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Buddhism

Zen . . . does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Alan Watts (1915-73), British-born U.S. philosopher, author. The Way of Zen, pt. 2, ch. 2 (1957).

Identity

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts (1915-73), British-born U.S. philosopher, author. Life (New York, 21 April 1961).

"Heaven need not wait for a grave." - Alan Watts

A highly respected Zen master and Eastern philosopher who had as much in common with Neal Cassady and Timothy Leary as he did with traditional academics.  On his 1967 Warner Brothers release, Watts takes the listener through a basic introduction to Hindu thought and tradition, backed all the while by some very cool drone rock performed on traditional Indian instruments.
- from the liner notes of  _The Infinite Zero Almanac 1996 Volume V_ compilation CD on American - track: _Om, The Sound of Hinduisim_ 

Waveforms:

• _Seeing Through The Net_ (talk to IBM employees) MP3 (96k)(from the program Love Of Wisdom)(51:30)
• _Time In The Future Pt. 1 Seg 1_ MP3 (64k)(15:52)
• _Sex & The Church_ MP3 (53:10)(50megs)
• _Swimming Headless_ MP3 (96k)(55:02)(38.7megs)
• "in the ordinary way you see, you say 'well that made quite an impression on me' as if you were a slate, or a blackboard upon which life makes an impression as a chalk does on a slate or a blackboard... so we say 'well, here are these events and i am the observer of all these events... and i remember them and they make an impression on me...'  but in the psychology of taoism, there is no difference between you as observer, and whatever it is you observe... the only thing that is you, is the observation of life from a certain point of view... i said a little while ago, you think your heads are empty and blank, but the actual inside of your head is felt in terms of everything you see on the outside... we make an opposition you see, between the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experience, the knower and the known.  because we think about knowledge in terms of certain metaphors.  the metaphor of the stylus on the writing sheet, the reflection on the mirror, all those sort of images come into our idea of knowledge... but in the taoist theory of knowledge it is quite different.  there isn't a knower FACING the known.  it would be more like, say, that if there is any knower at all, it contains the known.   your mind, if you have one, is not in your head.  your head is in your mind.  because your mind understood from the standpoint of vision, his space.  the chinese use this word 'ku' which means 'sky', 'space', and sometimes 'emptiness'... and there is a saying that form, or shape and color, and this, are said to be identical.  space or emptiness is precisely shape/color and shape/color is precisely emptiness.  this is actually a buddhist saying from the Treidia Sutra... so that all that we call space contains the myriads of shapes and colors and bodies and weights and so on... it doesn't reflect them as a mirror, but it is the absence which guarantees their presence, and it is their presence which guarantees their absence.  so there is this mutual relationship again, the mutual arising expression between voidness and form, between existence and non-existence, being and non-being... these are never felt as alternatives or things that are in some kind of contest.  so then, when it is said that there is NOT any thinker behind thoughts, not any experiencer who has experiences... this is a way of saying that experiencing, knowing, is not an encounter between strangers.  western thought concentrates very much on knowledge as an encounter.  and it is thus that we talk about 'facing facts', 'facing reality', as if somehow or other the knower and the known came from two completely different worlds and met each other like that... whereas actually the phenomenon of knowledge is almost the precise opposite of that.  instead of being a collision between two wandering bodies in space, knowledge is much more like the expansion of a flower from the stem and the bud.  where the opposite points of the flower are the knower and the known... they are the terms of something which as it were, lies between them.   let me repeat... we tend, in all our metaphors and common speech, to think of life as an encounter between the knowing human, the knowing mind, and the world.  they think of it, not as an encounter but as an expression, not an impression.  an expression... of a process that has polarized itself.  coming out from a center, and expressed itself in terms of opposites... of course this is the basis of the whole yan/ying principle..."
• _The Limits Of Language_ MP3 (96k)(27:52)(19megs)(April 1973 lecture in Philadelphia, PA)
• 604 dub track _Gamma Goblins (It's Turtles All The Way Down Mix)_ MP3 (192k) by Hallucinogen off of _Hallucinogen In Dub_ on Twisted (2002)
• samples Alan Watts talking about drama

• _Not What Should Be, Not What Might Be, But What Is_ MP3 (96k)(55:59)(39megs)(april 1971 - radio series #5 Myth & Religion)
• _Sense Of Nonsene_ MP3 (96k)(22:28)(15megs)
• _Consciousness, The I-Ching & Civilization_ MP3 (160k)(17:41)
• _Identical Differences_ MP3 (96k)(6:00)(4megs)
• _Wisdom Of The Ridiculous_ MP3 (96k)(18:02)
• _World As Play 3_ MP3 (32k)(11:14)
• _I Think_ MP3 (64k)(truncated 45:07)
• _The Tea Ceremony_ MP3 (truncated 4:21)
• _Who Is It Who Knows There Is No Ego_ MP3 (51:30)(48.3megs)
• _Uncarved Block_ MP3 (32k)(42:47)
• _Aliens_ MP3 (32k)
• _Om_MP3 (96k)(12:39)(8.9meg)
• _Coincidence Of Opposites_ MP3 (96k)(45:57)(32.3megs)
• _Zen And The Art Of Controlled Accidents_ MP3 (45:59)(part IV)(43.1megs)
• sampled in 604 track _Uhkasakkoja Natsihipeille_ MP3 (192k) by Luomuhappo
• "when we make music, we don't do it in order to reach a certain point such as the end of a conversaion... if that were the purpose of music, to get to the end of the piece, then obviously the fastest players would be the best.  so likewise when we're dancing, we are not aiming to arrive at a place on the floor, as we would be if we are taking a journey... when we dance, the journey itself is the point.  when we play music, the playing itself is the point... [...] grooving with the eternal now..."

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