Posted by jonvon on October 04, 2002 at 10:44:31:
In Reply to: puzzling Watts -- ?????? posted by giveawayboy on October 03, 2002 at 20:50:00:
to me watts does a better job marrying east and west than a lot of other people have done. being a westerner and an eastern scholar he was able to talk about the east in a way that westerners can understand. that was what first attracted me to him.
plus he has a lot of great ideas about being. my fundamental question for a long long time (since the 7th grade) has been "what is man?"
one of the things i uncovered recently was this: in the same way that empty space and stars are all part of one fabric, so being is a fabric in which is woven *i exist* and *i don't exist*. i know that probably makes no sense... but i'm thinking of it in terms of death and life. or ego and the obliteration of ego. the whole notion that *i exist* and *i must continue to exist* has led us down a lot of bunny trails. like the search for eternal youth. obviously if that was a Good Thing, we would have always been eternaly youthful. it would have been built into us. but there are things we can only know through as we get older, as our bodies and minds change. it is the way it is supposed to be. the ego that pushed us forward into life begins to break down in some senses. at the end it is completely obliterated in death. death represents a pole in the continuum of being, or empty space, darkness in some senses, a female (receptive) position. space quietly accepts the boiling stars, death quietly accepts those passing to it. just as we can enter meditative states to find peace and serenity, death is the ultimate peace and serenity. we enter meditation to reveal ourselves to ourselves. death is the ultimate revelation. see where i'm going with this? maybe?
i wrote in _low table_:
i wished to be a wide dry wind covering a vast and ancient desert, a wide wide wind and dry so dry, a kind of dissipation without losing essence, the essence of being
i really didn't know what i was writing about at the time. i just knew that i had this feeling that i wanted to experience another kind of being, or maybe another side of being. it felt a bit like i wanted to commit suicide, but i knew that wasn't really it. it was something else. it was a longing for death, but not for the sake of being dead. it was that i wanted to obliterate the ego, that thing in me that has to BE, that needs to be FED and to TELL EVERYONE THAT IT EXISTS and wants to PUSH INTO OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS and all the other crass things the ego demands. after a while i think i was getting tired of myself. weighted toward the positive male position so to speak. i've since kinda started figuring it out. not sure if that will make sense to anyone, but it makes sense to me and i'm really excited about it.
anyway watts really helps me with this stuff a lot. i could care less about firm doctrinal statements. just let me disappear. please god, let me disappear.
: I could never understand or 'get into' Alan Watts. In fact, I don't even know what his whole 'trip' is, but I'd appreciate anyone who could tell me without dissolving into thin air. Yeah! Also, I don't have anything against the guy. It's just hard for me to read his books since the words seem to vanish off the page. Now, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso on the other hand--there's a guy I can read. He is concrete!
: Later, Bill