get intoxicated, it’s OK. You don’t have to be a teetotaler to be a Buddhist. This is especially true in Japan and China; my goodness, how they throw it down! A scholarly Chinese once said to me, ‘You know, before you start meditating, just have a couple martinis, because it increases your progress by about six months.’

Now you see these are, as I say, they are not commandments, they are vows. Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver. The reason why these precepts are undertaken is not for a sentimental reason. It is not that you’re going to make you into a good person. It is that for anybody interested in the experiments necessary for liberation, these ways of life are expedient. First of all, if you go around killing, you’re going to make enemies, and you’re going to have to spend a lot of time defending yourself, which will distract you from your yoga. If you go around stealing, likewise, you’re going to acquire a heap of stuff, and again, you’re going to make enemies. If you exploit your passions, you’re going to get a big thrill, but it doesn’t last. When you begin to get older, you realize ‘Well that was fun while we had it, but I haven’t really learned very much from it, and now what?’ Same with speech. Nothing is more confusing to the mind than taking words too seriously. We’ve seen so many examples of that. And finally, to get intoxicated or narcotized–a narcotic is anything like alcohol or opium which makes you sleepy. The word ‘narcosis’ in Greek, ‘narc’ means ‘sleep.’ So, if you want to pass your life seeing things through a dim haze, this is not exactly awakening.

So, so much for the conduct side of Buddhism. We come then to the final parts of the eightfold path. There are two concluding steps, which are called Samyak smriti and Samyak Samadhi. Smriti means ‘recollection, memory, present-mindedness’ … seems rather funny that the same word can mean ‘recollection or memory’ and ‘present-mindedness’ Bbut smriti is exactly what that wonderful old rascal George Gurdjieff meant by self-awareness, or self-remembering. Smriti is to have complete presence of mind.

There is a wonderful meditation called ‘The House that Jack Built Meditation,’ at least that’s what I call it, that the Southern Buddhists practice. He walks, and he says to himself, ‘There is the lifting of the foot.’ The next thing he says is ‘There is a perception of the lifting of the foot.’ And the next, he says ‘There is a tendency towards the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ Then finally he says, ‘There is a consciousness of the tendency of the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ And so, with everything that he does, he knows that he does it. He is self-aware. This is tricky. Of course, it’s not easy to do. But as you practice this–I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, which I suppose I shouldn’t do–but you will find that there are so many things to be aware of at any given moment in what you’re doing, that at best you only ever pick out one or two of them. That’s the first thing you’ll find out. Ordinary conscious awareness is seeing the world with blinkers on. As we say, you can think of only one thing at a time. That’s because ordinary consciousness is narrowed consciousness. It’s being narrow-minded in the true sense of the word, looking at things that way. Then you find out in the course of going around being aware all of the time–what are you doing when you remember? Or when you think about the future? ‘I am aware that I am remembering’? ‘I am aware that I am thinking about the future’?

But you see, what eventually happens is that you discover that there isn’t any way of being absent-minded. All thoughts are in the present and of the present. And when you discover that, you approach samadhi. Samadhi is the complete state, the fulfilled state of mind. And you will find many, many different ideas among the sects of Buddhists and Hindus as to what samadhi is. Some people call it a trance, some people call it a state of consciousness without anything in it, knowing with no object of knowledge. Some people say is is the unification of the know-er and the known. All these are varying opinions.

I had a friend who was a Zen master, and he used to talk about samadhi, and he said a very fine example of samadhi is a fine horse rider. When you watch a good cowboy, he is one being with the horse. So an excellent driver in a car makes the car his own body, and he absolutely is with it. So also a fine pair of dancers; they don’t have to shove each other to get one to do what the other wants him to do. They have a way of understanding each other, of moving together as if they were Siamese twins. That’s samadhi, on the physical, ordinary, everyday level. The samadhi of which Buddha speaks is the state which, as it is, the gateway to Nirvana; the state in which the illusion of the ego, as a separate thing, disintegrates.

Now, when we get to that point in Buddhism, Buddhists do a funny thing, which is going to occupy our attention for a good deal of this seminar. They don’t fall down and worship. They don’t really have any name for what it is, that is, really, and basically. The idea of anatman, of non-self, is applied in Buddhism not only to the individual ego, but also to the notion that there is a self of the universe, a kind of impersonal or personal god, and so it is generally supposed that Buddhism is atheistic. It’s true, depending on what you mean by atheism. Common or garden atheism is a form of belief; namely that I believe there is no god. The atheist positively denies the existence of any god. All right. Now, there is such an atheist, if you put dash between the ‘a’ and ‘theist,’ or speak about something called ‘atheos’–‘theos’ in Greek means ‘god’–but what is a non-god? A non-god is an inconceivable something or other.

I love the story about a debate in the Houses of Parliment in England, where, as you know, the Church of England is established and therefor under control of the government, and the high ecclesiastics had petitioned Parliament to let them have a new prayer book. Somebody got up and said “It’s perfectly ridiculous that Parliament should decide on this, because as we well know, there are quite a number of atheists in these benches.” And somebody got up and said “Oh, I don’t think there are really any atheists. We all believe in some sort of something somewhere.”

Now again, of course, it isn’t that Buddhism believes in some sort of something somewhere, and that is to say in vagueness. Here is the point: if you believe, if you have certain propositions that you want to assert about the ultimate reality, or what Paul Tillich calls ‘the ultimate ground of being’ you are talking nonsense. Because you can’t say something specific about everything. You see, supposing you wanted to say God has a shape. But if god is all that there is, then God doesn’t have any outside, so he can’t have a shape. You have to have an outside and space outside it to have a shape. So that’s why the Hebrews, too, are against people making images of God. But nonetheless, Jews and Christians persistently make images of God, not necessarily in pictures and statues, but they make images in their minds. And those are much more insidious images.

Buddhism is not saying that the Self, the great Atman, or what-not… it isn’t denying that the experience which corresponds to these words is realizable. What it is saying is that if you make conceptions and doctrines about these things, your liable to become attached to them. You’re liable to start believing instead of knowing. So they say in Zen Buddhism, “The doctrine of Buddhism is a finger pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” Also, we might say in the West, the idea of God is a finger pointing at God, but what most people do is instead of following the finger, they suck it for comfort. And so Buddha chopped off the finger [metaphor], and undermined all metaphysical beliefs.

There are many, many dialogues in the Pali scriptures where people try to corner the Buddha into a metaphysical position. ‘Is the world eternal?’ The Buddha says nothing. ‘Is the world not eternal?’ And he answers ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world both eternal and not eternal?’ And he don’t say ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world neither eternal nor not eternal?’ And STILL he don’t say ‘nuttin’. He maintains what is called the noble silence. Sometimes called the thunder of silence, because this silence, this metaphysical silence, is not a void. It is very powerful. This silence is the open window through which you can see not concepts, not ideas, not beliefs, but the very goods. But if you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. It’s better to destroy people’s beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it is The Way.

Transcript source: deoxy.org

T47:28

Terms (more)

Dharma: is a key concept that signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with the order that makes life and universe possible. Dharma is “cosmic law and order” and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living” as taught by the Buddha.

Moksha: in Indian philosophy and religion is a liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra); derived from Sanskrit, the term moksha literally means freedom from saṃsāra.

Samadhi: a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached (before or at death). 

Saṃsāra: is a Sanskrit word that means “wandering” or “world”, with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. It also refers to the theory of rebirth and “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence” and liberation from Saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvana, Mukti or Kaivalya.

The Noble Eightfold Path: is the fourth of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, and asserts the path to the cessation of dukkha (suffering, pain, un-satisfactoriness). The path teaches that through restraining oneself, by cultivating discipline, in practicing mindfulness and meditation, the enlightened ones stop their craving, clinging and karmic accumulations, and thus end rebirth and suffering. It is used to develop insight into the true nature of reality, achieve liberation from rebirths in realms of Samsara, and to attain nirvana. In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel (dharmachakra), with eight spokes representing the eight elements of the path. The eight Buddhist concepts in the Noble Eightfold Path are:

  1. right view: the belief that there is an afterlife, that not everything ends with death, that Buddha taught and followed a successful path to nirvana;
  2. right resolve: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving-kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
  3. right speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him, speaking that which leads to salvation;
  4. right conduct: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts.
  5. right livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life;
  6. right effort: guard against sensual thoughts; this concept, states Harvey, aims at preventing unwholesome states that disrupt meditation.
  7. right mindfulness: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; encourages the mindfulness about impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five skandhas, the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
  8. right samadhi (concentration): practicing four stages of dhyana meditation.

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Thanks for visiting.

New post  Eric 

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The Golden Flower

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Culture, Faith, Lessons, Philosophy, Spirituality

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alan Watts, Carl Jung, Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower

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The Secret of the Golden Flower


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“If the wrong man uses the right means,
the right means work in the wrong way.”

~ Chinese saying

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I recalled this talk after my reading a post about perceptions of others… I didn’t want to write about it… I just waned to listen to the talk.

Thanks for visiting.

 Eric

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awake my soul

24 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Happiness, Inspiration, Lessons, Mindful, Philosophy, Self-assessments

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

Alan Watts, Carl Jung, happiness, Jung, Jungian, psychology, Social Sciences

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Carl Jung said: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” I want to stimulate some thinking about that and how it looks, so I came across this on November 22, where Stewart of Dark Matters a Lot posted this video:

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prayers-thoughts-positiveenergy
Carl Jung pointed out that
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.” Beyond Meds posted a video and article, apparently by Monica Cassani, on Alan Watts speaking about Carl Jung on Accepting the Darkness of Self and Others: 

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Jung also said:

    • “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
    • “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”  
    • “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” 
    • “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” 
    • “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”    

If I said, “I just want to be there, at the outcome; making money or living in peaceful bliss.” What would you tell me? 

Thanks for visiting,

New post Eric

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11-24-13.

Inner Peace

Inner Peace Award - I would have a no-awards blog but this award changed me. Thanks Suz. I'm glad I changed.

November 2013

Top Posts (LIkes)

  • Looking at yourself honestly - Mental Strength
  • Only one Word was on my mind
  • A Virus Called Fear
  • Five steps to mindfulness
  • Scientist debunks Hawking's 'no God needed' theory
  • Happiness: Self-acceptance
  • How is feeling upset my problem?
  • 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
  • 10 Principles for Success and Inner Peace
  • How Meditation Changes Our Brains

Recent Posts

  • Psychic Ability, Remote Viewing and A Course in Miracle with Russell Targ
  • America’s Great Divide
  • ACIM Zoom
  • Christ & Christianity { Alan Watts }
  • A Course In Miracles (training and discussions)
  • Awareness
  • Imagination creates reality
  • The World As Emptiness, and Being Let Go
  • Man cannot stand a meaningless life
  • Empath Support
  • Don’t take consciousness for granted
  • The World is Only Reflecting Back to You What You Are
  • Living Happily
  • we are holographic
  • How close is science to understanding consciousness?
  • Mapping the “War on Christmas”
  • The Fountain (95 minute Full Feature Film)
  • laugh… evolve…
  • be still and contemplate
  • Year 3 in WordPress time
  • mind is everywhere
  • Three Hermits – the simplicity of joyful worship
  • Love one another
  • Do Your Best
  • within these reflections…
  • signs of the Soul (reblog)
  • Verbal and Emotional Abuse… is More Than Just Words Said
  • How are you stepping outside of your childhood programming and recovering your power of creation?
  • Dreamwalker’s Hearts Beat as One!
  • Humble (reblog)
  • 2015 – resolutions
  • Artists 4 Peace
  • irrational ideas – quality of life (reblog)
  • dreams fly free (reblog)
  • A Virus Called Fear
  • The sky is not the limit (reblog)
  • Thanksgiving – Why?
  • Science and Prayer
  • Veterans Day Thanks
  • What If Heaven Is Here And Now?

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Hunt 4 Truth

Hunt 4 Truth

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." https://hunt4truth.wordpress.com/ Absolute Truth is whole, complete and perfect. Absolute Truth is just beyond words, mental concepts, and form; Non-being, yet in everything and yet beyond thought forms. Prayer and meditation fashion in our hearts further honesty, openness, and willingness and thus, we may glimpse guidance and truth to rightly think and act. Any glimpse of truth is not Absolute Truth. It may be sufficient until we renew our commitment to serve God. Life is thus best navigated during mindfulness of prayer and meditation by an inner peace. "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Romans 1:20

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