Church of the Churchless

Morality, like Alan Watts, is in the eye of the beholder

It's been interesting to see the various reactions of regular readers of this blog to my series of posts about Alan Watts, especially my recent post about how "Alan Watts was true to his moral philosophy." 

Those like me who agree with how Watts viewed reality -- as a self-organizing whole without any top-down commander like God -- tended to view his personal life as irrelevant to his philosophizing, which leaned in his later years toward Chinese/Taoist perspectives.

Not surprisingly, those who disagreed with how Watts saw things seized upon his three marriages, affairs with other women, drug use, and excessive drinking as evidence that Watts was a fake who didn't live up to the ideals that he spoke about in his books and talks.

This is a reflection of the fact that in large part, morality is subjective. Different people look upon right and wrong in different ways. So here's some observations along that line, using the reaction to Alan Watts as an example.

First, I wanted to learn more about the life of Watts, so yesterday I ordered a biography from Amazon, "Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts," by Monica Furlong. I got it today and obviously haven't been able to read it yet, but noted that Furlong had a new foreword in the 2012 edition. Here's how Furlong's foreword ends.

Watt's philosophy, carefully developed over the years with study, had a freshness and honesty about it. He had read deeply in Christian theology and felt that many of its symbols had lost their power as a result of being taken too literally, and needed to be rediscovered. He worked at meditation, read Jungian psychology, studied Oriental religious ideas of all kinds, visited Japan.

Out of much thinking, reading, and talking, he developed a language that spoke to Westerners who wanted a religion, or at any rate a way of life, that was not totally trapped in rationality. He felt that religion tended to suffer from mystification and the use of a mandarin language that excluded most people, except as timid followers of leaders who then abused their power.

His own teaching moved between ways of talking about huge imponderables -- suffering, death -- to the everyday -- the kind of food, clothes, relationships, ways of living that might be appropriate for human beings.

Few, if any, human beings can cope well with becoming a guru or icon. Alan Watts handled it better than some, mainly because he had good friends, and he had a sense of humor that put his fame into perspective, but he was stressed by the exposure and at times his head was turned by it. 

Watts is not a man on whom it is possible to deliver an easy verdict -- he escapes labels. He had an extraordinary wisdom, a lot of knowledge, and a rare ability to put both into language that ordinary people can understand.

He still has much to teach anyone searching to find belief -- his short and deceptively simple little books are remarkable guides. He was sometimes vain, a know-it-all who could be thoughtless of others, but he was invariably kind in what he said about other people. "He was fond of lifting the elbow," Dom Aelred Graham wrote to me, "but I never heard him say a harsh word about anybody."

There are not many of us of whom the Recording Angel will be able to say as much, and it was perhaps Watts's capacity to live out the life he wanted, with all its ups and downs, its failures and successes, that left him so attractively free of envy.

His children, I noticed when I interviewed them, were both clear-sighted and truthful about him, but also had loving memories, as had his friends.

He was both an inspired leader and, like all of us, flawed -- in Gary Snyder's words, "he sowed problems wherever he went." Watts knew himself well, and used to describe himself as a "genuine fake," an expression that catches not only his ambiguities, but also the ambiguities of the human condition, not least when we are trying to be religious.

This book tries to explore both the genuineness and the fakery.

Furlong does a nice job here, balancing Watts' strengths and weaknesses, pointing out that Watts echoed his philosophy in his life: there aren't sharp edges in nature, or in human nature. No clear demarcation of black and white, good and bad, moral and immoral. 

There are shades of meaning, ambiguities, tendencies that can reverse themselves and move in a fresh direction. 

As noted before, Alan Watts didn't set himself up as someone to emulate. He urged people to trust themselves, not authorities, religious or otherwise. So those who criticize Watts for not being moral are laying their own ethical framework over Watts' life and then finding it lacking.

I'm reminded of the current controversy in Great Britain over Boris Johnson, the prime minister, having  parties during a time the rest of the country was on a strict Covid lockdown. Now, that's the sort of hypocrisy that, if proven to be true, deserves condemnation. 

But to my knowledge, Watts never said "Don't drink; don't use psychedelic drugs; don't have affairs; don't drink alcohol excessively." Sure, he did those things. Yet he can't be condemned for living a life that was at odds with his philosophy.

Since Watts was a big admirer of Taoism, below is a story from Eva Wong's book, "Lieh-Tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living." The back cover says, "The Lieh-Tzu is a collection of stories and philosophical musings of a sage of the same name who lived around the fourth century B.C.E."

That's a long time ago, but one story reminded me of the debate over Alan Watts' morality today. In 2007 I shared an abbreviated version of that story in "Wine, women, and enlightenment." Here's that blog post.

Got to get fired up, or cooled down, for the Taoism talk I'm going to give to a Comparative Religion class tonight. I won't prepare a whole lot. Want to let it flow.

I'm planning to carry along the Lieh-tzu, though. That's the third leg of the traditional Taoist canon, along with the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu.

Translator Eva Wong says:

The Lao-tzu describes a state of reality that a sage experiences; the Chuang-tzu describes a state of mind that the sage is in; but the Lieh-tzu describes how the enlightened person lives.

…If the Lao-tzu is poetry and the Chuang-tzu is prose, then the Lieh-tzu is a series of comic strips. By exaggerating the ridiculous aspects of human actions, it portrays the human condition as humorous and pokes fun at social taboos.

I love how Taoist sages so often take a contrarian view of morality. You won't find a story like "What damages health more—unrestricted pleasure or obsessive hard work?" in a traditional religious scripture. Here's an abbreviated version of Lieh-tzu's tale.

-----------------------------

Tzu-ch'an, the chief minister of the kingdom of Cheng, had two brothers. While he spent his energy on strengthening the country and putting down crime and disorder, his two brothers indulged in everything that satisfied their senses.

One of the brothers had a brewery and a large warehouse in the back of his mansion where he stored thousands of jars of wine. He drank heavily, and, when drunk, he was oblivious to everything around him. He couldn't recognize friends or relatives, and he lost all concern for life or death.

The other brother had a dozen rooms in the house where he kept a group of beautiful young women. When he was aroused sexually, he would spend months with the women, never even bothering to come out to meet friends and relatives or take care of the family business.

Tzu-ch'an was very concerned about his brothers' lifestyles. So he went to talk to Teng-hsi, a fellow statesman who, although sarcastic and snide at times, was known for his keen observations and problem-solving ability.

Tzu-ch'an said, "Can you suggest anything that would get my two irresponsible brothers to behave more properly?"

Teng-hsi replied, "Tell them what they're doing is damaging their health. Maybe this will convince them to change their lifestyles."

One day Tzu-ch'an found his brothers together. He took this opportunity to talk to them about their lives.

"Heaven made us a cut above animals in dignity and intelligence. Therefore, it is your duty to live up to these expectations and behave in a manner befitting our position in society. If you only live to satisfy your senses, you are no more than animals. Stop harming yourselves, become responsible citizens, and I shall give you a position in the government."

Tzu-ch'an's brothers said:

"We know that wine and sex damage health. But we also know that life is short, and we want to enjoy whatever we can now. You, on the other hand, suppress what you want to do in order to maintain your rank and power.

"You are proud of your achievements and you want us to conform to your beliefs. You want to entice us with titles and political power, but we know that such things only bring burden and trouble.

"You may be the chief minister, and the country may look like it's in order. But look at yourself closely. You are tired and haggard. You have damaged your body and mind because you are anxious about keeping the country in order. In order to maintain your reputation, you have damaged your heart by suppressing your natural inclinations.

"We, on the other hand, may be wild and unruly, but we are true to ourselves. We have never put up a front to gain respect. We have never been involved in dirty politics or harmed other people with treachery and intrigue.

"Can you say this about yourself? If you can't, then it's not we who should take your advice, but you who should take ours."

Tzu-ch'an did not know what to say. Later he saw Teng-hsi and related the whole incident to him. Teng-hsi said, "You have been living with enlightened men and didn't even know it."

Lastly, here's an excerpt from another Lieh-Tzu story, "A madman or an enlightened man?"

Is Tuan-mu Shu a madman or an enlightened man? If you judge him by social norms, then it would appear that Tuan-mu Shu was indeed crazy. He abandoned his family, did not care for the welfare of his descendants, and squandered his wealth.

But then again, Tuan-mu Shu was sincere in everything he did. There was no pretense, no scheming, no ulterior motive in his actions. He followed his heart and was not constrained by social conventions. He enjoyed himself freely, he gave freely, and he never did anything that went against his nature.

Alan Watts was true to his moral philosophy

There's nothing that irks me more on this blog than commenters who are annoyingly sanctimonious, taking an I'm-holier-than-thou attitude to people they feel morally superior to. So when I saw this comment about Alan Watts by Spence Tepper yesterday, it irritated me.

Allan Watts may appeal to drug addicts, alcoholics, sex addicts and fame addicts, but he would have done them greater good acknowldging his own struggles with these things. A man who fails, but struggles, openly acknowldging his struggle, and fights directly as best he can, that is a source of real inspiration. But a man who escapes his duty in a world of clever sounding concepts is no role model. Except to provide what appeals to some functioning alcoholics looking for an enabler : A clever but paper thin identify with which to paper over the windows of harsh sunlight, a means of enabling the denial. We can only look at Watts deconstruction of identity as wishful thinking and in fact the creation of an identity of freedom that in fact enabled addiction.

There's so much wrong with this comment, at first I didn't know how to respond to it. But this morning, I did, addressing myself both to Tepper and to another commenter critical of Watts, "Appreciative Reader."

Appreciative Reader and Spence, I'm planning to write a blog post tonight about what Alan Watts said about morality, since you two have what appears to be an erroneous conception that Watts' personal life contradicted his philosophy of life.

That isn't true. At least, I see no evidence that it is. So please explain in a comment why you think that Watts being married three times, having affairs, using drugs, and becoming an alcoholic is at odds with the philosophy he espoused.

I've read most or all of Watts' books, some several times. I've just finished listening to all of the audio recordings in the Tao of Philosophy section of the talks on the Waking Up app. I'm not aware of the slightest mention that Watts believed in rigid moral commandments such as the Bible and other religious texts contain.

In fact, the opposite is true. He urged people to trust themselves, and to not be taken in by the illusion that there's a Commander, a Boss, a God, who decrees what is right and good to do, or who controls people's actions. I've also seen no evidence that Watts put himself forth as a guru to be emulated. Again, the opposite is true. He jokes and plays around, not taking himself seriously, saying that he just gives talks for the money and because he enjoys it.

You two have piled onto Watts for reasons I can't understand. It's irritating when people try to kill the messenger because they don't like the message. It's fine to disagree with a philosopher's point of view, but I see no value in saying that Watts' philosophy is garbage because he had some human problems.

Are you aware of anyone who doesn't have problems? Could your own personal lives withstand a close look to see if you've overcome human weaknesses, or what appear to be human weaknesses? In part this is a sensitive issue for me because my mother was an alcoholic, along with being a strong independent woman who was an amazing thinker and persuasive talker, even though I came to disagree with her conservative political views.

The notion that someone who becomes an alcoholic or heavy drinker is amoral, a bad person, offends me. It's the worst kind of holier-than-thou sanctimoniousness to view a person as a failed human being because they drank too much, had affairs, or otherwise didn't live up to traditional standards. My family was full of flawed successful people who were interesting in part because of their flaws, not in spite of them.

It's one thing to criticize a religious leader like the RSSB guru who says one thing and does another thing. But unless you can provide evidence to the contrary, my view is that Alan Watts lived the life he espoused in his talks.

Note that my central concern isn't whether Watts lived up to some objective standard of morality, because such doesn't exist.

Sure, virtually everybody agrees that killing, stealing, and such  almost always are immoral, though exceptions are common. Killing is OK in war; stealing because your children are starving is understandable.

Since Watts never did anything criminal to my knowledge, and morality in large part is a personal decision, seemingly the charge against Watts here is that the philosophical message he conveyed in his books and talks was at odds with some aspects of his life: notably the affairs he had while married and excessive drinking, which some call alcoholism.

So I did some Googling of "Alan Watts morality." The best articles I found were on the AllanWatts.org web site, a two-part series called Mysticism and Morality (see here and here). This appears to be a transcript of a talk by Watts.

Here's an excerpt that shows the foundation of how Watts viewed morality: real honesty.

You see, now, how real honesty is a genuine basis of morals. Real honesty is always not pretending that you’re [your] feelings are other than they are. We know, as we deal with situations practically, that we may have to do things that go against our feelings, and it’s the same with helping people—when you have to—whom you don’t like and you don’t want to help, but on the whole it’s rather necessary to do so. But don’t ever be dishonest in playing that you’re [your] feelings are not what they are.

Now, from this standpoint we can perhaps understand something about the deep relationship between morals and mysticism. If we go back, you see, to the experience that I described as mystical we see that it is the vision—I tried to put it, fumblingly, in the sense of the rightness, the harmoniousness of everything that you are from one moment to another.

That, in other words, human behavior—its ups and its downs—is no different in principle from the behavior of the clouds, or of the wind, or of dancing flames in the fireplace. As you watch the pattern of the dancing flames they never do anything vulgar. Their artistry is always perfect. Ultimately, it is the same with human beings. We are just as much a part of the natural order as flames in the fire or stars in the sky. But this is only apparent to the person who is honest in the sense in which I have spoken.

In other words, the person who is tied up with trying to pretend that his feelings are other than what they actually are—he can never see this, and he’s always a troublemaker. He is the original hypocrite. The person who is unbelievably destructive is the person who pretends that he is a model of love and rectitude and justice, and, in fact, isn’t. Because nobody really can be. But then, superior altogether is the kind of person I would call the ‘loving cynic’ who knows, of course, that everybody has his weakness and his price and so on, but isn’t contemptuous for that reason.

I also picked up my favorite book by Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity. Here's some passages that offer another perspective on how Watts viewed morality.

If morality is the art of living together, it is clear that rules, or rather techniques, have a place in it. For many of the problems of a community are technical problems -- the distribution of wealth and population, the proper management of natural resources, the organization of family life, the care of the sick and disabled, and the harmonious adaptation of individual differences. 

The moralist is therefore a technician who is consulted on these problems as one consults an architect on building a house or an engineer on erecting a bridge. Like medicine, shoe-making, cookery, tailoring, farming, and carpentry, living together requires a certain "know-how." It demands the acquisition and use of certain skills.

But the moralist has, in practice, become much more than a technical consultant. He has become a scold. From his pulpit or his study he harangues the human race, issuing praise and blame -- mostly blame -- like fire from the mouth of a dragon. For people do not take his advice. They ask how it is best to act under such and such circumstances. 

He tells them, and they seem to agree that he is right. But then they go away and do something different, for they find his advice too difficult or have a strong desire to do the opposite. This happens so regularly that the moralist loses his temper and begins to call them bad names. When this has no effect, he resorts to physical violence, implementing his advice with policemen, punishments, and prisons.

...The conventional moralist has nothing to contribute to these problems. He can point out the frightful effects of alcoholism and gambling, but that is simply more fuel for depression and worry. He can promise rewards in heaven for suffering patiently endured, but that, too, is a gamble of a kind. 

...The urge is ever to make "I" amount to something. I must be right, good, a real person, heroic, loving, self-effacing. I efface myself in order to assert myself, and give myself away in order to keep myself. The whole thing is a contradiction.

The Christian mind has always been haunted by the feeling that the sins of the saints are worse than the sins of the sinners, that in some mysterious way the one who is struggling for salvation is nearer to hell and to the heart of evil than the unashamed harlot or thief.

It has recognized that the Devil is an angel, and as pure spirit is not really interested in the sins of the flesh. The sins after the Devil's heart are the intricacies of spiritual pride, the mazes of self-deception, and the subtle mockeries of hypocrisy where mask hides behind mask behind mask and reality is lost altogether.

The would-be saint walks straight into the meshes of this web because he would become a saint. His "I" finds the deepest security in a satisfaction which is the more intense for being so cleverly hidden -- the satisfaction of being contrite for his sins, and contrite for taking pride in his contrition. In such an involved vicious circle the masks behind masks are infinite.

...Where there is to be creative action it is quite beside the point to discuss what we should or should not do in order to be right or good. A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good, in conducting relations with other people so as to live up to a rule. Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence.

Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are "itself." It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the "well" it wishes to others is not security but liberty.

Nothing is really more inhuman than human relations based on morals. When a man gives bread in order to be charitable, lives with a woman in order to be faithful, eats with a Negro in order to be unprejudiced, and refuses to kill in order to be peaceful, he is as cold as a clam. He does not actually see the other person. Only a little less chilly is the benevolence springing from pity, which acts to remove suffering because it finds the sight of it disgusting.

But there is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self-love all the bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

If you still want to call Alan Watts immoral because he had affairs and drank alcohol to excess, go ahead. I just hope you'll agree with me that Watts had a view of morality that was much different from the top-down God-centered approach to right and wrong that religions espouse.

Don't apply that sort of morality to Watts, because he denied it, and it doesn't apply to him. But if you feel good about seeing yourself as morally superior to Watts, I'm sure he'd hear this with good humor, telling you to go ahead if that's what gives you pleasure.

Alan Watts speaks about the Limits of Language

Here's another of the blog posts where I share notes I take while listening to audio recordings of talks by Alan Watts, thanks to Sam Harris making these available on his Waking Up app. I've now shared summaries of all of the talks in the Tao of Philosophy section.

I'll be taking a break from my Alan Watts listening, then probably I'll jump around and sample the many other Watts talks on the Waking Up app. I enjoyed this one about the Limits of Language, just as I have the other talks.

Watts is correct that the language we grow up with shapes how we view the world. The current issue of The New Yorker has an interesting article about how classical Chinese with its thousands of difficult to draw ideograms made it very difficult for the Chinese people to read and write their own language.

So in the 1900s ways were found to simplify Chinese, which made possible China's transformation into a global power. But the special character of Chinese remained, a subject Watts often alludes to his talks, such as how verbs often or usually lack a subject/noun, which is rare in English. 

Limits of Language

Ideas are very powerful, not just emotions. Underneath the surface of every language are hidden beliefs. Like, the assumption that everything material is made of some basic stuff, as a carpenter makes things out of wood.

But is a tree made of wood? No, it is wood. Our language contains many ghosts. There isn't a flash of lightning. The flash is lightning. What are some hidden assumptions that underlie language and mathematics?

Organisms are made of something. Stuff had to be assembled by an outside intelligence, a boss. The boss is different from what he puts into shape, because common sense does not allow that things shape themselves. But in Chinese, nature means that which is so by itself. 

To be made is to be commanded, by God or the laws of nature. Like a military command. God the Father is a beneficent parent.

At first an atom was viewed as not cuttable into smaller pieces. But a deeper look revealed that the atomic realm consists of particles and waves, which then looked more like a wavicle. Even smaller particles were found.

Through us, the universe is looking at itself. But you can't directly see the back of your head. The knower never becomes the object of knowledge. So there's always a profound mystery. You will never know what is really going on, because if you were, it would be like making love to a plastic woman.

Why I became a philosopher is because I always believed existence was weird. It's odd that we're here. You get a philosophical itch. Why is this so? Then you realize the real question is, how is it?

What is this it? If you got an answer, you wouldn't be able to put it into words. We always classify when you ask "What is it?" Man or woman. Republican or Democrat. Cat or dog. But with existence we need a group of all groups. We can't envision what the outside would be. So we can't answer the question, "What is it?"

Physicists give us the answer in terms of form, not substance. Seemingly wavicles must be of some thing, but they're not. It is the form that matters. 

Matter comes from the Sanskrit root "to measure." So we get maya, illusion. In Chinese "li" is organic pattern. A grammatical illusion is that all verbs need subjects. What is the difference between a thing and an event? I close my fingers and I'm fisting. Handing is when my fingers are open. 

Chinese is close to this, having only verbs, not nouns. When we divide the world into doers and doings, we lose sight of the possibility that the whole universe is a process. It's a ridiculous idea that a commander is always needed.

The world is a musical phenomenon. Good music is always only about itself. Listening to music is the meaning of it. Suchness. You are your form. You are what you're doing. 

"You must go on living" is a double bind. We're not living in the now where reality lives. Only suckers put hope in the future. Aristocrats live in the past. Proletariat live in the present because they have nothing else. Bourgeousie live in the future.  

They transform the future into a spiritual future. They will never die, being with God. This hope for the future is a hoax. Maybe I'll make spiritual progress if I work at yoga for 20-30 years. Because you're not fully alive now, you think that one day you will be.

If you were actually aware of how the world is, you couldn't describe it. We eat abstractions all the time. When you understand, you don't put your hope in time. Meditation is unlike any other human activity. You do it for its own sake, not to improve yourself.

Be completely in the here and now. Come to your senses. Yoga is the cessation of symbolizing. Until there is silence of the mind, eternal now eludes us.

Understand non-verbal reality. Very easy. Be fully aware without thinking. Can you hear the past or future? Can you hear anyone listening to something else? Contemplate what is. Then all these ghosts go away. 

Jesus said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." In India, Jesus wouldn't have been put to death. "I and the Father are one" -- they'd say, yes, so right. 

But we have a delayed notion. Only at a certain age, if you've been with a certain guru. Here, you have to wait until you're dead to understand reality. 

"I'm neurotic." "I'm frightened." "I'm dependent on material things."  I need to get all that under control first. So you've got spiritual pride. You want to be rewarded for all the work you'll put in. Wouldn't it be great to be as free as the air? But you see that you're a mess.

You want to run away from making a mess, but you can't. There's nothing you can do to transform yourself into someone liberated, because you want this. You can't bite your own teeth. Or lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

What does it mean if you can't do anything about it? The reason is that you don't really exist. That is, as an ego, a soul, a separate will. When you realize this, you're liberated. Zen: neither can you take hold of it, nor can you get rid of it. Not being able to get it, you get it. 

This isn't fatalism. Ego is an abstraction, like "3" is a concept. So is one's self. There's a happening, but that's not you. By dying to yourself, finding you don't exist, you're reborn. Forgetting yourself, the universe flows on.

Trust yourself and others, but not completely

Recently I've been writing blog posts where I share notes I take while listening to audio recordings of talks by Alan Watts, thanks to Sam Harris making these available on his Waking Up app.

Those posts are similar to books I read in this fashion. Not long after I've been exposed to them, I can only remember a few things about them.

Which brings to mind Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University, which was part of his appearances on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s.

His brilliant notion was to offer university courses that only take a few minutes, because he'd only teach the couple of things that college students can remember five years after they've graduated. This You Tube video shows Sarducci explaining the concept.

Of course, right now I can remember quite a bit about what Alan Watts says in his talks, since I've been listening to them in just the past two weeks or so. But I'm pretty sure that I'll forget most of his message before too long, aside from some pearls of wisdom that have embedded themselves in my mind.

Like, trust yourself and others, but not completely. 

Couldn't agree more. This is one of the simple truths that Watts is adept is pointing out. When he says those things, they seem obvious. However, he expresses the truths in such a fresh, engaging fashion, they seem delightfully new.

Think about it. Let's say you've a devotee of a guru, or some other spiritual teacher, who claims to know how to come closer to God or divinity. You've surrendered yourself to this person, considering that they possess a higher wisdom that you lack.

What gives you confidence that you've done the right thing? It can only be that you trust yourself. You trust that your devotion to this person is well-founded. You trust your commitment to them. 

So even if you have turned over to this spiritual teacher some decisions you otherwise would have handled on your own -- like ethical/moral decisions about how to live -- this surrendering of your own volition is possible only because you trust your sense that this is the right thing to do.

Likewise, if you later decide that the spiritual teacher isn't worth following any more, what gives you the ability to walk away from the person is your trust in yourself that now this is the right thing to do.

In other words, as Watts says in one of his talks, if you don't trust yourself, you've got no leg to stand on. Even choosing to not trust yourself or someone else requires that you trust your decision to stop trusting.

That last point is important. 

Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect. You, me, the Pope, gurus, doctors, lawyers, politicians, scientists, the Dalai Lama -- every human being is prone to not being trustworthy for one reason or another, some more than others, of course.

"I could be wrong" has to be our ever-present mantra, along with the related "You could be wrong." 

Often wrongness is factual. When Donald Trump says the 2020 election was stolen from him, that's factually wrong. Trump can't be trusted in that regard. Also, many other regards. If someone says global warming isn't happening, that's also factually wrong, and the person can't be trusted in that regard.

In other regards, they can be trusted. Thus we have to trust in our ability to discern when trust is merited, and when it isn't, whether or not the object of our trust is ourself or someone else. 

When I listen to Alan Watts speak, I don't agree with everything he says. When I read a nonfiction book, I don't agree with everything the author has written. But if my overall feeling is that someone can be trusted, I have no problem overlooking my occasional feelings of "you're wrong." 

My wife and I have been married for almost 32 years. Sometimes she thinks I'm wrong. Sometimes I think she's wrong. This doesn't affect our love for each other in the slightest. It's a natural part of every relationship to consider that the other person is wrong at times.

And it's also a natural part of the relationship we have with ourselves to admit "I was wrong," and so I shouldn't have trusted myself when I thought I was right, even though there was no way I could have known at that moment that I was wrong -- because life doesn't allow do-over's, moving only in one immutable direction in a series of now's.

To repeat: trust yourself and others, but not completely. Such is the spice of life, never being sure what will happen in our relationship both with others and ourself. The Netflix series "Succession" is a great example of this. 

No central character can be trusted. Indeed, they glory in their untrustworthiness. I always enjoy it when a Succession actor asks "Can I trust you?" and they hear "No, absolutely not." This is a big part of what makes the show so captivating, the continual intrigue of not being certain who can be trusted at any moment.

Alan Watts talks about Man and Nature

Here's another installment in my sharing of notes I'm taking as I listen to audio recordings of Alan Watts that Sam Harris has put on his Waking Up app. 

This talk is titled "Man and Nature." It presents the traditional Chinese view as being most in line with modern science, a view I agree with. There's a reason the classic book was called The Tao of Physics, rather than, say the Jesus of Physics or the Brahman of Physics. 

Chinese philosophy is thoroughly naturalistic, leaving aside offshoots that are religious/supernatural. This helps explain why I'm enjoying the talks by Watts so much, since I find Taoism (or Daoism) to be my favorite spiritual approach, along with non-religious Buddhism, especially Zen.

Enjoy.

Man and Nature

Experience leads us to feel that we're isolated centers of will and action placed in a world that is not us. Science tells us something different. An ecologist would say that what you do is what the whole universe is doing here and now, like a wave being the result of the ocean.

The real you isn't a puppet that gets pushed around. We've been hoodwinked into believing that you only exist in your own skin. Our real body is that, plus the whole external environment.

Don't view things that way, and we despoil the environment. We try to vanquish the world. We need a new consciousness that the real self is more than the conscious ego.

This unknown self is more Us than I, connected to everything that is. Knowing that, you see that you never die, instead appearing in various forms. 

What is nature? Not something artificial. There's an idea that nature is outside us. There is human nature, but you can't trust it.

(1) The Western theory is that nature is a machine, an artifact. It is made by God, like a table made out of wood. A construct, and someone knows how it was put together -- the architect, God. Later, the view changed to no God, but nature was still seen as a mechanism. Most of us look at our bodies as a chauffeur looks at a car.

(2) The East Indian theory is that nature is a drama. Maya/illusion, art, play. In Hinduism ultimate reality is an eternal boundless self. The universe doesn't tell you that self is vibrations of the universe. Brahman plays hide and seek eternally. Self pretends it is lost. Kali Yuga is an age of darkness we're supposedly living in now.

(3) The Chinese theory is that nature is of itself, so, marked by spontaneity. Automatic, but not machinery -- rather, biology. The heart beats by itself. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, grass grows by itself. Tao is the course of nature. Words can't describe it. 

There's a great difference between Tao as nature with no boss, and the Judeo-Christian view of God as Lord of Nature. With original sin, you can't trust human nature. The Chinese would say, if you can't trust yourself, you can't trust anything. Can you mistrust yourself if you don't trust yourself?

If you can't trust yourself, you're totally mixed up. You have no leg to stand on. In this respect Taoist and Confucian philosophy are in agreement.

Confucius taught that the highest virtue is human-heartedness. Virtue doesn't mean morality. Above all, trust human nature in full realization that it is both good and bad. A "good" war is based on human greed for treasure, women, whatever. A "bad" war is based on ideologies. 

If you're going to do something evil, do it for a plain simple selfish motive. Don't do it in the name of God. Because if you do, it turns you into a monster who is no longer human, but self-righteous. 

Humans are complex. We don't know ourselves at all, really. You're much more than your conscious thoughts. 

Western mechanical theory. Indian drama theory. Chinese organic theory. Nature, including human nature, is a system of organic anarchy. So the Chinese come closest to getting it right. 

When you look at clouds, you know at once they aren't a mess. Patterns of foam on water never make an artistic mistake. We humans are all wiggly. Is there something wrong with how the stars are arranged? Should they be organized in a regular pattern? Do you praise peaks in a mountain range for being high, or the valleys for being low?

When people visit a place called Inspiration Point, they say, ah, just like a picture. Someone goes to see Picasso and says, your paintings don't look like anything. Picasso asks, do you have a photo of your girlfriend? He takes one out of his wallet. Picasso says, is she really so small as that?

Natural order is like order in trees and mountains. They are orderly, but we can't put our finger on the order. Order of nature is thus in a way indefinable. Nature is a self-ordering principle that doesn't know how it does it.

Government always is a mess. Government always is opposed to people. Taoists say the state should be as unobtrusive as possible. Simply help the people and don't claim any merit for yourself.

So here is a conception of nature as something we must trust. But nature isn't completely trustworthy. Sometimes it lets you down with a wallop. 

It's a great thing if you can learn what the Chinese call purposelessness. Like waves washing against the shore with no meaning. Haven't you gone on a walk with no purpose in mind? All music is purposeless. Same with dancing. Do you dance to arrive at a particular spot on the floor?

Same with us. There's no "God's purpose." 

Here's the choice. Are you going to trust it, or not? That "it" is you and nature and everything around you. Now, there will be mistakes. But if you don't trust it at all, you're going to strangle yourself. You'll surround yourself with laws and rules and police and guards. 

Who will look after the guards? No go. To live, I must entrust myself to the totally unknown. I must trust nature that doesn't have a boss.

Alan Watts speaks about the Myth of Myself

Here's another installment in my sharing of notes I'm taking as I listen to audio recordings of Alan Watts that Sam Harris has put on his Waking Up app. 

This talk focuses on the fascinating subject of who the "I" is. Most of us believe that this refers to someone inside our head that we consider to be Me. But Watts disagrees, viewing us as basically being the same as the cosmos. 

In a bit of synchronicity, a few minutes ago I checked my email and found a message from a local spiritual teacher, Jessica Amos. Echoing Watts, she wrote in part:

In his book Going Home, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the concept of "This is, because that is," using the visualization of ocean waves...

Imagine you are a wave on the ocean, and surrounding you are many, many other waves. If you (the wave) look deeply within yourself, you will realize being there depends on the presence of all the other waves. Your coming up and going down, being big or small, depend entirely on how the other waves are. 
 

"Looking into yourself, you touch the whole, you touch everything -- you are conditioned by what is there around you."

Here's my notes of Watts' talk. Enjoy.

Myth of Myself

"I" is a profound mystery. You can't touch your finger with your finger. Or "I" with "I." Most believe we are a skin-encapsulated ego. We regard our self/ego as being inside our head.

Not so in other cultures. Japanese/Chinese would point to their heart or solar plexus as the seat of self. But we locate our self between the ears and behind the eyes. We have an idea of ourselves as a little man in the head getting signals from outside and controlling the body voluntarily.

A child asks: "Mommy, who would I have been if I had a different father?" The child gets an idea from their culture that mommy and daddy pop the child into a body. The idea is that we're a soul or spiritual essence imprisoned in a body.

So we speak of confronting reality, of coming into the world, of being an island of consciousness. What is outside of me is not me. This results in estrangement between me and the outside world.

Actually, we don't come into the world. We come out of it. Each of us is a symptom of the state of the universe as a whole. 

There are two great myths, ideas we try to use to make sense of the world.

(1) The world as artifact, like clay made into a pot. Everything has been made. But the Chinese disagree. They see things growing naturally, like a seed turning into a plant. Others, though, believe there's a celestial architect. 

God is a mastermind who knows everything. Unfortunately, this becomes too much for modern man, being watched by a cosmic judge. Everywhere is this eye judging and watching you.

(2) Instead, we get another myth, that of the purely mechanical universe. The idea of the universe being run by a kindly gentleman doesn't make sense. Outside the human mind, there's just a chaotic interaction of blind forces.

Energy is totally stupid. Our intelligence is an accident. The universe doesn't share our feelings. It must be beaten into submission. These ideas also don't make any sense.

You can't get an intelligent organism living in an unintelligent environment. An apple tree apples. Our Earth peoples. We grow out of this world just as apples grow out of an apple tree. A tiny seed has the potentiality of an giant oak within it. 

The usual notion of us being isolated egos in a bag of skin is a hallucination. When you try to describe the behavior of an organism, you must also describe the environment. Walking requires a description of the floor.

You couldn't see me without the background. In order to see me you must see not just what's within the boundary of my skin but what's outside too.

The only thing to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets is this: For every inside there's an outside, and for every outside there's an inside. Different, but they go together. What is hidden is implicit. What is obvious is explicit. 

Your behavior can't be separated from the world around you. Each of us is a waving of the entire cosmos. But we feel that we're a stranger in this world. This depends on a false notion of ourself. 

We have two kinds of consciousness. Spotlight is conscious attention, or concentration. Floodlight is what lets you drive a car while you're talking to a friend. But our culture says that conscious attention is me.

We ignore floodlight consciousness, which is always operating. So we have a sensation of ourselves as just the spotlight, leaving us unaware of most of our being. Our real deep self is the whole of being. 

Being is infinite variety. You are what the whole thing is doing. Each one of us is the world playing this way for a while. Yet we fear death. We tell our children, you've got to be educated and whipped until you're really human.

We get the ghastly Christian ego who feels he's homeless, an orphan. We have a sensation of being a stranger on the earth. 

We speak of confronting reality, of facing facts, such as we're an island of consciousness in an alien world. We feel estranged from the external world.

We need to realize that the real self is not just the conscious ego. We don't know how we know. We're unaware how we grow our hair or digest our food. Our unknown self is inseparably connected with all there is.

You never die. What you are just appears in different forms. If you want to know how the inside of your head feels, open your eyes and look. That's how the inside of your head feels.

Courageous criticism of Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Today "Natasha" left three comments on a recent blog post, "RSSB guru standards have sunk a lot since Charan Singh's time." RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an organization currently led by Gurinder Singh Dhillon, often abbreviated as GSD.

I admire people like Natasha who speak truth to power. Here's what was said in the three comments. It takes courage to stand up against people like Dhillon, especially in a country like India where religious zealots often treat critics harshly. RS is a shorter way of referring to Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

I have RS friends in India that say the lower caste members of RS say that GSD only meets with rich people. He only appoints rich people from higher castes to positions of authority. This is common knowledge of the lower caste members of RS who do seva at the Dera. Their kids get denied admission to the Dera school but no one will admit to that. And they don’t get the same level of care that higher caste RS sevadars or westerners get. They say the only reason the officials protect GSD from legal troubles is in order to get the votes from his followers. This is common knowledge in the Punjab. Westerners are so naive with what they believe about the guru. The caste system is alive and well at the Dera.

And many of them believe his wife was murdered to keep him and his sons from going to prison. In the Punjab this is very common behavior from powerful people. They have also little respect for women.

Westerners can’t speak to the kind of person GSD is because they don’t know the Punjabi culture. They don’t know how he behaves in Punjab and with officials. They don’t spend anytime with him and don’t know him on a personal basis. They only know what they are told by high caste members of RS. If Americans lived among the poor people in Punjab they would understand what he is really like and they would know what people think of him here. He just another powerful guru who says what people want to hear but does only what is in benefit for him. This is very common with gurus. I don’t understand how westerners can serve someone they don’t know. And they don’t know him at all.

Alan Watts on finding the balance between gooey and prickly worldviews

Here's another compilation of notes I'm taking from audio recordings of Alan Watts that Sam Harris has shared on his Waking Up app. This talk is called Seeing Through the Net. It's 47 minutes long, but you can get the gist of what Watts said by reading my summary in a much shorter time.

"Who guards the gods?"

In modern times many have the goal of rational control of everything inside and outside us. But things have gotten so complex, nobody knows what to do. If you try to run a hospital, or a business, there's so much red tape.

You don't understand the basic assumptions of your own culture if that's the only culture you know. What do you mean by the good life, rationality, and so on? So find complex cultures different from your own, such as Chinese or Indian.

Triangulation often is better than a single line of sight. What are you going to do if you're a god with technological powers? Most people don't know what they want. 

What if you could control your dream and experience 75 years in one night? Are you wise enough to play at being God?

The Western model of the universe is political, engineering. No Chinese child would ask, "How was I made?" However, Western thought has a creator. The world is a construct. We look at things as bits of information.

But the physical universe is wiggles. Clouds, mountains -- no sharp edges. Some fishermen held up a net and looked at things through it. Likewise, we break up the world into measurable units. We come to think that this is the way the world really is. Discrete, made up of points.

Prickly people want precision. Gooey people say, you don't understand. Actually, the universe is both. Look close, prickly. Broader view, gooey. 

The capacity to look via scanning is like a spotlight. A floodlight has less intensity, but you see more all at once. A spotlight notices those things for which we have notation. A thing is a unit of thought. To talk about the universe you have to reduce it to things

As one understands a machine, we have reduced the cosmos to bits. This is very fruitful in being able to control the world via technology. 

We reduce the infinite wiggleness of the world to grasp it in thought. In medicine, you get a specialist who looks at a patient as a gall bladder. But there are fundamental differences between a mechanism and an organism. 

Trying to control the world only through scanning, bit by bit, things will look overly complex. We face an information explosion. Even computers won't help much.

What if we went from from spotlight to floodlight? What if we could grasp a situation instantly, intuitively? With pattern recognition, humans can recognize an object instantly. Humans have no problem with this, while computers do.

Brain: you yourself are this thing you can't figure out. You are the most complex thing that has been encountered in the cosmos. What you want is surprise. When you've figured everything out, you'll be bored.

Ideally, a person trusts his own brain. He makes his best discoveries without thinking.

But others only will believe you if you explain in a bit by bit fashion. This takes time. Most decisions in life can't wait. I'm not against technology. But new respect for organic organization is needed. We've got to let back some goo in the system, not just prickle.

The brain can solve problems without us knowing how. 

Practical issue: if technology relies exclusively on linear thinking, it will destroy its environment, because everything becomes too complex.

Are we going to foul things up by insisting on using linear input/analysis, without trust in multiple inputs that we can't pin down because it is you? In Chinese culture, man's essential nature is good, unlike the Christian notion of sin.

Native Americans have a saying, "Paleface doesn't know he is hungry until he looks at his watch." We've confused the menu with the dinner, and we're starving. Symbols are not reality.

How to sound like Alan Watts in two easy steps

As noted in a couple of recent posts (here and here), I've been enjoying listening to audio recordings of Alan Watts' talks that Sam Harris has shared on his Waking Up app.

I'm pretty sure I've read all of Watts' books, some of them several times, notably The Wisdom of Insecurity, which I absolutely love.

But the audio recordings have given me a fresh appreciation for how Watts viewed the world, or more broadly, reality. His spontaneous speech -- he spoke without notes -- offers a window into his mind that is clearer in some respects than his books provide.

So here's how you, or me, or anybody, can sound like Alan Watts in two easy steps.

(1) Look for complementary opposites, not just a favored perspective. Watts continually points out that up doesn't exist without down; black without white; life without death; truth without falsehood; figure without background; love without hate; and so on.

In this regard, as in many other regards, Watts is a thorough-going Daoist.

The yin-yang symbol encapsulates how opposites relate to each other. Within yin there's a bit of yang; within yang there's a bit of yin. Each can transform into the other, showing that there's no such thing as a stand-alone concept, even if we'd prefer that this were the case -- as in life somehow existing without death.

Everything is related to another thing that may appear to be distinct from the first thing, but which upon closer inspection is inseparable from it. There's no way we could see a white cloud if there wasn't blue sky providing a background. So clouds and sky really are one thing, not two.

(2) Look for organic naturalness, not controlled transcendence. Watts' speaking style illustrated this. He doesn't have an outline that he follows, a scripted speech. Instead, you can sense his mind darting this way, then that way, and back again, sort of like a jazz band riffing on a musical theme rather than a symphony playing a composer's sheet music.

Here too his viewpoint is Chinese/Daoist rather than Western/Abrahamic or Indian/Hindu. He doesn't consider that we humans are spiritual beings inhabiting a material world. Instead, we are natural beings inhabiting the natural world. There's no difference us between us and nature. Our job isn't to control nature, but to live in harmony with our fellow natural beings and entities.

A creator God has no place in his worldview. Nor does the notion that we are sinners, fallen souls, strangers in a strange land. What keeps us dissatisfied is the false idea that satisfaction lies somewhere other than the here-and-now we find ourselves in.

RSSB guru standards have sunk a lot since Charan Singh's time

Writing recently about how the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, threatened people whose village is involved in a property dispute with RSSB, got me to thinking about how different things are guru-wise compared to the time Dhillon's predecessor, Charan Singh, headed up the organization.

I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971. He died in 1990. So for nineteen years I was exposed to how Charan Singh handled being guru.

This included two weeks in 1977 I spent at the Dera, RSSB headquarters in India, when I got to hear him speak and answer questions in English at evening meetings along with having two brief personal interviews with Charan Singh.

Plus, I read all of his books numerous times, listened to cassette tape recordings of him speaking and answering questions, and repeatedly watched several RSSB videos made during the time Charan Singh was guru. 

There was never any doubt in my mind that Charan Singh was a deeply warm, friendly, honest, humble, sincere, compassionate person. Let's leave aside the question of whether he was God in Human Form, as the RSSB teachings say.

Charan Singh was an exemplary person. He fulfilled his duties as RSSB guru with grace. The only "scandalous" talk I ever heard about him was that he had disciples bypass India customs through some scheme involving watches, if I recall correctly.

The fact that I can't remember this very well shows that it wasn't a big deal. 

Compared to what Gurinder Singh Dhillon has been accused of, it's absolutely nothing. I have no problem recalling most of the scandals the current RSSB guru has been enmeshed in, though I may have omitted some in this 2020 post, "RSSB guru's life should be closely examined."

Here's an excerpt from that post, which nicely sums up why I think it makes sense to pay close attention to how Dhillon has been behaving. In short, not very well, especially compared to previous RSSB gurus.

Dhillon is a public figure. He is the leader of a religious organization with millions of followers. He is shown in You Tube videos that are viewed by many.

And Dhillon also has been the subject of many stories in the Indian financial press regarding the involvement of the guru, his family, and close associates in a financial scandal where allegedly hundreds of millions of dollars were illegally siphoned off from companies once controlled by the Singh brothers, who are relatives of the guru, into shell companies and unsecured loans to the Dhillon family.

Here's a sampling of blog posts I've written about the questionable activities of the RSSB guru.

Malvinder's criminal complaint casts light on RSSB guru's role in financial fraud
Devastating criticism of Gurinder Singh Dhillon by a RSSB insider
Delhi Police financial fraud charges point to RSSB guru's involvement
Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, accused of making death threats
Sheetal Talwar talks about death threat made from RSSB satsang office
Sheena's "Memoirs of a Seeker" throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon
Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon's shady business dealings
RSSB guru appears to have lied about his financial problems

It is easy for a guru to appear all spiritual, loving, and trustworthy when he or she is sitting on a stage, surrounded by fawning followers, with nobody asking tough questions about the guru's personal life outside of his religious duties. 

But none of us is only who we are at our best public moments. There's much more to us that only comes to light in private moments. Knowing the full picture isn't important when it comes to most people we know.

For example, I don't need to know the private life of my doctor, hair cutter, plumber, or electrician, because this isn't relevant to my relationship with them. However, in the case of a guru who is considered to be God in Human Form by his devotees, a trusted spiritual guide with upstanding morals, it definitely is highly relevant how the guru behaves in his private life.

I just spent an enjoyable four days, Monday through Thursday, watching every prime time minute of the Democratic National Convention. It didn't feature just the public side of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It also showed lots of details about their personal and private life.

That's the only way to understand who a politician really is. And it's also the only way to understand who a guru really is. You can't claim to be a "perfect" guru if in your personal life you're doing some decidedly imperfect things.

So if you're a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, ignore the admonition to not be interested in the guru's personal life. Sure, usually a person's private life should be off-limits to public scrutiny. But not when a person occupies an important public role, like wanting to be President or Vice-President of the United States.

In that case, as in the case of a guru who supposedly is a highly elevated spiritual being capable of guiding people back to God. it makes sense to get to know the entire person, not just their public persona.