Alan Watts

[Wind]

I shall post here video lectures from Alan Watts recorded over 50 years ago.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn4hXhdvXdI

The Essential Lectures of Alan Watts video series was recorded in 1971 above Muir Woods, California, and in 1972 aboard the ferryboat the SS Vallejo in Sausalito. Produced by his son Mark and directed by long-time archivist Henry Jacobs, the series explores core philosophical themes that spawned over Watts’ career.

Everyone knows what time is, yet it is difficult to explain in words. On one hand we say I don't have enough time and yet we find ourselves perpetually in the present moment. Here Alan Watts points out that our insistence that the past determines the present is as nonsensical as insisting that the wake determines the course of the ship.

[Emil El Zapato]

I shall post here lectures video lectures from Alan Watts recorded over 50 years ago.

That's some crazy sheeit! Fun and interesting.

One would really have to be patient to explain things with that much deliberation...kudos to him.

[Wind]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RrQL7gP5vY

Alan Watts further explores the Hindu dramatic view of the universe,
in which God plays all of the parts – all the while pretending not to know who he/she/it is!

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer and speaker known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. He received a master's degree in theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and became an Episcopal priest in 1945. He left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

I just realized Alan died on my younger older brother's birthday, but nine years before his birth.

My oldest bro was born 8th of January in his sign of Capricorn.

[Wind]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj0I4UGydlY

To many of us the image of God as a gray-bearded omnipotent and omnipresent supreme being has become implausible, yet the common sense notions of divine authority surrounding that image persist.

[Emil El Zapato]

Video went gonzo Wind...

[Wind]

Video went gonzo Wind...

How so?

[Emil El Zapato]

How so?

It says, "Video Unavailable" ... but it is available on youtube via the link...

[Wind]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLTSoImeUYE

In common speech we often say that you can't get something for nothing.

However here Alan Watts puts for the opposite idea that you can't have something without nothing!

Basing his ideas on sensory perception and physical experience, as well as the Buddhist concept of the Void,
he makes a compelling argument that everything actually depends upon nothing for its very existence.

[Wind]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqdDhyilqHg

"The Cosmic Self pretends that things are getting serious, just like a great actor on the stage. Even though the audience knows that what they see on stage is only a play, the actor’s skill takes them in—they weep and laugh and sit on the edge of their seats with anticipation. They’re utterly involved in what they really know is just a play. So that’s what’s going on here. Brahman is a tremendous actor with absolutely superb technique, so much so that Brahman takes itself in and feels that the play is real. We are all the The Ultimate Reality - acting out our own parts and playing the human game so beautifully that Brahman is enchanted, and this is what enchantment means—under the influence of a chant, hypnotized, spellbound, fascinated. And that fascination is maya." ~ Alan Watts

[Emil El Zapato]

It's a profound thought but I'm not sure I like it...I gotta be me, at least for now.

[Wind]

I gotta be me, at least for now.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXYndNL4Mu8