Alan Watts

100 Days of Wonder #2

ol’ wizard

I can’t recall exactly how or when I came across Alan Watts. It might be sometime during the fall of 2019, on Twitter—I vaguely remember

visakanv's switchboard

posting about him. In any case, since then, I’ve listened to a bunch of Alan’s talks and been amazed Every. Single. Time.

Eloquence

Even now, after hours of filling my ears with the beautiful, eloquent sentences he conjures, I feel his words ring more true than ever. Take this example I heard this morning:

“Nowadays, we live in a non-participative culture, and we don’t do very much singing and dancing. We are lugubrious. But we watch other people do it on television.”¹

It’s from a talk of his during, if I’m correct, the sixties! We just have to replace television with social media, and it’s even more true!

The points on spirituality he’s making, by the way, are equally—or even more—profound. Take this eloquent quote, which is simple in a good way:

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

His words are so simple—there’s no mucking about around it—but it’s still deeply profound.

Storytelling

Then there’s his storytelling skill, which is filled with humor, conciseness, and timelessness. Here’s a good example where he shows the difference between worrying/overthinking induced by having to make decisions vs. doing more “simple” work:

“There’s this guy, a farmer, who ordered a helping man to come in and found that he was an extraordinarily efficient worker.

For the first day, he put him on sawing logs. And he sawed more logs than anybody had ever sawed. It was fantastic. They were all done in one day.

So the next day, he put him on to mending fences. And there were all kinds of broken fences around the farm. And in one day, he had the whole thing done. So he thought, “What am I gonna do with this guy?”

So he took him down into a basement and said, “Look, here are all the potatoes that have come in from this harvest. And I want you to sort them into (three groups: those that we sell, those that we use for seeding, and those that we throw away.” So he left him at that.

At the end of the day the laborer came back and said, “Well that’s enough, mister. I quit.”

“No!” the farmer said, “You can’t quit! I’ve never had such an excellent worker. I’ll raise your salary. I’ll do anything to keep you around here.”

“Eh,” the helping man said. “No. It’s alright mending fences and chopping wood, but this potato business is decision after decision after decision after decision!”²

Spiritual entertainer

Alan was a kind of spiritual entertainer, combining both the playfulness and the deep meaning that exist in life into enlightening talks. I can only aspire to be like him, though Alan would probably say not to try too much. ;-)

I highly recommend listening to some of his works (there’s a lot on Youtube). One great talk is this one:

Anyway, Alan is like a dead mentor from whom I’ve learned a lot!

Cheers!

Jibran

1. https://www.organism.earth/library/document/out-of-your-mind-4

2. https://www.organism.earth/library/document/do-you-do-it