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Re-familiarizing us with Zen traditions, Alan Watts inspires listeners to move beyond going through the motions of practice.
Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.
In this episode of Being in the Way, Alan Watts explains:
Our lack of awareness of the basic structure of the worldThe world itself as meaningless (non-symbolic)Realizing fundamental energy and Zen as the religion of no religionThe metaphysical in terms of the everydayThe composition of Zen practiceHow westerners are bothered by ritual and splendorHow Buddhism has degenerated over the yearsA re-familiarization with Buddhism for modernityThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“There is this tremendous problem, unless the Buddhist tradition is to go down the drain completely, of re-familiarizing the Japanese with what it’s all about. Over the years it has degenerated into going through the motions and into being something which is just a kind of magic.” – Alan Watts
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Focusing on cosmic balance, Alan Watts outlines the fundamentals of Taoism and how to skillfully interfere with our environment.
Find the full Zen and the Art of the Controlled Accident series of talks at play.alanwatts.org.
Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.
This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts shares a lecture on:
The philosophy of TaoismTaoism as the flow of things / the course of natureThe pervasive illusion of separateness and seeing it within our languageHow we only experience the world bit-by-bitA transformation of our everyday consciousness into onenessHow we are all indestructible beyond the egoLife as a game of yin and yang, crests and troughsThe fundamental idea of mutual arisingHow everything we do interferes with our environmentLearning how to interfere skillfullyThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“We are not ordinarily aware of how we’re aware, and as a result of that, we don’t understand our connection with the world, and we don’t understand what our real self is. We get anxious; we’re afraid that death may be the end of us. This is, of course, the purest superstition, because everybody is indestructible.” – Alan Watts
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Explaining the delicate balance of religiousness, Alan Watts lectures on the principle of leaving no trace.
“Religion of No Religion” is part of the Japan Tour 1965 series of talks that you can listen to in full over at the Alan Watts Streaming Channel
Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.
In this episode, Alan Watts explains:
How the highest kind of a Buddha is like an ordinary personImitation and how all religious comments about life become clichesThe way of the enlightened man as the track of a bird in the skyZen Buddhism and the dance between metaphysical and ordinaryBalance and compatibility between universality and the particularsThe problem with being too spiritual or too worldlyThe connection of all events in the universe, past, present, and futureHow everything in the universe depends upon each otherThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“All religion, all religious comments about life, eventually become cliches. That’s why religion always is falling apart and becoming a certain kind of going through the motions, a kind of imitation of attitudes.” – Alan Watts
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In a lecture on symbolic reality versus real reality, Alan Watts explains the importance of total sensory awareness and looking at our motivations.
"Symbolic Reality vs. Real Reality" is part of Flow, a three-part session in the TAO for NOW series of talks that you can listen to in full over at the Alan Watts Streaming Channel
Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/alan and get on your way to being your best self.
This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts discusses:
Being aware of all sensory inputs while meditatingAllowing oneself ‘to be’ in a non-conceptual wayConfusing the world of symbols for realityThe limits to what we can enjoy in a material senseThe uselessness of guiltMoney, tithes, and western religion versus gurusWhy our motivation and intention mattersExperiencing life naked and directlyThe Taoist approach to letting go of your body-mindUsing all five of our senses to witness our surroundingsThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“The point is to be wide, wide awake and aware of your total sensory input without confusing it with the symbolic world of words and concepts so that you experience life naked and directly. Experience YOU naked and directly, without having in your head the concept of who you are a a role player, as a personality, as an ego.” – Alan Watts
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Join us on a journey of contemplation and enlightenment in this captivating introduction to Taoism.
Discover the profound wisdom of Taoist philosophy with Alan Watts as he invites us to embrace the course of nature. Through insightful exploration, he delves into the timeless significance of Yin and Yang, illustrating their inseparable connection and guiding us toward a deeper understanding of harmony and balance in existence.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode, Alan Watts speaks about:
Ancient Chinese philosophiesHow social institutions are mistaken for the real worldThe self, Confucianism, and the roles we play in lifeTaoism and the basic energy of the universeTao as the force of natureHow space and solid are two facets of one realityYang and Yin, positive and negative, male and femaleConscious dying and preparing to let goActing in accordance with natureThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“It is the inner connection, or rather the inseparability of Yang and Yin, which is what is meant by Tao. That’s why Tao cannot be explained. The reason again if I may put it in another way is that all thinking is classification. It’s asking ‘is you is or is you aint’. Is it this or is it that. After all, if you want to say something is inside it requires an outside. You can’t have an inside without an outside or an outside without an inside.” – Alan Watts
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Taking a trip through the constructs of form and labeling, Alan Watts philosophizes about the limits of language.
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit play.alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts philosophizes about:
Unexamined systems of belief underneath languageIdeas that are built into our common senseThe substance of form, pattern, and organizationThe profound mystery of matterLimitations in trying to use language to define the ineffable‘Matter’ as a root word for many thingsChinese views of natureWhy verbs do not necessarily need subjectsBeing at peace with ourselves in a world of formRecognizing the universe as a process“When we divide the world into operations and agents, doers and doings, then we ask such silly questions as ‘who knows, who does it, what does it?’ When the what that is supposed to do it is the same as the doing. You could very easily see that the whole process of the universe may be understood as process, nobody is doing it.” – Alan Watts
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In celebration of the waters that bring life to all things, Alan Watts reflects on the separation between human civilization and the natural world.
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit play.alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this unique and experimental recording, Alan Watts discusses:
The beauty of life on the waters in Sausalito, CaliforniaThe rhythms of natureTime and timelessnessThe transformation of one form into anotherThe separation of man from the natural worldObjecting and Objectifying the worldIdentity and being able to know knowingThe spacious environment of the ocean“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it’s not clock or calendar time, it has no urgency. It’s timeless time, because I know I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years.” – Alan Watts
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Using wisdom from Eastern philosophies, Alan Watts explains why Westerners should let go of any preconceived notions of God.
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
This Alan Watts lecture features a discussion on:
Comparative studies on religionThe absurdity of Christian imperialismSuperiority and lack of faithThe difference between faith and beliefBlasphemy and those who claim to be GodThe political image of God in the westThe ceramic model of the universe (material and form)Hindu mythology and dramaSelf-discovery of supreme realityThe meaning of MayaPunitive reasons why people say that God is deadFixed notions of God as idolatryContemplative prayer and letting go of our ideas of GodExistence as relationshipBuddhist vows versus western obedienceLooking beyond the skin-encapsulated ego“It must be understood that the crux of the Hindu and Buddhist disciplines is an experience, not a theory, not a belief.” – Alan Watts
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Bringing awareness to ecstatic grace, Alan Watts enlightens us on the sexual archetypes formed by religion.
Two cultural icons. Two unique perspectives... One understanding of the presence of the way.
Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass"
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this recording, Alan Watts lectures on:
Baptism, confirmation, and religious initiationMasturbation and other supposedly sinful behaviorsDefiance and wickednessThe material world and sexualityThe Semitic vs. Greek perspective on sexSexual energy for reproduction rather than pleasureThe fall in the Garden of EdenThe institution of marriageWomen throughout western literatureLove and the illogical promises we makePrudism and extreme monogamySubtle eroticism in the Victorian eraHow repression may lead to being overcameLibido as a fundamental realitySexuality in religious iconographyThe function of sexual play beyond utilitarianismSex as a sacramental expression of loveSeeing the divine aspect in a loverThis series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“The function of sexual play is not merely the survival and utilitarian function of reproducing the species as it is among animals to a very large extent. What peculiarly distinguishes human sexuality is that it brings the partners closer and closer to each other in an intense state of united feeling. In other words, it is a sacrament, the outward invisible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, bringing about love.” – Alan Watts
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This time on the Being in the Way Podcast, Alan Watts delves into questions of identity, purpose and buying into the ‘Myth of Myself’.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode, Alan Watts explores:
The question of our own identity and our place in the worldMyths of the self handed down through historyViewing ourselves and the world with a “floodlight consciousness” – rather than the narrow “spotlight consciousness” we are taught to see the world throughHow we are not born into this world, but grow out of it – “In the same way an apple tree apples, the Earth peoples.”“The most fascinating problem in the world is who am I? What do you feel when you say the word I? I myself?
This problem has fascinated me for many years. Most Western people locate their ego inside their heads. This is the ordinary average conception of what is oneself.” – Alan Watts
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit https://Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
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Picking up from our last episode, Alan elucidates faith versus belief, and how our individual existence is connected with the totality of the universe.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
From his houseboat in Sausalito, CA, Alan Watts explores:
The two great myths which underly our Western sense of identity: the Judeo-Christian myth of an overly intelligent universe founded by a cosmic king; and the material myth of a universe which is mechanical, un-intelligent, and emptyThe problem of “believing” in God, versus the real attitude of faith which is being open to whatever reality isFinding out who we are beyond social institutions like time, money, value, language, and survivalHow you as an individual implies by your existence everything else in the universe“The problem about believing in God, incidentally, is that believing is the wrong attitude. Believing is a form of mistrust, because it’s saying, ‘I fervently wish that you exist, and if you don’t, I don’t know what to do with myself.’ The real attitude of faith is not believing, but simply being open to whatever reality is, and to say you don’t know.” – Alan Watts
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Delving into the historically complicated human relationship to divinity, Alan Watts describes the trap of separateness.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode, Alan Watts explores:
The sensation of our own existence Jewish Christian mythology Identifying with the tribeUniversal law and the roots of justiceFreud and the energies of the psyche Man as a product of nature versus the supernaturalThe idea that we were all subjects of a divine king you might say was a political model based on the organization of the great city-states of the ancient near east. That image, you see, has absolutely haunted Western man throughout his whole development because he has felt that he is in the universe on probation and sufferance. He doesn't quite belong here." – Alan Watts
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Offering us the possibility of waking up, Alan Watts contemplates the joyous cosmology that we are God playing the roles of ordinary people.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode, Alan Watts explores:
If there could be a theory of the world that justifies and makes worthwhile the difficulties and suffering that we undergoThe contemplation that an infinite omnipotent being would eventually get bored with being everything, so would begin to shield itself from this knowledge, and pretend to play the role of separate beings so it could experience the full thrill of waking up to itselfThe idea of reality as God playing a game of hide and seek with itself for it’s own excitement and cosmic jokeThe difference or potential complete non-difference between the experience and the experiencerThat what you think of as outside yourself is actually just a hidden you“We have within us a higher self who is pretending to be the ordinary everyday person that we are, who’s acting it. In other words, our everyday life is a dream from which we have the possibility of waking up.” – Alan Watts
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Sifting down behind the cultural myth of man as separate, Alan explores how we are all actually Earth, the Universe, and the Big Bang.
In this episode of Being in the Way, Alan takes us on a journey from childhood to adulthood, highlighting how we are trained into separation from a young age, and forced to focus on the never-arriving “future,” rather than being present in the moment. Through this lens, he further spelunks the “hoax of man” and offers insight into how this sense of ego identity creates tension and frustration.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode Alan discusses:
How from childhood onward we are constantly preparing for something in the future, rather than being present for lifeThe culture’s division of work and play, and the confused idea that money can buy you pleasureGrowing up in society, identity, defining a person, and being a “genuine fake”How the sense of ego creates tension, separation, alienation, and frustrationThe inseparable connection of the polarity of self and otherThe dawn of creation and how we are not actually separate from the Big BangThe 19th-century myth that man is a fluke in an unintelligent, automatic universe“Your actual self—what is finally and fundamentally you—is not a separate and lonely part of the world, but the real you is the world itself, everything that there is, expressing itself as this particular organism here and now.” – Alan Watts
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
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In this unique episode of Being in the Way, Alan Watts offers tribute to the life, humor, magic and ‘nonsense wisdom’ of writer, G. K. Chesterton.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
This series is brought to you by the Alan watts organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“I read G.K. Chesterton’s works very carefully, and I have, by osmosis, imbibed an enormous amount of wisdom from him. Funny thing is, not so much in terms of specific ideas, as in basic attitude to life. This is a man, who above all virtues, has what I think is one of the greatest virtues which we don’t usually find catalogued—he had a sense of wonder.” – Alan Watts
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Exploring modern culture as actually anti-materialistic, Alan tackles matters of sedentariness, sensuousness, isolation, work, play, God, and sexuality.
Host, Mark Watts, returns to introduce another thought-provoking talk from his father, Alan Watts. In this powerful lecture—one of his earlier field recordings, entitled ‘The Unpreachable Religion,’—Alan turns our common idea of modern materialism on its head.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
This series is brought to you by the Alan watts organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
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Alan Watts pulls back the veil of ‘the human game,’ digging into language, ethics, finding balance, and the art of the controlled accident.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode, Mark Watts introduces Alan Watts in ‘Learning the Human Game’ – originally recorded at a seminar at the University of Michigan. In this lecture, Alan explores the connection between language and ethics, helping us understand why the perfect balance between randomness and order is the optimal middle-ground for experiencing life.
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“Mental health is a good game—and a good game is what keeps a certain balance between randomness and order. And a healthy society, therefore, is one which keeps a proper balance between law and whimsy.” – Alan Watts
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Contemplating the coincidence of opposites within the 'human game,' Alan ponders the simple yet thought-provoking question: is existence serious?
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode of Being in the Way, Mark introduces a lecture from his father Alan Watts called 'Coincidence of Opposites' – the first talk in a seminar called 'Learning the Human Game,' given in 1965 at the University of Michigan to a small group of psychology and philosophy grad students.
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
"One has to get used fundamentally to the notion that different things can be inseparable—that what is explicitly two, can at the same time be implicitly one." – Alan Watts
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Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, & Allen Cohen join Alan Watts on his houseboat to discuss change, the evolution of society, and the practicality of 'dropping out.'
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
In this episode of Being in the Way, Mark Watts introduces a truly legendary discussion featuring his father Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Allen Cohen. Beaming in from the summer of 1967 on Alan's infamous houseboat in Sausalito, CA, this stacked lineup of free-thinkers, beatniks, poets, environmentalists, psychedelicists, and spiritualists dive into heady and practical conversation around "dropping out" into a freer, more natural, tribe-focused society.
This series is made in partnership with the Alan Watts Organization. Discover the official Alan Watts archive at alanwatts.org
"What we need to realize is there can be a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed." – Alan Watts
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In this recording from 1972, Alan Watts lectures on mystical vision via art, aesthetics, and Buddhist and Daoist philosophy.
Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan
This series is made in partnership with the Alan Watts Organization. Discover the official Alan Watts archive at alanwatts.org
“You and I have all conspired with ourselves to pretend that we are not really God, but of course we are. That is perfectly obvious. We are all apertures through which the universe is looking at itself. Only it is so arranged that we don’t know that in exactly the same way as we don't look at our own eyes.” – Alan Watts
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