Reminding you that we'll be giving you an address at the end of today's talk, which you can write to for more information about the spoken word lectures and seminars of Alan Watts and their availability and convenient audio concepts. We ask that you not make copies of these programs off the air without express permission from the Alan Watts Institute. Now here is part four from the seminar entitled Future of Politics. The old philosophy of Bushido, or the way of the warrior in Japan, is a test of nerve between men up to, can you face this thing? Can you face being chopped up instantly? The Zen poem which says, under the sword lifted high, there is power making you tremble. but multitude, which means go straight ahead, and there is the land of bliss, there is paradise.

[01:10]

Don't stop. Don't hesitate. The minute you are put off or made to flinch, as we say, by the heavy edge of the sword, you're lost. If you don't flinch, you're always quick enough to defend yourself. So life could be construed in terms of a competition. Who's going to flinch first? See? Right. So we are involved politically in a game of studying the logistics of a mutual eating society. After all life, all living creatures, exist by virtue of destroying something else.

[02:13]

Biology is a system of transformation. Just as the waves here, you see, are a series of transformations in the surface of the water. So, every kind of living species is a series of transformations of form. But they do this through the route of teeth, of sharp edges, of chewing, of pain. And so when anything is chewed up, it has pain. And that pain is its reaction to being chewed up. And by virtue of pain and being chewed up, it is transformed into a higher order of being than itself. Because the one that finally catches you is higher up in the game. And so the experience of pain is something that we say, that's terrible.

[03:25]

That's the end. But on the other end of the spectrum, as it were, the pain of a piece of caviar egg that is being chewed up is experienced as exquisite pleasure. It's time for victory. And now then, the secret of, say, Buddhist enlightenment is to realize that these values that are put hang terrible, pleasure great, are arbitrary. That when, for example, you were a baby and you made a bowel movement on the floor,

[04:32]

And you thought, wowee, that was great. Your mother said it stinks. And you were taught to interpret the smell of excrement as being something bad. In the same way, exactly, we are taught to experience the sensations of being sick, of being in pain, and of dying, in other words, of not continuing in the survival process, we are taught to give them an emotional equivalent of bad, [...] bad. Don't do this way. Don't go that way. Please stop. Have a comment. Therefore, we have a hangover. But the paradox of the matter is this, that if you have a serious hang-up against dying, you can't be a good soldier.

[05:41]

Think of that for a moment. What a funny situation that is. In order to have the courage We demand of our young leaders, you know, who have a full of strength and vitality and so on, we say to them, come on now. It's your duty to defend our society against detainees. And in order to be able to do this efficiently, you must have a virtue called courage. And to have the virtue called courage, You must be in a very weird, paradoxical situation, which is within the prime of life, when all the world is open to you, and you want to love the girl and everything else, you must not be afraid of death. You understand very well that when you get to be an old man, you stop being afraid of death.

[06:52]

Because, you know, you're a guy, you're worn out, You'd be very happy to die, actually, because the injustice of carrying on is too much. And so you can stay with Robert Louis Stevenson. Under the white and starry sky, dig me a grave and let me lie. Gladly I lived and gladly die, and I lay me down near the will. That's fine for an old gentleman. But for a young man, or a young woman, well, tell me, We demand, right there, the courage to lay down life. In a way, The old are cheating the young.

[08:01]

Because from the old people's point of view, it doesn't matter so much. And so they can brag and talk about the virtues of courage without actually having to fight. Because there's no problem. but for the people who we actually ask to do the fighting, it is a problem. So now then we have to consider the whole question of the philosophy and use of violence, because this is the final political question. Politics are ultimately When you get down, shall we say, to the nitty-gritty of politics, it's a question of violence.

[09:06]

Because we would say when persuasion comes to the end of its terror and people won't be persuaded, then a fight starts. Now, we can explore the whole philosophy of being so skillful in persuasion that you never need to resort to violence. But let's leave that aside for the moment. Let's go through the path of violence and explore that and find out where it ends up. And I would very strongly advise all of you, if you get a chance, to see the Japanese film called Samurai. It comes in three installments, three shows. And it's the life story of Miyamoto Musashi, this tremendous samurai hero who becomes the unperturbed master of swordsmanship under the tutelage of his then-master.

[10:19]

His then-master is Takuwa. you should read Taekwon's essay on the art of sorghmanship, which is in Suzuki's book, Zen and Japanese Culture, where he describes how you apply zen state of mind, state of consciousness, to the art of fantasy in the same way as Eriko describes it in the Zen and the Art of Archer. The thing is that the whole story reveals is that Musashi comes to the point where he realizes the total vanity of killing. He wants to be a farmer. He wants to have a wife and a child and he wants to grow things. And he absolutely despises the idea of fighting.

[11:23]

that he is challenged to a duel by the most gorgeous young samurai in Japan. The physically beautiful man whose whole ambition in life is to fight with Musashi. And Musashi just doesn't want to do it. But he feels somehow that what the motivations of this are are extremely complex. He must. or Phil, the pound-owner, appointed barman, to fight him with this young man. Because the young man so desperately wants to fight with him. And they arrange a duel. And of course, infinite complications socially are involved with this because the young samurai is the teacher of one of the great noblemen, Daniel, He is his personal teacher in swordsmanship, and therefore all the diagnosis, revenue, associates, and court are involved in it.

[12:31]

So they set the place of duel on a particular island. And Musashi sends a messenger. that he will arrive to meet the appointment of a duel in his own time on the boat. He comes in just before dawn onto a beach where this young man is really waiting to meet Fetch with me first. While he is coming to the boat, he takes a paddle from the boat And with his sword, cuffs it into a certain shape. And this is the weapon that we use. He keeps his short sword cheap by his side in emergency.

[13:35]

And he approaches his antagonist on the beach with nothing that we wouldn't have had. But he has so time everything that The critical moment of the battle will occur when the sun rises. And because he stands in the water all the time, on the edge of the sand, the opponent has the sun in his eyes. He can't see. And is therefore defeated by nature. But in the moment of being slain, The opponent was so proud to have had this battle that you could see him looking just before he dropped dead. He looked into the eyes of the utmost admiration and love and fought from death. Even if he was defeated somehow in Rome, he had found his ambition.

[14:41]

And then all those dark yellows and noblemen gather around and come and say to Musashi, this is the most magnificent painting we ever saw. And Musashi leaps. He says, I will never again meet so great an opponent. And he goes away immediately. There are no honors, no nothing. He walks back to the poet. And the poet says, oh, I am so happy you won. And the satsi can only weep. What a futility. So, what the Zen masters taught to Samurai in the art of thought leadership, What that ultimately, if you really understand how to use violence, how to use power, you don't use it.

[15:57]

The highest school at Kendo, fencing, is called the no sword school. Here you see is a funny situation. If you're a Buddhist, one of the first principles that you observe, especially if you're a Buddhist of Southern Asia, , if you don't kill anything, you're a vegetarian, you abstain from the taking of life. Your first precept, , undertake the precept for abstaining from the taking of life. So people say, well, how can these Sun Rites, who slaughter everybody in all directions, be Buddhists?

[17:01]

Well, here's the problem we have to consider. Because you still have to ask, being a younger Buddhist, who are vegetarian, how can you dare to stanch all those poor vegetables? to your existence. I asked R.H. Blythe this. R.H. Blythe was the man who wrote Lenny Lindrich's Context or I suppose. He was a devoted vegetarian and a teetotaler. And I teased him, you know, we had a wonderful discussion together afterwards. He was a vegetarian. We were starting up all those vegetables. How can you do that? He said, they don't scream so loud. So here you have the paradox of Buddhism, which is a way of life which highly expresses compassion and kindness, ahimsa, calmness,

[18:17]

yet somehow, in a funny way, align itself with a crop of soldiers using these frightful weapons. But by the association Eventually, a few of those soldiers learn how to get out of the system. Now, Japan as a whole may have learned at this point how to get out of the system of violence. It's doubtful. They may have learned their lesson in that Second World War. And you could say perhaps the cultured members of the country as a whole have learned that the game of violence doesn't work.

[19:19]

And a few individuals learned this as a result of studying Judo and the art of Judo and the art of Kendo or Tensei to its final limits. They learned the power of never defending yourself. There's a beautiful scene in the movie when Miyawata Wakashi is in a little cheap inn, and he's eating his dinner, and they happen to put the rice that's been lighted, and that he is suddenly challenged by a brigand. who is in charge of the particular crime racket in the area. And the brigand comes on with a very strong line at him, you know. And you see Musashi kicking the lights out of the right with his chopsticks, throwing them away, absolutely unconcerned.

[20:25]

And this brigand looks at him. He has tried all his tricks, all his terrors, and this man simply is bored. So the brigand instantly becomes Musashi's disciple. So, you see, what happens, the politics of the thing comes down to a game of nerve. Let's just take it geographically and physically. As you look at Japan today, go and visit a town like Kyoto. The hills on the north side of Kyoto are the loveliest land, with the most beautiful forests and hills from landscape and street, where anybody could possibly want to live.

[21:34]

Therefore, naturally, the richest and most powerful people own the land. This was the luxurious area. Well, it so happens that the Zen monks occupy a great deal of it. They live like princes, only, personally, each one of them is poor. They need a life of what I would call luxuriously . And you know what that means when you retire. camping, light can be found in rock, you don't sleep in silk sheets, you sleep in a rock blanket, but the surroundings are lovely. That's the way they look. The question arises immediately then, how did they capture this land? And monks with nothing, no weapons at all, from the most powerful brigands around.

[22:44]

because the people who are the nobility today were originally the roughest guys going. So today the Rockefeller family in the United States, for example, were the rougher barons. Human people. The great George and Lady Lillian, who were originally the brilliant chiefs, who robbed the land and put everything down. So in the same way, the Daimyo were simply the most successful bunch of crooks. The government of the United States is, as a matter of fact, nothing other than the most successful group of gangsters. But somehow the monks overcame them. Because the monks looked them in the eye and said, you can't fight me.

[23:50]

And they said, oh, oh, we can't fight you. And they tried everything. And the monks couldn't be frightened. Until the brigands got worried. Because they would like to be as untritable as that, because if they knew they could be as untritable as that, they could win any contest. The monks simply stared them down. And I can't imagine what that must have meant in terms of some personal suffering. A certain individual monk, they may have tried to torture someone. They said, see if we could move you. They couldn't be moved. they just could not be made anxious or frightened. And the reason why they couldn't was that they had learned this thing.

[24:59]

That You needn't be ashamed of feeling pain. You needn't panic about pain. It's perfectly all right to be in pain and to object to it. But don't object to objecting. Let go. And if you understand that, you see, you can be a complete hero. incapable of being moved by any torture. Because you see through the illusion of the world. They saw that. And therefore they put out to face all those brigands. And therefore the brigands said,

[26:06]

And as a result, it made the ownership of the pet's land on the North End of Kyoto pass into the hands of the monks. Now shortly before the Second World War, the Japanese government committed an ultimately serious mistake, which is the reason why the Japanese were defeated. They deprived the monks of their land. and said, all churches have to be disembarked. We take away from you your lands. And therefore, you will have to ship to restaurants and tourist places in North Connecticut. Because shortly before something happened in Japan, shortly before the Second World War, whereby they lost their understanding of the Minnesotan school and made this ridiculous gamble of bombing Hawaii and starting that war in which they failed.

[27:28]

And it's so curious, you see, that with starting up that war and rejecting the monks happened at the same time. And I wrote, just before the Second World War started, an article in Asia magazine called The Rusty Swords of Japan, saying how the samurai had lost their spirit. The war hadn't started at that point. They had lost the understanding of the sword, because they'd lost the understanding of the Therefore, they would win, they would lose. They had many times, but they won't. How about that? There are some hours in life

[28:34]

There has to be violence. That trees have to be chopped down, that pigs have to be stuck, that chickens have to be strangled. That a soft, succulent, sensitive substance has to be crunched by teeth. If this doesn't happen, life doesn't go on. So what now? What are you going to do about that? What will be your response to that situation? You could say, no, no, no, no, no, that's just too bad. Let's stop the whole thing. I want to stop the show. Get off. Not too bad. How will you do that? Even a vegetarian can't stop it.

[29:40]

You can commit suicide, yes, and say I reject the whole system. It is appalling and horrible. That's one possibility. Well, what's the other possibility? The only other possibility is to say that if violence is involved, If the teeth are involved, if there is that side of life, then let us do it beautifully. If you have to cut a head off, don't do it with a blunt knife. Because that will involve unnecessary suffering. Do it with the sharpest knife that you can make. The best. And then thereafter, if you're going to eat living flesh, you're going to eat a fish or a bird or whatever.

[30:43]

You owe it to this form of life to prepare and cook it in the most expert way. But then you can say, a fish that has died for you and is not well cooked has died in vain. So then, insofar as the dead fish to the dead bird to cuddle you, they may at least have the privilege of enjoying themselves as you. Now that may sound, you know, a weird language. And you can say, ah, you can talk. It's all right so long as you're alone eating it. But supposing you were the bird, you wouldn't enjoy it. You'd just disappear. You'd become unconscious. that you wouldn't turn. What is the question? But I wonder if that's really the problem.

[31:49]

Let's take the whole idea of Christianity. Jesus initiated a rite which we call the Mass. And this rite has been kept going for goodness knows why, but it's been kept going for thousands of years among Christians, every Sunday. Everybody's supposed to have a rite. What's it all about? Jesus takes a loaf of bread. Now, what is a loaf of bread? It is grains of wheat that have been beaten up and pulverized into flour. And what is a cup of wine? It is crushed grapes that have been squeezed and broken into juice.

[32:55]

And he makes an analogy. He takes the bread and he says, this is my body, which is given to you. Do this. in remembrance of me. He takes a cup of wine and he says, this is my blood which is shed for you. Incidentally, for the remission of sins. In this remembrance of me. I never heard him talk about this. But, obviously, Well, here is life itself saying to you, I am the weak. I have been crushed to give you life. I am the vine. He said, I am the vine. You are the branches. I am the vine which has been squashed.

[33:59]

But please, for the remission of sins, don't drink yourself. Take the Because in some funny way, the creature that is the evil one is giving himself to sacrifice his home. And please, don't kill me. So in the whole sense of the idea of the mass, something that you participate in in order to attain salvation and liberation from guilt and hell and all that kind of thing, is connected with the idea that the victim is a voluntary victim. And as a matter of fact, in the very ancient sacrifices, human sacrifices in Mexico, the Mayan and Aztec intercultures, where there were human sacrifices, it was the essence of the victim.

[35:18]

Now, there cannot be such a thing as the voluntary sacrificial victim. except in a world, in a metaphysical world view where you know that death and life are simply opposing vibrations. That death can never win. You can't have a state in which death is the permanent situation. You went to life, you involved with death. Death involves life, and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, with each other like that. So death comes every so often. And it wipes out your memory. But you keep on going on the review scene. Remember how long it's taken for you to develop from bathing up until now?

[36:29]

What a struggle it's been. What a big thing. See, that's one great wave in this vibration. Like that. But there are short waves, like waking and sleeping, like when you look at the light. Actually, the light is vibrating so fast that you can't pick up the intervals. But when you hear a very deep sound, You can hear the vibration. The vibration between life and death is such an enormous wave. Well, there has to be an enormous wave in order that you can understand what an enormous wave is. whole parable, the map which is saying, well, it's saying what the Hindus say when they say Anandramam.

[37:53]

Anandramam means food is problem. Food is the Godhead. This is my body. Every victim which is squelched and squirmed and crunched and turned into you, It is from a certain standpoint a voluntary offering, a kind of process with cosmic mysticism whereby you really want to be scrunched up and absorbed into someone or something else. Because you will raise all kinds of streaks at the moment of being crunched up and say, now, stop, now, now, now, now. But all that is the flavor of being crunched up.

[38:57]

Oh, don't let that happen. See, see, see. Don't let that happen. And he realized, finally, that just as in the movie I was describing to you, when the antagonist, the neomorical Musashi, has actually been killed, he's been given the death blow, he's still alive for a moment. And he looked into the eyes of his adversary and was expression of complete love and total admiration. And God said, This is pain to light which involves the teeth. I accept you. I love you.

[40:04]

And now this isn't quite the final story. Let's suppose this is really the picture. Let's suppose that the life force, the Brahman, does give itself to us through the fish. The fish don't know it exactly and go through a kind of ecstatic masochistic dance in the course of being devoured. Let's suppose we understand all that. Then you have to say, when you review all this, and you've seen this absolutely ecstatic display of pain being offered to you to continue your life as a gesture of love, you realize what kind of a thing you're dealing with, what you're involved in.

[41:18]

See? You see, this idea of the The vibrancy of a loving gesture being given to you all the time by all these pictures to sustain your being, what are you going to do? You say, wait, wait. This is so gorgeous, this thing, that I'm treated with the greatest reverence. Let's prove it. Let's choke it. Let's Less suffering everywhere we can, like Schweitzer talks about, reverence for life. This thing is so throbbing, it's so enthusiastic in a way it's abandoned itself and offers itself for my consumption. But one wants to say to it, thank you, but this thank you is a loving thing. It's a gesture of touching it and calming it. Cut down the suffering. Always.

[42:19]

let compassion progress. And drink out of a feeling of immense gratitude to this energy that turns itself into you all the time through pain. So that you, every individual is a murderer. The only thing in you that isn't stolen from other beings through murder is water. Everything else in your body is horror. some other form of life by killing it. See? So you say in response to this wave of energy that is manifesting itself as you as a result of murder, you say finally, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to stroke people, I want to love people. Let's cut down the killing. That's the easy piece of the thing.

[43:23]

You've been listening to Alan Watts with part four from a seminar entitled Future of Politics. Thank you. Thank you.

[44:29]

Thank you. Thank you. um [...]

[46:15]

You are invited on Christmas Day to tour the TPSA all day, but especially at 6 o'clock for Angela to end. With Jimmy having a horse, featuring the Goodwill and a baby of inspired world, Christmas Day will be coming up. um um I don't know.

[48:38]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, my God. Coming up in one minute.

[49:41]

Your TGFA SPR charter comment on Africa. This is S.B.R. Tardo, the commenter on Africa. In January 1984, delegates from 44 African countries met in Tanzania in the Second African Population Conference.

[51:07]

It then issued its TV Mountain Journal Declaration containing six principles, eight objectives, and 90 recommendations which can apply to all the world rather than only to Africa. Thirteen years earlier, the first such African conference was held in Ghana. That unhappy continent in 1984, Africa, had a population approaching 500 million, and its growth rate was estimated to be 3% or 15 million additional lives a year. In 1950, its population was estimated to be 220 million, when its growth rate was 2.1% or 4.4 million per year. By the end of this century, its population may reach 870 million. If its growth rate remains at 3%, by the end of the century, Africa will be adding 26 million lives a year to its population. The growing imbalance between Africa's increasing population and its net use of its limited resources does not bode well for its populace, some 45% of which was estimated in 1984 to be under 15 years of age.

[52:24]

But you might hear a declaration, what, confirm it?

[52:30]

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