What Happens When You Only Pursue Pleasure - Alan Watts

is a deeper question altogether which is what do you desire? what makes you itch? what sort of a situation would you like? let's suppose I do this often in vocational guidance of students they come to me and say well we're getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do so I always ask the question what would you like to do if money were no object what would how would you really enjoy spending your life well it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system crowds of students

say well we'd like to be painters we'd like to be poets we'd like to be writers but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way or another person says well I'd like to live in out of doors life and ride horses I said you want to teach in a riding school let's go through with it what do you want to do when we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do I will say to him you do that and forget the money because if you say that getting

the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time you'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living that is to go on doing things you don't like doing which is stupid better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way and after all if you do really like what you're doing it doesn't matter what it is you can eventually turn it you could eventually become a master of it it's the only

way to become a master of something to be really with it and then you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is so we don't worry too much that that's everybody's somebody's interested in everything and anything you can be interested in you'll find others as well but it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like doing things you don't like and to teach your children to follow in the same track see what we're doing is we're bringing up children and

educating them to live the same sort of lives we under me in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing so it's all retching or vomit it never gets there and so therefore it's so important to consider this question what do I desire well when we answer that question in a naive way we figure out that we want to desire what we want is to control everything to create girls that don't grow old apples that don't rot clothes

that never wear out conveyances that get from one place to another instantly so we don't have to wait power available to do anything that you could conceive and do it just instantly like that to get this funny technological omnipotence but if you take time out to think about that and really go into it with your full strength of imagination and find out whether that's where you want to be you will soon see that's not what you want because the moment you have a situation where you are really in control of things that is to say

in which the future is almost completely predictable you will see as I said last night that a completely predictable future is already the past you've had it and that's not what you wanted you want a surprise and you don't know what that's going to be because obviously it wouldn't be a surprise if you did you want a pleasant surprise but like you say what sort of a surprise would be pleasant and you can't really answer that because you know if there are to be such things as pleasant surprises there must also be unpleasant surprises there

must be rude shops so you're like somebody taking one of those wishing well boxes you know tubs you know will you fish in and you'll bring out a package and you don't know whether you've got a dead rat in it or a new camera and that's the way that's that seems to be the thing that really excites people but quite certainly there comes out of this inquiry a feeling of real disillusionment with the ideal of power to be in power to be in control is not something that any sensible person wants now you may say

that shirking responsibility that if you were a really responsible person you would go out for power and try to use power it to the best possible advantage for the benefit of all all right what would be the benefit of all ask them what do you want me to do with this power I'm dictator what would you like me to do well nobody knows because they haven't thought it through they think of all sorts of short-range things and they are largely conflicting and confusing because they're not well thought out but again when it finally comes down

to it nobody wants to be God now I think that this is the greatest possible lesson for the Western world to learn because we are so hung up on the idea of power of control of being able to make everything go the right way and we've never thought it through when you get control of it what are you going to do with it and so when you think things through like that you understand you do not want power don't want to control over them and therefore in the exploration of what you want you get to

the point where having all pleasures at your command and they Paul and you think of new sources of pleasure and eventually you get like the ancient Romans who had all these mad crowds of barbarians who had to go every Saturday to the Colosseum for a show that really had to surpass everything because they had public baths they had prostitutes they had every kind of luxury but when they went to see one of the big shows that people like Nero put on they would have for example floats circling the Colosseum all full of slave girls from

distant parts of the Mediterranean garlanded with flowers and waving at the crowd and going innocently around in the next minute they would release wild lions into the arena to eat up all the slave girls they got a big sadistic kick out of that because you see pursuing pleasure beyond a certain place takes you in to what are the Buddhists call the Naraka world that is to say the hells when you have explored pleasure to its ultimate limit the only thing you can get a kick out of is pain so naturally you descend from the devil

world at the top of the wheel to the naraka world at the bottom where it de shows all these beings in in states of torture you get to the hell world as a result of not knowing what you want as a result of thoughtless pursuit of pleasure which ends you eventually in the pursuit of pain so when you're in the hell well that's where you want to be so when I ask I go right down to the question should be started with what do I want the answer is I don't know when Bodhidharma was asked

who are you which is another form of the same question he said I don't know planting flowers to which the butterflies come Bodhidharma says I know not I don't know whatever well when you don't know what you want you've really reach the state of desirelessness when you really don't know did you see there's a there's a beginning stage of not knowing and there's an ending stage of not knowing in the beginning stage you don't know what you want because you haven't thought about it or you've only thought superficially and then when you somebody forces you

to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I like this I think I like that I think I'd like the other as the middle stage then you get beyond that say is that what I really want the end you say no I don't think that's it I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn't turn my nose up at it but it's not really what I want why don't you really know what you want two reasons that you don't really know what you want number one you have it

number two you don't know yourself because you never can the Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge just as a knife doesn't cut itself fire doesn't burn itself light doesn't illumine itself it's always an endless mystery to itself I don't know and this I don't know uh turd in the infinite interior of the Spirit this I don't know is the same thing as I love I let go I don't try to force or control it's the same thing as humility anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control in other words cease to

cling to yourself you have an access of power because you're wasting energy all the time in self-defence trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to your will the moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available therefore you are in that sense having that energy available you are one with the Divine Principle you have the energy when you're trying however to act as if you were God that is to say you don't trust anybody and you're the dictator and you have to keep everybody in line you lose the divine energy because

what you're doing is simply defending yourself so then the principle is the more you give it away the more it comes back