The Wisdom of Insecurity

Product Information

In early 1951 Alan relocated to San Francisco, where, at Dr. Frederic Spiegelberg’s invitation, he began teaching Buddhism at the American Academy of Asian Studies (which later became the California Institute of Integral Studies). Drawing quite a crowd, his classes at the Academy soon blossomed into evening lectures open to the public and spilled over to local coffee houses frequented by Beat poets and writers. I have been taught by the very liberal community in which I have grown up to be skeptical of anything written by a white man in the 1950s and, in general, I think this skepticism is probably warranted. I can imagine the criticism that might develop from reading a book of philosophy that is so secondhand; why not go straight to the source? But we've already covered that I've been feeling pretty shot and my brain is no longer working as well as it once did. I needed the digest version. And if there is anything objectionable (not that I detect anything, but like I said, my brain is shot), some kind of slant or bias in the writing, it doesn't matter much to me, because I've got the ideas and concepts that I need. At the end of the day, the source for these kinds of things doesn't matter much; it's just getting the ideas and running with them. Once there is the suspicion that a religion is a myth, its power has gone. It may be necessary for man to have a myth, but he cannot self-consciously prescribe one as he can mix a pill for a headache. A myth can only "work" when it is thought to be truth, and man cannot for long knowingly and intentionally "kid" himself.

What science has said, in sum, is this: We do not, and in all probability cannot, know whether God exists. Nothing that we do know suggests that he does, and all the arguments which claim to prove his existence are found to be without logical meaning. There is nothing, indeed, to prove that there is no God, but the burden of proof rests with those who propose the idea. If, the scientists would say, you believe in God, you must do so on purely emotional grounds, without basis in logic or fact. Practically speaking, this may amount to atheism. Theoretically, it is simple agnosticism. For it is of the essence of scientific honesty that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested. He says, in terms of morality, "A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good ... Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are 'itself.'" On being the present moment (Watts says we are not to live in the present moment so much as to realize that we inescapably are the present moment) and experiencing pain: “Seeing that there is no escape from the pain, the mind yields to it, absorbs it, and becomes conscious of just pain without any ‘I’ feeling it or resisting it. It experiences pain in the same complete, unselfconscious way in which it experiences pleasure. Pain is the nature of this present moment, and I can only live in this moment...pain and the effort to be separate from it are the same thing” (97-98). I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly. From my limited appreciation of both Watts’ views and cognitive science, I see nothing so glaringly contradictory that it would undermine one or the other. However, I do think there are some interesting possibilities for investigating what this kind of experience he describes may be.Here is a person who knows that in two weeks’ time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affairs if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rather, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself.” [emphasis added] In many regards a book ahead of its time, and for that reason I can understand its long-standing adoration. However, from my point of view as a very pragmatic person (although willing to try and open my horizons and better myself in any which way), I struggled in making a connection between Alan's overly indulgent flourishes of metaphor and any practical application.

Another way of putting the ideas, is that Watts advocates living fully in the present moment. Focusing attention on current experience, rather than being subsumed in the world of thoughts, memories and future projections. The happiness problem is similar in that it is caused by unfulfilled desires and fears which pull us away from experiencing the present moment. But the thought, “this living in the present sounds like something I’d like to have, how can I get it?” is just another unfulfilled desire pulling you out of the present, thus a paradox. We are forced to wrestle with the demon of nothingness, until that day when, through thought, prayer and meditation, we - or rather the Being of God - melts it in a Fire of Attention, Love and Peace. For those of us who lift our eyes from the television screen and social media feeds, and actually contemplate the meaning of our existence and the universe around us, it may appear tempting to conclude that human beings are the product of an evolutionary “mistake”. Perhaps our consciousness is capable of grasping too much knowledge and insight, and without the soothing balm of illusions and myths, we are too weak to face the unknown:This chase for happiness will never be over. It’s just what society’s trying to sell you, because it still hasn’t managed to come up with a better way of giving you true fulfillment. The irony is that many of us have little patience or use for the present moment unless we are experiencing pleasure. The trouble with pleasure is it cannot exist without pain. And so, we are in a constant retreat from and avoidance of pain. While words often correspond to reality in predictable ways, which is why we use them, this can create the confusion that words are the reality. However consistent, words tend to cut up reality arbitrarily, and make reality seem static and fixed, rather than changing and fluid. The working inhabitants of a modern city are people who live inside a machine to be batted around by its wheels. They spend their days in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes. As a matter of fact, mental activities of this kind can now be done far more efficiently by machines than by men — so much so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mechanism for logical calculation. Already the human computer is widely displaced by mechanical and electrical computers of far greater speed and efficiency. If, then, man’s principal asset and value is his brain and his ability to calculate, he will become an unsaleable commodity in an era when the mechanical operation of reasoning can be done more effectively by machines.

But, still, his point remains valid - because most faiths, firmly held, can help you finally overcome your anxiety.Such an instantaneous release of the problem comes from appreciating key insights about reality and the self. While the insights are not truly separate, they are confusing, so I’ve done my best to separate them and present them in a sequence as I understand them. Insight #1: Words are Not Reality Have we lost the idea of a real self with meaning? Oh, not a self with added contextual meaning - but our selves Alone - without the meaning of our environment. Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Alan Watts had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the un-writable’. Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit. A fascinating entry into the deepest ways of knowing.”