When a Fish Swims

"When a fish swims, he swims on and on, and there is no end to the water. When a bird flies, he flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. From the most ancient times, there was never a fish who swam out of the water or a bird that flew out of the sky. Yet when the fish needs just a little water, he uses just a little, when he needs a lot, he uses lots. Thus the tips of their heads are always at the outer edge (of their space). Yet if there were a bird who first wanted to examine the extent of the sky, or a fish who first wanted to examine the extent of the water  -  and then tried to fly or to swim, they will never find their own ways in the sky or the water."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Zen Compositions

"The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.

...

But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run.

...

Trying not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp since it's motivation is the same, my urgent desire to save my self from a difficulty. I can not get rid of this desire since it is one and the same desire as the desire to get rid of it."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Postscript. My last post explained what my recent series of "autumnal abstracts" has to do with quantum mechanics. This post is meant to convey the complementary explanation of what my autumnal abstracts have to do with Zen. Leaving aside the unintentional recursivity of the word "complementary" (since the concept has a formal meaning in quantum mechanics), here is an alternative summary of how using knee-high waterproof boots to get "up close and personal" to patterns of leaves in the creek - ostensibly to get better compositions - failed miserably. As I explained in the last post, no matter how slowly I approached a clump of leaves, invariably, the ripples induced in the water by my boots would dislodge one or more of the key elements of whatever composition I saw in my mind's eye. By the time I stood over the spot where I saw the original pattern, most of the leaves were gone. Here is where the Zen side of story begins...

The first day I donned my boots, it took me about a dozen attempts to learn how to "minimally disturb" whatever it was that caught my eye; to emphasize, not one, two or a few tries, but an embarrassingly many attempts. It was vastly harder than I anticipated. At some point - after my 3rd or 4th failure - I dejectedly poked my tripod into the water, angry with myself at being unable to do such a "simple” thing. So there I stood, knee-deep in water, immersed in a euphonious Siren call of delicately beautiful patterns I so wished to capture but which vanished the instant I approached them, when the absurdity of it all finally struck me like a Zen-master's cane! I doubled over with laughter, as multiple versions of Alan Watt's "the harder we try to catch hold of the moment..." aphorisms leapt to mind.

Adding to this genuinely Zen-like moment was the fact that two joggers just happened to be close enough to see and hear me. They both turned in unison to see what the source of the absurd laughter was. Without breaking stride or uttering a word, they just stared at what from their perspective must have seemed a "not quite all there and possibly drunk photographer" and ran off into the woods. I laughed for a few more moments, resolved to remember this little creek's Zen lesson, and resumed searching for interesting and evanescent patterns.

So, are my (still ongoing) "autumnal abstracts" a lesson in quantum mechanics? in Zen? or something else entirely? In the end, it's all just a matter of perspective 😊

Reality is Not Symbols

"If you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a certain kind of concentration, because reality is not symbols, it is not words and thoughts, it is not reflections and fantasies. Therefore to see it clearly, your mind must be free from wandering words and from the floating fantasies of memory."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Imperfect Concepts

"To Taoism that which is absolutely still

or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead,

for without the possibility of growth
and change there can be no Tao. In
reality there is nothing in the universe which
is completely perfect or completely still;
it is only in the minds of men
that such concepts exist."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Taoist Wisdom (To Get Us Through the Day)

"There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. 'Such bad luck,' they said sympathetically. 'Maybe,' the farmer replied.

 The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. 'How wonderful,' the neighbors exclaimed. 'Maybe,' replied the old man.

 The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. 'Maybe,' answered the farmer.

 The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

 'Maybe,' said the farmer."

The Story of the Chinese Farmer
As interpreted by Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

The Source Of All Light

"We are the eyes of the cosmos.
So that in a way, when you look
deeply into somebody's eyes,
you're looking deep into yourself,
and the other person is looking
deeply into the same self.

...

See, the source of all light is in the eye. If there were no eyes in this world, the sun would not be light. So if I hit as hard as I can on a drum which has no skin, it makes no noise. So if a sun shines on a world with no eyes, it's like a hand beating on a skinless drum. No light. YOU evoke light out of the universe, in the same way you, by nature of having a soft skin, evoke hardness out of wood. Wood is only hard in relation to a soft skin. It's your eardrum that evokes noise out of the air. You, by being this organism, call into being this whole universe of light and color and hardness and heaviness and everything.

...

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself.
Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies.
We are the witnesses through which the
universe becomes conscious of
its glory, of its magnificence."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

The Eternal Energy of the Universe

"A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.

...

Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to 'feel it in your bones.'

...

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about,
because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Eternal Energy

"You, yourself, are the
eternal energy which
appears as this Universe.
You didn't come into this world;
you came out of it.
Like a wave from the ocean.

...

We are the eyes of the cosmos.
So that in a way, when you look
deeply into somebody's eyes,
you're looking deep into yourself,
 and the other person is looking
deeply into the same self."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Meditative Inseparability

"Now, of course, reality—from a philosopher’s point of view—is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me: what do I mean by reality? Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about a spiritual world, or what? And to that, I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept. So, in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that’s also a philosophical concept. And reality itself is not a concept. Reality is [imagine hearing Alan Watts striking a standing bell], and we won’t give it a name.

Now, it’s amazing what doesn’t exist in the real world. For example, in the real world there aren’t any things, nor are there any events. That doesn’t mean to say that the real world is a perfectly featureless blank. It means that it is a marvelous system of wiggles in which we describe things and events in the same way as we would project images on a Rorschach blot, or pick out particular groups of stars in the sky and call them constellations as if they were separate groups of stars. Well, they’re groups of stars in the mind’s eye, in our system of concepts. They are not—out there, as constellations—already grouped in the sky.

So, in the same way, the difference between myself and all the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea. It is not a real difference. And meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up. That is to say, that we become interiorally silent and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls. Because you see, most of us think compulsively all the time, that is to say, we talk to ourselves."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Essential Lectures, Meditation

Reality of the Infinite

"... for as the reality of light cannot be proved or described in terms of visible shape, the reality of the infinite cannot be proved in terms of the finite. For this reason every attempt to prove the existence of God by logic is a foregone failure. Logic cannot reach God. It may travel backwards in time from effect to cause, effect to cause, but as long as it stays in time, as it must, it cannot touch the eternal. That which doesn't not begin with the infinite cannot end with it."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Universe as Self-Excited Circuit

“Through our eyes,
the universe is perceiving itself.
Through our ears, the universe
is listening to its harmonies.
We are the witnesses through
which the universe becomes
conscious of its glory,
of its magnificence.”

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

"Each query of equipment plus reply of chance inescapably do build a new bit of what we call “reality”. Then for the building of all of law, “reality” and substance… what choice do we have but to say that in some way, yet to be discovered, they all must be built upon the statistics of billions upon billions of such acts of observer-participancy."

"Beginning with the big bang, the universe expands and cools. After eons of dynamic development it gives rise to observership. Acts of observer-participancy... in turn give tangible 'reality' to the universe not only now but back to the beginning. To speak of the universe as a self-excited circuit is to imply... a participatory universe."

- John Archibald Wheeler (1911 - 2008)

“You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273) 

Like a Wave from the Ocean

We do not "come into" this world;
we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples."
Every individual is an expression
 of the whole realm of nature,
a unique action of the total universe.
...
The only way to make sense
out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it, and join the dance.
...
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.
When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water,
because if you do you will sink and drown.
Instead you relax, and float.
...
You are a function of what
the whole universe is doing
in the same way that a wave
is a function of what the
whole ocean is doing."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Wiggly Order

"When you look at the clouds they are not symmetrical. They do not form fours and they do not come along in cubes, but you know at once that they are not a mess...They are wiggly but in a way, orderly, although it is difficult for us to describe that kind of order. Now, take a look at yourselves. You are all wiggly...We are just like clouds, rocks and stars. Look at the way the stars are arranged. Do you criticize the way the stars are arranged?"

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
The Tao of Philosophy 

A Magical Illusion

"You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate 'you' to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real 'you' is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For 'you' is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973) 

Symbols, Signs, and Time

"We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Waves

 "You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way
that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Order of Thought

"But spontaneity is not by any means a blind, disorderly urge, a mere power of caprice. A philosophy restricted to the alternatives of conventional language has no way of conceiving an intelligence which does not work according to plan, according to a one-at-a-time order of thought. Yet the concrete evidence of such an intelligence is right to hand in our own thoughtlessly ordered bodies. For the Tao does not 'know' how it produces the universe just as we do not 'know' how we construct our brains."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

The Way of Zen

Arbitrary Divisions

"The true splendor of science is not so much that it names and classifies, records and predicts, but that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be. However much it may confuse facts with conventions, and reality with arbitrary divisions, in this openness and sincerity of mind it bears some resemblance to religion, understood in its other and deeper sense. The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than to understand and explain it. The more he analyzes the universe into infinitesimals, the more things he finds to classify, and the more he perceives the relativity of all classification. What he does not know seems to increase in geometric progression to what he knows. Steadily he approaches the point where what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind, a window whose name is not ignorance but wonder."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Existence Itself

"If you awaken from this illusion,

and you understand that

black implies white,

self implies other,

life implies death.

You can feel yourself,

not as a stranger in the world,

not as something here on probation,

not as something that has

arrived here by fluke,

but you can begin to feel

your own existence as

absolutely fundamental.

What you are basically,

deep, deep down,

far, far in,

is simply the fabric

and structure of

existence itself."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)

Complicated Little Curlicues

"It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlicue, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it."

- Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)