Focusing on cosmic balance, Alan Watts outlines the fundamentals of Taoism and how to skillfully interfere with our environment.
Find the full Zen and the Art of the Controlled Accident series of talks at play.alanwatts.org.
This time on Being in the Way, Alan Watts shares a lecture on:
- The philosophy of Taoism
- Taoism as the flow of things / the course of nature
- The pervasive illusion of separateness and seeing it within our language
- How we only experience the world bit-by-bit
- A transformation of our everyday consciousness into oneness
- How we are all indestructible beyond the ego
- Life as a game of yin and yang, crests and troughs
- The fundamental idea of mutual arising
- How everything we do interferes with our environment
- Learning how to interfere skillfully
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
“We are not ordinarily aware of how we’re aware, and as a result of that, we don’t understand our connection with the world, and we don’t understand what our real self is. We get anxious; we’re afraid that death may be the end of us. This is, of course, the purest superstition, because everybody is indestructible.” – Alan Watts
About Alan Watts:
A prolific author and speaker, Alan Watts was one of the first to interpret Eastern wisdom for a Western audience. Born outside London in 1915, he discovered the nearby Buddhist Lodge at a young age. After moving to the United States in 1938, Alan became an Episcopal priest for a time, and then relocated to Millbrook, New York, where he wrote his pivotal book The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. In 1951 he moved to San Francisco where he began teaching Buddhist studies, and in 1956 began his popular radio show, “Way Beyond the West.” By the early sixties, Alan’s radio talks aired nationally and the counterculture movement adopted him as a spiritual spokesperson. He wrote and regularly traveled until his passing in 1973.