Alan Watts - Become What You Are

ABOUT THE BOOK

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever.... You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now.from Become What You Are

In this collection of writings, including nine new chapters never before available in book form, Watts displays the intelligence, playfulness of thought, and simplicity of language that has made him so perennially popular as an interpreter of Eastern thought for Westerners. He draws on a variety of religious traditions, and covers topics such as the challenge of seeing ones life just as it is, the Taoist approach to harmonious living, the limits of language in the face of ineffable spiritual truth, and the psychological symbolism of Christian thought.

ALAN WATTS (19151973) was a renowned lecturer and the author of nearly thirty books, including The Way of Zen and The Book.

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Become What You Are

Alan Watts

SHAMBHALA

BOSTON & LONDON

2014

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1995, 2003 by Mark Watts

Cover design by Lora Zorian

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Watts, Alan, 19151973.

Become what you are/Alan Watts.Expanded ed.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2336-5

ISBN 978-1-57062-940-2

1. Philosophy, Asian. 2. AsiaReligion. I. Title.

B121.W377 2003

181dc21

2002026911

Contents

AS THE TITLE SUGGESTS, BECOME WHAT YOU ARE is a collection of Alan Wattss writings that touch on the dilemma of the person who seeks his or her true self, a quest so often undertaken at the expense of seeing ones life just as it is. As Alan Watts wrote:

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists forever. This movement and change has been called Tao by the Chinese.... A sage has said that if we try to accord with it, we shall get away from it. But he was not altogether right. For the curious thing is that you cannot get out of accord with it even if you want to; though your thoughts may run into the past or the future they cannot escape the present moment.

Understood in this way, to become what you are is at once an impossible directive and an unavoidable fact.

This volume is a collection of Alan Wattss articles from the mid-fifties, interspersed with short essays from the late thirties, written before he came to America from England. The shorter pieces appeared originally in The Middle Way, a journal published by the Buddhist Lodge of London. The collection begins with The Paradox of Self-Denial. Although the original manuscript is not dated, the typewriter used to write this piece was acquired in 1953, and the content and length are consistent with other articles that were originally read aloud by Watts on KPFA radio in Berkeley, California, beginning in 1955. These broadcasts were quite popular, and continued for over thirty years.

The second chapter, and the first of the short essays, is the title piece of this volume, and was taken from a scrapbook of Wattss early articles. An examination of the back of the clipping reveals the announcement of meetings of The Buddhist Lodge in March, April, and May of 1938.

The third chapter, The Finger and the Moon, was retitled thus in Wattss hand, having originally been titled The Realm of the Spirit. It is dated April 17, 1955, and addresses the shortcomings of Western religious practice in the context of Zen and Asian thought generally. Then, in chapter four we return to the Middle Way essays with Importance, a beautiful little piece on the perspective of a Buddhist poem.

In Tao and Wu-wei, the fifth chapter, Watts writes about the significance of not-doing and not-forcing, ideas central to Chinese Taoism. Midway through the original text he mentions these two years of talks, referring to the initial public radio series. This probably was one of the later talks in that series, and his handwritten revisions in the last four pages of the original suggest that this article may have been transcribed from a recording, making it perhaps one of his first broadcasts not read from a script but originally performed before a live radio audience.

Walking on the Wheel, the sixth chapter, is again a short essay from The Middle Way. Here we find Chuang-tzus perfect man as he walks the wheel undisturbed by desire, attachment, fear, or regret. On the back side of this clipping we find an interesting quote attributed to Tan Ching, which reads:

If we allow our thoughts, the past, the present and the future ones, to link up in a series, we put ourself under restraint. On the other hand, if we let our mind attach to nothing at all times and towards all things we gain emancipation.

Since Watts was then the editor of The Middle Way he probably selected the quote for publication. A similar theme was developed throughout his later works, and the quote serves as evidence of the philosophical influences shaping his thinking at the time.

The seventh chapter marks our departure from the radio articles to an article written for The Journal of Religious Thought, published in 1953 by Howard University, in Washington, D.C. The Language of Metaphysical Experience is an excellent analysis of the similarities between the knowledge gained by mystical experience and natural science and the linguistic problems posed by expressing that variety of knowledge in words. The article is in many ways far ahead of its time, blending Eastern thought, physics, and Western philosophy and religion toward an understanding of life rooted in wonder, for, as he quotes Goethe:

the highest to which man can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes him wonder, let him be content; nothing higher can it give him, and nothing further should he seek for behind it; here is the limit.

Following The Language of Metaphysical Experience we begin a series of articles from The Middle Way, including Good Intentions, Zen, The One, Is There an Unconscious? That Far-Off, Divine Event, The Parable of the Cows Tail, and The Second Immortal. The Zennist perspective of Wattss early contribution to The Middle Way is fairly represented in the group, followed by the much more serious treatment of Buddhism in The Problem of Faith and Works in Buddhism. The Middle Way selections (later collected in