Alan Watts - Don't Be A Saint

it has been well said that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export you see Hinduism is a way of life that goes far far beyond what we in the west call religion it involves cookery everyday Family Life house building uh just everything it's the whole Hindu way of life and so you can't export it just as you can't export Shinto from Japan it belongs to the soil and the culture but there are essential elements in it that can be transmitted outside the culture of India and Buddhism was one of the ways of doing just that so

one might say simply this to try and sum up what Buddhism is about the word Buddha is derived from the root Budd in Sanskrit bu U DH which means to be awake so the Buddha is the the awakened man the man who woke up what does he wake up from obviously a dream and what kind of a dream is this well I would call it uh a state of hypnosis and this state of hypnosis although I'm using hypnosis in a rather archaic sense of the word is a state of being entranced Spellbound fascinated and this

is called in Sanskrit avidya a v i d y a Vidya is knowledge in Sanskrit and it is the root from which we get viere in Latin to see and so Vision in English so putting the a in front of it means non aidia not seeing ignorance ignorance where uh you see but you ignore everything that you're not looking at when you put the beak of a chicken on a white chalk line and the chicken is fascinated with that and can't get away from the chalk line that's Avidia so in the same way our beaks

were put on a chalk line when we were hypnotized into the notion of attending to Life by conscious attention Alone by the spotlight to the exclusion of the floodlight and so we began to imagine that we were separate individuals what is called in Buddhism Sakaya drishti the view of separateness and a Buddha is one who has overcome that he is awakened from that illusion from that state of hypnosis and he knows that uh well I can't put what he knows in any positive terms this is the special thing about Buddhism everything in Buddhism sounds negative

let's put it this way let's suppose uh you engage yourself in a in a uh relationship with the Buddha or with one I mean there are hundreds of Buddhas one we call Goa is just the historical Buddha that everybody knows about but one Buddha leads to another because as a result of his relationships with people he turns them into Buddhas too awakened people now you meet one of these people and he's going to give you a rough time but one one of the the Buddhas running around these days is Krishna mty and Krishna MTI uh

absolutely destroys everybody's religion he okay why do you believe this why are you hanging on to that why do you want to insist that this idea is so see and he shows you that all your fixed formulations all the ideas to which you cling are spurious and then you suddenly get into a kind of vertigo dizziness that you feel suddenly that you're no longer standing on the firm ground but that the Universe has suddenly turned into water or Worse air or Worse still empty space there's nothing to hold on to now you see often when

one discusses religion with people they say well I I need a religion because I need something to hold on to well that's the way not to use a religion because if you use religion as something to hold on to your religion is an expression of unfaith faith is where you let go not where you hold on when the cat falls off the tree the cat relaxes you see and so the cat lands with a soft thud and doesn't get hurt because the cat has Faith but if the cat in midair were suddenly to grab itself

with all four feet and and tighten up you see it would be hurt and that's what people do when they say Rock of Ages C for me let me hide myself in thee they want something to hold on to you see and that is unfaith so the method of Buddhism it's called the Dharma doesn't mean the law it means the method the method is to knock the stuffing out of you to take away everything to which you cling to cleanse you completely of all beliefs all ideas all concepts of what life is about so that

you are completely let go so Budd M has no doctrines at all that you have to believe in I don't care what background you come from whether you're a Roman Catholic or at one extreme or a logical positivist at the other both are clinging to something you see and so the method of Buddhism is to knock out the underpinnings and say well we just not only do we not believe in anything we don't even believe in not believing in anything you know you crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after you but in

this case you do the exact opposite of that that's a defensive move to crawl into a hole in this way you crawl into great space and then pull the space out after [Laughter] you and uh to go through this is pretty pretty rough because you can do it on what seems at first to be a merely intellect ual level so you can engage a group of people in the discussion and you can start whenever they propose an idea that is their sort of guiding principle of life you demolish it show that it doesn't hold water

and step by step you unearth by talking with them what are the fundamental ideas they're operating on everybody is everybody is a philosopher everybody has metaphysics although they may not know what it is cu they've never examined but by this method you bring it out and you demolish it and this suddenly what seemed like a very nice intellectual discussion turns into sheer murder uh people get really anxious they develop all the trembles and the symptoms of extreme anxiety and so they finally say to the guru the teacher well heaven's sakes what do you believe in

he says I'm not proposing anything I didn't set anything up well how do you navigate how do you how do you exist this is what's the problem because you see uh what we're moving from as as I suggested a moment ago we're moving from a state of affairs where we are accustomed to navigation on land to a state of affairs where we're in the water and this is very critical for today because the impact of modern science on Western culture has been very similar to this in you say in Christianity we sing hymns like How

firm a foundation and Rock of Ages in Festa B and Mighty Fortress Is Our God uh we' have something to stand on the church's One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord you know and it's this firm thing all right suddenly all that disappears or becomes implausible and we find ourselves swimming or Sinking now when you find that you're living in the midst of the universe of Relativity well there's nothing you could hold on to you got to learn how to swim and to swim youve got to relax and stop stop grabbing so this is what

Buddhism does when it says it's the art of let go of non-attachment non-attachment doesn't mean that you uh lose your appetite for dinner it means simply that you stop grabbing you get rid of stickiness stickiness in the sense of for example when a wheel has a an axle that's too tight and it sticks you want to loosen it up a bit you don't want it too loose you don't want it floppy like a lot of people when you tell them to to relax they become like a limp rag it's not relaxing relaxing is having still

tone but um it's a certain it's a middle way so this is what this is entirely what Buddhism is about it's about learning uh for example if I may put it in a vivid way when you were born you were kicked off a precipice and you're you there's nothing that can stop you falling and although there are a lot of rocks falling with you with trees growing on them and all sorts of things like that you can cling to one of those rocks if you like as it goes down with you for safety but it's

not safe nothing is safe everything is for fall apart everything is in a state of change and uh there's no way of stopping it and when you are really resigned to that and when you really accept that then there's nothing left to be afraid of and when there's nothing left to be afraid of and you've given everything up and uh you know that uh even you know a lot of people in religion cling to suffering because they know they are right as long as they hurt oh I bless the good Lord for my boils for

my mental and bodily pains for without them my faith all congeals and I am doomed to Hell's n ending Flames uh you know there are a lot of people who know that they're right so long as they suffer but that's an illusion too even suffering offers no Security even suicide offers no security in Buddhism you see there is no security at all you simply have to face this fact that everything is in flux and go go go go with it and so the question then is simply how to convince people of this if anybody wants

to be convinced you know it's not the sort of thing you shove down people's throats you don't convert them to this because if they don't want to be converted they won't let go so Buddhism therefore involves a very special relationship between the questioner and the person to whom the question is addressed the pupil and the teacher and now then Buddhism came to China as early as 60 AD but didn't at that time make a very great impression it was not until about about the year 400 that a very great Sanskrit scholar by the name of

kumarajiva came and started teaching Chinese Scholars Sanskrit and they worked with him to translate Sanskrit into Chinese and they translated the Buddhist scriptures they didn't of course do them all at that time because the Buddhist scriptures occupy about as many as much space as the encyclopedia britanica in fact a little more the Indians are great talkers well anyway uh they found that when they translate this into Chinese you had to find equivalent Chinese words for the Sanskrit ideas and they found these from the from the Dost philosophy well slowly then Indian attitudes began to be

modified by Chinese attitudes because the Chinese read into these translations daoist meanings so things got a little altered now here came the alteration that is crucial first of all in Indian Buddhism there's very little humor but Chinese uh life is full of humor the greatest philosopher of China janga you know is the only philosopher who is in I think in the whole world who is profoundly humorous there's a book in the um modern Library published by Random House called the wisdom of laer and uh this is translated by linu tang and he includes along with

the translation of laa huge sections of tra and this is absolutely fascinating because of the humor of it Indian Buddhism had very little humor some yes but very little next it was all tied up with celibacy which to the Chinese was absolutely incomprehensible because Chinese civilization is rigged around the family to a far greater extent than ours is which is saying something and uh they could just couldn't see any point or any wisdom ins celibacy when Buddhism came to China it still retained a certain element of celibacy but for different reasons than than Hindu the

Chinese way of celibacy is not that sex is naughty but it's terribly convenient not to have a [Laughter] wife in other words the ideal of of the uninvolved life uh has a certain appeal but they could never never get through into their heads the notion that uh sexual desire was bad which plays has always played a fairly strong role in Hindu thinking not in the same way as it has in the west they don't have a the Hindus don't have a guilt take on it but they think that it it dissipates your spiritual energies and

you see the in in yoga they envisage the idea that at the base of the spine there is what is called the Kundalini the the the serpent power or the the force of psychic energy and so long as it remains at the base of the spine this force is dissipated in sexuality Now yoga is to suck this thing up the spine and get it into the head and so then you withdraw from the manifestation of this energy or the dissipation of it in sexuality and uh it's put on a higher level only uh which end

is up uh you can do it the other way too they have What's called the right hand way of doing it and the left hand way of doing it I'm not going to go into that now but the the Chinese didn't see it that way they couldn't see that it was a dissipation of energy uh so what they wanted to aim at was a way of living Buddhism and being awake but at the same time remaining active in the ordinary life of the world it's what's called in their phraseology being King on the outside and

a sage on the inside managing practical Affairs completely involved in whatever life is but at the same time inwardly living on top of a mountain being Cloud hidden whereabouts unknown so Chinese Zen is the preeminent expression of this because it is the mixture of Indian Buddhism and Chinese ISM plus a certain confusion practicality Zen developed out of the work of kumarajiva came into China as I said four 400 or a little before he had two disciples who began to work on Buddhism from a daoist point of view and they were actually The Originators of Zen

then apparently about uh shortly before 500 as the dates now check out another Indian came to China whose name was Bodhi Dharma and Bodhi Dharma was the person who touched off Zen as a specific movement bod Dharma had a pupil by the name of um AA qu in Chinese AA is Japanese pronunciation like Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Chan and uh the story is that when AKA came to Bod Dharma bodh Dharma refused to accept him as a student all Zen Masters do this they reject you and this stimulates you you see

to come back stronger if I mean if you're going to learn at all and AAR came back stronger and stronger and stronger and Bodhi Dharma resisted him stronger and stronger and finally he cut off his left arm and presented it to bodh Dharma and said look here's my left arm given to you as a token that nothing in the world matters to me except to find out what you're all about all right he said what do you want to know AAR said I have no peace of mind please please pacify my mind in Chinese mind

is um this word pronounced shin and shin is here Shin is the heart mind it's the psychic Center and so bodh Dharma said bring out your shin here before me and I will pacify it AA said when I look for it I can't find it bodh Dharma said then it's B ified and eka immediately understood what all the thing was about that's the experience called Satori in Japanese wo in Chinese Mandarin and in the Cantonese [Laughter] dialect uh it's just what we call in our modern psychological jargon the AHA phenomenon uh the AHA phenomenon aha

now I see well now um what was all this this Zen is uh a translation of the Sanskrit word Jana and so this is being pronounced in Chinese and Zen in Japanese is unfortunately untranslatable in English it designates a certain State of Consciousness that is sometimes called meditation but that won't do it all contemplation isn't really the point Chinese have a different word for contemplation and uh sometimes one pointedness of mind I would prefer to translate this word with the notion of total presence of mind when we say a person is crazy we often say

they're not all there now go to the opposite of that and visualize a person who is completely there or who is completely here person who lives totally and absolutely now that doesn't mean he's incapable of thinking about the past or the future because thoughts about the past and about the future are included in the present you have them now but imagine the kind of person who is not distracted who when he talks to you it really gives you his whole being who doesn't as it were look over your shoulder and wander after something else somebody

who first of all he's completely here and he's so much here that you can't phase him now this idea of phasing is crucial in Zen you see I referred a moment ago to attachment that Buddhism is living free from attachments and I made the point that this is not abandoned a sense of a good appetite for dinner but it's stopping sticking in psychological jargon you don't block a mind of no hesitation it's sometimes called in Chinese the phrase Mo Chu is used of going straight ahead so supposing somebody walks up to you on the street

and says are you saved now most of us who are intelligent people feel embarrassed by such a question you know what this wretched Salvation Army person or Jehovah's Witness doing asking me whether I'm saved or not and we all a little bit you know what do you do with a nut like that so but as in Zen this is a perfect moment to respond see to the most embarrassing question are you saved but Zen comes back in a very funny way uh in Zen uh one doesn't give philosophical answers to a question like that you

give practical answers I had a boiled egg this [Music] morning because whenever you are asked about matters sacred theoretical and philosophical you answer in terms of things earthy and practical but then on the other hand when you asked about things earthy and practical iCal you answer in terms of things religious and philosophical is dinner ready you know who's asking this question who are you so this is then the flavor of Zen is you know bodh Dharma is supposed to have meditated so long that his legs fell [Music] off and he's usually drawn this way something

like this [Music] anyway it looks like a Shmo but uh in Japan you buy these toys that are darumas and they are so weighted in here that you can never knock them over you can bat it on the floor bat it this way bat it that way but it always comes up again and so the poem says seven times down eight times up such is life so uh this is the the the principle of not being phased not being attached so to play the game you can't phase me this is uh very important in the

art of lifemanship fundamental gamesmanship because you see when the Zen monks moved into Kyoto uh they took over the best part of town simply fantastic how this happened the beautiful Hills were occupied by The brigands Who later became the Japanese nobility uh the great dios these were the toughest characters and the Zen monks played a game with them which was that you know you possess all these lands and you are powerful and so on but so what it's all falling apart then what will you do well they said that's too bad we don't know and

the Zen monk said no you haven't got the hang of the thing you see so they found that they couldn't terrify Zen monks that uh they played all sorts of Tricks but the Zen monks were better Masters at it see supposing you say to somebody uh look I'm not afraid of you you can do anything you like you can kill me or anything at all well if I go and kill the fellow who says this I'll never find out whether he was afraid or [Laughter] not so they outfaced these people and said you you we

have a secret you see that you don't have and we'll teach your your uh servitors to be great warriors because they'll learn the secret too and they won't be afraid of anything and this is what they did and so the dios the noblemen uh built great monasteries for these Zen Masters and monks on their best land the finest artists of Japan made Gold Leaf screens uh for almost every room in the place and although nobody owns anything individually the community owns it collectively with the protection of the daos and they had a tremendous scene going

now to us that sounds extremely weird even immoral you don't expect religious people to do things like that no I know you don't uh if if the religious people are self-righteous and have no humor but these people didn't go around pretending that they were specially good they didn't dupe themselves they were people who understood what human nature is that in every one of us there is an element of irreducible rascality in Jewish theology this is called the yahar ye z r h a r a the Yahara the element of irreducible rascality which was created by

God because God has one too and that's why when you are really affectionate with somebody else when for example men I don't know what women do in their private lives between each other but men uh as we all know say to someone they're very fond of why you old bastard you know just like that you know there's a certain way of saying to a person uh there's a certain glint of recognition and so there's a Z poem which says when two Zen Masters meet each other on the road they need no introduction when a thief

meets a thief they recognize each other instantly and this goes back you see again Into the Heart of Chinese philosophy that human nature is considered to be basically good and even the rascally elements of it are good they are the sort of salt in the human stew there has to be this little thing that human passions and that the the natural uh contentiousness and greed or whatever that we have is an essential element in our makeup and that when people lose sight of that they go mad nothing for example is more dangerous than a saint

that is say an unconscious Saint who thinks that he is right and who Endeavors to live an absolutely Pure Life and to eliminate all selfish thoughts somebody who undertakes that task is going to be a menace to all around because he loses his humor he loses his real humility which is knowing that after all since we're humans we have certain needs we are need to eat we need uh sex we need this that and the other and this this sort of has a a quality of humor to it and uh so this is why in

Zen art the sages are always drawn to look a little bit like bums you know that Pai or h as he's called what's called The Laughing Buddha the fat Buddha with an immense belly uh and carrying around an enormous bag of rubbish into which he indiscriminately puts anything he finds around and then gives it away to Children this is the sort of uh type which the Chinese call the old Rogue and the old Rogue as a type of the poet Sage Monk and Scholar you see is greatly admired he's the nonviolent brigand the Rolling Stone

the free man or in our words The Joker The Joker you see is the card that can be play any role in the pack so then Zen developed in China after Bodhi dharma's time and came to a a sort of golden age in the tong and Sun dynasties the Golden Age of Zen lies between 713 ad and approximately 1100 1200 11 to 1200 that's the great creative period in which all all the marvelous Masters emerged and during which Zen exercised a profound influence on the development of Chinese poetry and painting calligraphy and scholarship then between

11 and 1200 uh it shifted to Japan and uh underwent a new development rather different in quality and in tone and after it had done that for some Curious reason but it's very complicated historical question it slowly faded away in China so that as we find it today it is principally a Japanese phenomenon and it is slowly fading in Japan and slowly growing in the west it's a very funny thing now then let me indicate what Zen training what its method is how does it work I said before what is involved is a dialogue an

interchange between two people one who's defined himself as a student and has therefore defined the other as the teacher there is no teacher until a student arrives no problem until a question is raised so students create teachers if you ask a question you get 30 blows with a stick if you don't ask a question you get 30 blows with a stick because you simply you put yourself in statu pilari you've defined yourself as having a problem now nobody really has a problem but the Maya the game of life is to pretend that you do going

back to fundamental Hinduism the godhead or the self pretends it's all of us and so gets lost and so has a ball dreams all this going on so uh when you are on your way out from the dream it suddenly occurs to you that you have a problem life is suffering you would like to get out of this so one such student went to a zen master and he said we have to dress and eat every day and how do we get out of all that in other words you might ask the question in this

way we have to work get up Monday morning go to the office do all this routine beans sell something and so on how do we get out of the Rat Race so we have to dress and eat every day and how do we get rid of all that and the master said we dress we eat the student said I don't understand he replied if you don't understand put on your clothes and eat your food this is the kind of dialogue so characteristic of Zan so the position is this the master on being approached by a

student about the problem of Life says I have nothing to teach you I a zen master I have nothing to say Zen is not words and furthermore everything is perfectly clear there was a Confucian scholar who went to a zen master and said what is your secret teaching and he replied there is a saying in your own teacher confucious which Explains It All don't you remember when confucious said to his disciples do you suppose that I'm concealing something from you I've held nothing back and the scholar didn't get this so a few days later they

were walking together in the mountains and they passed the wild Laurel Bush and the Zen master said to the Confucian scholar do you smell it he said yes he said you see I'm holding nothing back so the position of the Zen master is there is nothing to tell you there is no we we're not offering you any Panacea any solution any Doctrine any big big goody uh to the problem of life because the problem is an illusion well then the student under these circumstances thinks well this is some sort of a come on um he's

testing my sincerity and of course the nothing which he has to teach is the The Mystery of the great void see he doesn't he doesn't take it as meaning just plain old ordinary nothing but the great void and so uh he persists and the teacher makes him persist until he gets way out on a limb he has to persist so much that he practically dedicates his life saying just as the way haa symbolically cut off his arm the student is put in the position of dedicating his life to solving this thing and getting what that

teacher has and of course there wasn't anything all along but he's been put in that position so uh then uh once he's in statu pilari uh once he becomes a student he's put through all kinds of Hoops they make him learn to meditate to sit cross-legged practice zazen and then they also add to the trouble by asking impossible questions which are called Coan and these questions are are palpably obsurd what they are saying essentially uh at least the elementary Coan are all concerned with this are requests for behavior on the part of the student that

will be perfectly genuine in other words show me who you are now wait a minute I don't want to see uh any social definition of you I don't want to know your name your address who your parents were I want to see the absolutely authentic you it's like EX essentialist talk about authentic being or it might be in the same way a Confessor father Confessor and a Christian sense could say now give me a really good confession what is the thing bad bad thing you've really done and you confess to him adulteries and murders and

thefts and sacrilege and blasphemies and curing and so on and he says oh no no no no no come off it those are only trivial things come on now what is the really awful thing you've done I don't know what me this is the backwards way of doing exactly the same thing as zen master is doing saying who are you really are you anybody is anybody home have you got anything and they what they they do things like uh making you shout see this this word is very important word in Zen uh nothing moo it's

represented by the empty circle the word moo in Japanese so they say now say it say moo moo you know with all your your guts going into it they say no no no no you you don't know how to say that come on that's feeble that's nothing let's really say it they have every kind of trick like that to show you that the more you make an effort to be genuine the more of a fool you become and they tie you up in nuts until you're desperate there was an American Zen student who was on

a full bride and um that gave him a year to study Zen and he got started to panic because he had only a month to go and he hadn't realized it and he knew he had to and he went to the sin master and said damn it he said look uh I've got I only got a month left the master said all right we'll have what we call ession ession is an intense uh meditation practice where you only sleep 3 hours a night sort of thing and you meditate all the rest of the time let's

go let's really do it do it do it do it and every day three times you come to me and present the answer to your Zen problem your Coan and it got worse and and it got worse and it got worse and he got more and more desperate that here was this full bright going to end and he wouldn't know what Zen was all about well practically on the last day he suddenly saw there was nothing to see you know it's all right the way it is and this tremendous illumination this loaded off his head

was of course what the master was trying to make him do but now in the ordinary way if you're not on a full bride and you uh you can stay around further in Japan the master will then play a trick on you you'll say now that's wonderful you got your foot in at the gate you saw you realize there's nothing to realize you realize the void there's nothing to cling to you see there no no barriers no blocks in any direction it's all transparent but that is just the beginning and many many it's all a

necessity now for you to discipline yourself much harder to make great efforts really to get through so what are you going to do about that uh the student may say well I don't know I've had enough I think I've realized what it's all about and he goes away sometime later he begins to worry because you see the Great emotional relief of this Insight begins to wear off and life begins to look ordinary again and so you thought maybe I did miss something that was a very good master I went to and I better go back

so back he goes and the teacher comes on very very tough and says you no you're no good you didn't stick with it why should I take you back oh master I'm so sorry I didn't realize I was young and inexperienced and I now I've come to my senses so the teacher finally says all right all right all right you're on probation so again he starts another Coan and this one comes in from a completely different point of view and he's got others that come from this way and from this way and from this way

and from this way and the point is always so long as I can begal you as teacher into thinking that something you can get you need to study with me when I can no longer fool you into thinking that there's something to get out of life you'll know that you're alive you don't get something out of it you're it but so long as you can be phased and you can be taken in by the teacher you need a teacher so in the end when the student no longer needs a teacher and he sees that it's

old boy who's fooled him the whole way through he says at the same time profound respect and you wonderful [Laughter] Rascal there's a very strange thing in the uh I've poked around a good deal lately in Japan among American Zen students to find out what's going on and they tell me that um the initial come on of a zen master is very tough and very authoritarian and paternalistic but as you move in he turns into your older brother and uh is a person you feel going right along with you beside you uh helping you in

this thing full of friendship and compassion and everything but occasionally he will suddenly turn and uh bring on the authoritarian stuff but they do it in a very strange way there was a zen master who on a Saturday morning when he should have been woken up uh at 8:00 uh no he should have been woken up at 8 on Saturdays and 7 on weekdays so this was a Saturday and his uh attendant Mount came and woke him up at 8 he was immediately looked at the clock and was absolutely Furious that he'd been woken up

an hour late because he didn't know it was Saturday so he struck out at this monk in a rage and the monk said Master but it's Saturday he said oh anger disappeared absolutely Serene no apologies so you see the nature of this game is the Zen game and I seem to have given away the show to you told you all the inside mechanics of it but you would discover that if you tangle with a zen master and you think you know from what I told you what are the mechanics of it and you stuck your

neck out to put yourself in the position of being an Inquirer everything I told you would be useless he would out with you completely that's what consists in being a master he's not doing it because he wants to be superior and to put down other human beings is doing it out of great compassion because he feels he knows something which uh if you could find out you would uh just be so happy and would want to give it to everybody else but you can't give it away because everybody's got it what you got to make

them do is to see that they have it and that you don't give it to them and that's the most difficult task e