Alan Watts on meaning, play, letting go

As noted in my previous post, I'm enjoying the audio recordings of Alan Watts that Sam Harris has put on his Waking Up app.

Here's some notes I made of Watts' talk on Sense of Nonsense, which focused on the meaning of life. Or, the lack thereof.

Watts started off by talking about significance, which we feel our life should have.

"Significant" music is such not because it means something other than itself, but is satisfying as it is.

Likewise, when our inner turmoil is quietened, small ordinary things are significant of themselves. A skilled photographer can capture images of leaves, pebbles, ripples on a lake, and lead us to see the images as significant. 

The significance of the world is what is going on now.

This is characteristic of music and dance. Dance is not to be going anywhere. Dance doesn't point outside of itself. Neither does good food. The delight of eating is different from what the food does for us.

"Fun" isn't leading to something else.

Hinduism has the notion of creation as God's play. Christianity has angels singing Hallelujah, which Watts says is "Whoopee!" Delight in nonsense. In the Bible, Job surrenders to the unreasonableness of God. 

The very question is the answer. Everything in the world is as weird as a hippopotamus. Jazz is a love of nonsense. 

So the true meaning of life is no meaning. Non-sense.  But this is significant nonsense. The world is full of fascinating complexity.

I also listened to Alan Watts talk about the Coincidence of Opposites. 

A most elementary lesson is that any sensual experience is a vibration: off-on. Life is a system of now you see it, now you don't. 

The crest and trough of life are inseparable. Different things can be inseparable. The two sides of a coin. Black and white. Sadness and happiness. 

The price we pay for concentrated attention, which can be highly useful, is that we lose sight of the figure/background relationship.

Our physical world is a system of inseparable differences. The organism/environment is a unified field, a transactional relationship. 

A mystic is a person who is aware of their inseparability from their environment. 

Is existence serious? Must I survive? How serious is life? Western culture assumes seriousness. In church, laughter is discouraged. 

However, a basic metaphysical axiom is that existence is playful. There's no destination. Music is playful. You play the piano. 

An end of the composition isn't the purpose of music. If it was, a symphony would just consist of the last few bars of music.

With travel, you try to get somewhere. But life isn't a journey. It's supposed to be a musical thing, played all the way along. 

Prediction has survival value. But it creates anxiety. All falls apart in the end. Existence is spontaneous. It happens of itself. We've got to let go and let it happen. Don't try.

Comments

[Tendzin]

I'm forwarding this to the 3 million children who starve to death every year. Wish they'd understand that "existence is playful" & get over themselves.

[um]

If, in polished countries, the lowest of the people are rude and uncivil, it is not merely because they are poor and ignorant, but that, being so, they are in daily contact with rich and enlightened men. The sight of their own hard lot and of their weakness, which is daily contrasted with the happiness and power of some of their fellow-creatures, excites in their hearts at the same time the sentiments of anger and of fear: the consciousness of their inferiority and of their dependence irritates while it humiliates them. This state of mind displays itself in their manners and language; they are at once insolent and servile. The truth of this is easily proved by observation; the people are more rude in aristocratic countries than elsewhere, in opulent cities than in rural districts. In those places where the rich and powerful are assembled together the weak and the indigent feel themselves oppressed by their inferior condition. Unable to perceive a single chance of regaining their equality, they give up to despair, and allow themselves to fall below the dignity of human nature.

This unfortunate effect of the disparity of conditions is not observable in savage life: the Indians, although they are ignorant and poor, are equal and free. At the period when Europeans first came among them the natives of North America were ignorant of the value of riches, and indifferent to the enjoyments which civilized man procures to himself by their means. Nevertheless there was nothing coarse in their demeanor; they practised an habitual reserve and a kind of aristocratic politeness. Mild and hospitable when at peace, though merciless in war beyond any known degree of human ferocity, the Indian would expose himself to die of hunger in order to succor the stranger who asked admittance by night at the door of his hut; yet he could tear in pieces with his hands the still quivering limbs of his prisoner. The famous republics of antiquity never gave examples of more unshaken courage, more haughty spirits, or more intractable love of independence than were hidden in former times among the wild forests of the New World

De Tocqueville, on the democraty of America ...

[Uchit]

The only useful thing you can do is to understand and then let go of evil in all its forms. These can be narcissists, control freaks disguised as your best friend or most likely a guru. Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the incarnation of an evil soul trying to suck in as many gullible sheep as possible. People who are very often in a desperate state in their lives, the soft souls that need help, are pray for the preditor fake gurus. GSD, and your family members such as majithia, your days are numbered, karma will be served.