Wisdom of the Ridiculous

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remind you that if you want more information about the teachings of the alan watts just right mba a box three or three sausalito nine four nine six five now here is alan watts with the talk entitled
chuang say wisdom of the ridiculous
during the last two sessions i've been talking to principally about the philosophy of the loud certain book without a drink
and now i want to shift today over to diwan zack
ah
this
yolanda
ah
savas we know
lived about
the three hundred b c
and maybe a little earlier than that
and he is a very very remarkable person because the the john's or book he's also more exactly his name is a
chung jo
but am
his book
sometimes called simply the john's or book
is quite unique in the whole history of philosophy
because he's almost the only philosopher from the whole of antiquity who has real human
and therefore is an immensely encouraging person to read
but part of his humor
is the art of exaggeration
and you always have to allow for that you always have to realize that he's slightly pulling his own leg he is a as in a group of people who are enthusiasts for something in a but have humor to very often find that when they're talking among themselves they
ideas to ludicrous extremes and roar with laughter about it
and drunk that does that
now for example
he has a great deal to say about the value of the useless life
the whole notion of something of life any moment in life or any event in life being useful that is to say serving the end of some future event in life is to a is absurd
ah because nothing is useful at all the universe is viewed as purposeless and useless through and through because ah
it's it's a game
more than that game doesn't really convey the sense of this
when a doll was sage as wandering through the forest he isn't going anywhere he's just wondering when he watches the clouds he loves them because they have no special destination
he watches birds moving around he watches the waves lapping on the shore and just because all this is not busy in the way that human beings the busy
because it says no and other than being what it is now it is for that reason that he admires it and it is for that reason that you'll get the peculiar styles of chinese painting in the tongue song and later dynasties well
nature in its way would wandering nature
is the main subject
when we say that something is without purpose that's a put down phrase say well it's no future in it what's the use now we say what's the use
and i
we need very much to realize that that question
reflects
our insanity
what's the future once the uk
the joy for the taoists is that things have no use and the future is not important
now you can exaggerate this and drugs or does in a very humorous way by describing the ideal useless man he's a hunchback
and he's so deformed that his chin rests on his navel and so on and
but he says now this man is very admirable is found the secret of life because when the social service workers come around he's the first to get a free handout
and when the military office has come around to conscript people for the army is the first to be rejected
therefore he lives long
and he also describes the case of some travelers came across an enormous tree fantastic thing and they said never did anyone see such a trees so they went up and looked at it at first they tested the leaves and found that they were rough and disagreeable and no good to eat
then they looked at the branches and found that they were all twisted and absolutely no good for using a sticks then they examined the wood and found it was full of piss and absolutely useless for a carpenter so nobody had disturbed the street
ah it was not used for cutting down on any purpose whatsoever and so it grew to an enormous size and was a great age
our joint danza is here pulling our legs he is not exactly asking us to take all that literally but this is his way of doing things then also he describes the behavior of the high form of man and he says
the man of character that is in this case the word death we were discussing yesterday the man of character lives at home without exercising his mind and performs actions without worry
the notions of right and wrong and the praise and blame of others do not disturb him
when within the four c's all people can enjoy themselves that is happiness for him when all people are well provided that is piece for him
sorrowful incontinence he looks like a baby who has lost its mother appearing stupid he goes about like one who has lost his way he has plenty of money to spend and does not know where it comes from he drinks and needs just enough and does not know where the food comes from this is the demeanor of the man of character
then by contrast the hypocrites are those people who regard as good whatever the world a claims as good and regard as right whatever the world claims as right
when you tell them that they are men of doll than their countenance a countenances changed with satisfaction when you call them hypocrites than they look displeased all their lives they call themselves men of doll and all their lives they remain hypocrites
they know how to give a good speech until appropriate anecdotes in order to attract the crowd but from the very beginning to the very end they do not know what it's all about
they put on the proper garb address the proper colors and put on a decorative experience appearance in order to make themselves popular but refused to admit that they're hypocrites
tom
but this guy explanation of the man who is
stupid in countenance and appearance and as wandering about as if he had lost his way and doesn't know anything because it's based on the text and loud so where he says the people of the world merrymaking as if partaking of the sacrificial feast as if mounting the terrorists in spring i alone a mild like one unemployed like an
newborn babe that cannot yet smile i'm attached like one without a home the people of the well have enough and despair but i'm like one left out i heart must be that of a fool being muddled nebulous the vulgar or knowing luminous i alone am dow confused the vulgar are clever
a selfish assured i'll own depressed patient as the see a drift seemingly aimless the people of the world all have a purpose i alone appear stubborn and uncouth i alone differ from the other people value drawing sustenance from the mother capital and mother nature

so
there is about to see the the character of the daoist sage as depicted by answer something of the fool
because the fool is the person
who
it doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain who doesn't compete
everybody else gets before him to the prizes the material prices of life and even to the spiritual prizes
the fool is you see the person who isn't going anywhere he sits by the road and go moody be a little bit be to get a little bit of giving them immediately immediately predictability the fool is like a mongolian idiot child who isn't that interested in survival
who are
we'll take a plate of food and run his finger around and it and make a wonderful slosh with the stew and then watch it drip from the tip of his finger they won't eat for quite a while and then he'll play with and all sorts of ways than is attentional will be distracted by something else and they will chase after that is the but he if the long as you don't cross him this
the case of the mongolian idiot he remains the most wonderfully friendly swinging kind of a cat and but he has no ambition
he doesn't fight for himself
and nobody can ever get him to
so the fool has always been used as a kind of analogue of the sage
there's a hindu verse which that sometimes naked sometimes mad now as a scholar now a fool thus they appear on a the freemen
and if you read the biographies of the early life with sri ramakrishna or sri ramana maharshi
they are our absolutely wild
now not all of this you see again just as in reading drunk so you mustn't take you to literally
these things are said by way of a kind of over stress to correct
another kind of overstressed in the opposite direction
when a japanese scholar many years ago explained the teaching of buddhism to me

he said something i had never heard anybody else say that the buddha taught for example that life is suffering in order to correct the wrong view that it ought to be pleasure
he said that everything is impermanent in order to correct the wrong view that reality lasts forever in time
so the idea of the middle way it's set up in this fashion by
going to one extreme in order to correct another this is a very common asian technique and it has found especially in zen well teaches when they are asked about something sacred will always answer in terms of something secular
the tree in the garden
then when you ask about something secular they answer in terms of something sacred thing as does a master in his student working in the field and they are using a knife to prune and the student sadness as to the master give me the knife and he gives it to him point first
and so he says but please let me have the other end and teach us as what would you do with the other end see the question immediately it turns into a kind of a metaphysical thing
so this play back and forth
between the extremes has as its interior design
the awakening of the mind to polarity that i was talking to you about yesterday this thing of mutual arising
drugs or tells a story about this he says a sudden keeper of monkeys said with regard to their ration of nuts that each monkey should have three in the morning and for at night but at this the monkeys were very angry so the keeper said they might have in the morning and three at night with which arrangement they were all well pleased
now the number of nuts was the same he goes on to say but there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of those concerned
ah
this that accesses the way of conduct of the sage
the basically drugs as philosophy is a philosophy of relativity
he makes a great deal of the point
that's our
there is no absolute standard of great or small of important or unimportant
there is a story for example of i sort of enfant terrible at a banquet and the speeches are being made after dinner and somebody gets up and says that the human being as the highest of all human of all creatures that the whole world serves humanity
andr
a lot of pompous nonsense the small boy gets up and says that since tigers feed on human beings it's quite obvious therefore that human beings exist for the service of tigers
ah
for dancer
you must get the point of view
that small things are as big as big things can be in big things are a small a small things can be everything can be looked at
as great or small important and unimportant and all the steps between
because his conception of the world is essentially a cyclic
in his idea of the circle and
taoist and zen teachers have a whole method of teaching by circles and drawing circles
the center of a circle
is any point on this conference
you can begin anywhere
does a cohen and zen buddhism which asked the question indra built the seamless tower where did he stop
now a seamless tower is like a sleeve with no no see my it
ah it's a as a continuous cylinder of cloth so the continuous cylindrical tower is the seamless tower where do you stop
so in the same way where does the circle start at the circle of life the cycle of life the interdependence of the bees and flowers the interdependence of long and short to see it all circular
and so
there is there is nowhere and there is everywhere that it can begin
in the same way when he discusses the organs of the body he makes a catalogue of all these organs and says now which do you prefer
a
is as which one it comes first and which one follows which one rules and which ones are servants he said it seems that the may be a governor in all this but nobody could ever find it
this is a very strange passage and drugs or which i've seen translated in many different ways that as an absolutely absurd translation of drunks are on the market now published meant a books by professor of chinese at harvard and it is absolutely ridiculous the whole thing is made by man who is i'm sure an ex missionary
and
keeps talking about god
well there is no expression in jaunts of a god
there is this sub expression

ah

gen sir
no
kim run
which has almost the same meaning as zit on spontaneity of itself so this means it's not that something is so through the power of heaven
now heaven
jan is
mean simply the universe
as you look out from earth which is as it were the center of the base
like everything else the whole expanse of the cosmos is ten heaven
and there is no connection in the idea of heaven with some sort of personal ruler of the universe
so the notion of god you see as we understand it is really very foreign indeed to taoists thought
and when you see somebody translating this as god it is a gives a very wrong impression of this teaching for example there is a passage in which
tion asked john saying can one get the dow so as to habit for one zone
and a sage answers
your body is not your own
it is the delegated image of
john
and an omission or is translate god because they read the bible man has made in the image of god your life is not your own it is the delegated adaptability of heaven right
yara offspring are not your own they are the dedicated
seeds of heaven
you move you know not how you are at rest you know not why these are the operations of the ways of dow so how could you get down so as to have it for your own
similarly there's a passage which says when a drunk man falls out of a cart though he may suffer he does not die
because his spirit is in a condition of security he does not suffer from contact with object could be existences if such security may be got from wine how much more from
kann nun from being a in accord with ah the spontaneous rhythm of the universe that's really what it means
but in the anxiety of missionaries and missionaries have been you see the great western they've been the foundation of chinese scholarship in the west to translate the scriptures and chinese they studied chinese they were the first people to start a chinese and they have constantly therefore
had an interest in slipping chinese
chris christian ideas into chinese classics just in the same way as when you read monier williams is sanskrit dictionary which is the base dictionary for sanskrit study for centuries it's all made up with a missionary bias
but this notion you see of god in the sense of the personal ruler of the world is totally foreign to chinese thought
there isn't even an idea in chinese thought of
the law of nature as we have it
see these the the motions of the body
the harmony of the organism is not what it is in obedience to a law
the
the chinese do have an idea of law
this is the word sir
ah
this is an interesting character
nowadays written this way

but originally written like this

just sir
this is a drawing of a sacrificial iron cauldron with a knife beside it
and it comes from a time when
the laws were inscribed on the sacrificial cauldrons so that when people came to offer their sacrifices they would read the laws
certain sages objected to this and said
that if the people know what the laws are in the fixed terms of writing they will develop a litigious spirit
that is to say they'll start haggling about what it really says and as you know that is the principal occupation of lawyers
and they said that the the the thing is that you you mustn't write it down like that
and so the the dow is described
as woods or
we will translate literally lawless
but it means of course transcending this kind of law which is a
specific law positive law i think is the correct legal term
so there is no notion in the taoist philosophy or if one might almost say in chinese philosophy as a whole for the certainly includes confucianism no notion whatsoever of the world as responding to a boss
so the body in other words does not have in it a ruling organ it's order
is
the consequence of of the operation of every part of it existing together simultaneously arising mutually
there's no gov
now the difficulty you see it in john's as philosophy the difficulty with human beings is they begin to think in terms of governing and ruling and they set out to dominate themselves and their surroundings
and invariably this leads to a mess
he tells the story of an ancient man by the name of paulo
polo was a great horse trainer
this is where we get the word polo from
but he said polo absolutely ruined the nature of horses
horses were nice charming creatures like dean swift's venoms or before apollo interfered and ruin their nature
then he says and other places a good carpenter doesn't need a square or a campus
he works without it
and this is fantastically true of japanese carpenters
you should see one of the fascinating things and going to japan as these old style carpenters working from the roughest architectural plans you could imagine
and with the strangest instruments that they have an uncanny knack of fitting things by feel and by i
a great story is told of good
ceremonial raising of the rich poll of a new temple
and it was being done by a certain guild of carpenters and there was a rival guild in town which had not got the contract and they were very sore about it so during the night one of the members the rival bill came and he chopped off six feet or so of the ridge pole
and so when the master craftsman came in the morning and all the priests had arrived the ceremony of raising the roof beam
he looked at it and said somebody has interfered with us
it must be our enemy gill they've cut off six feet of the roof beam anyway he said never mind i will put it right and he took his hammer and ceremonial is struck the beak then said raise it and it was raised and it fitted exactly
some
the our database of cause that the master capa de knew that this would happen and he made the beam drool on

without those sort of stories are always associated with the art of carpentry
ah
he needs no square you see because
his sense of
skill
that is in his og organism in his nerves in his senses is much more subtle
than anything that can be made with instruments
there are all kinds of stories about the artists of the forest excelling in this kind of thing of knowing with tremendous precision exactly where something should go
so a master is decorating a ceremonial tea room and is with his student and the student wants to know where to put a hook for hanging a bamboo bays for flowers on the wall and the master says there and the stew
makes a little mark somewhat later student rubs off the mark gets rid of it
but he remembers by a tiny little secret prick in the cloth where it should go
and then he says the teacher excuse me sir but i forgot what you said that thing should go the teacher says it was there and he puts his finger exactly on the same spot he that's the sort of thing that is admired
without the slightest calculations and now he goes on and says
the drugs or explains at length that music has been ruined by the five notes
says the five notes will make a man deaf and the five colors will make a man blind
how does this mean
it sir
well it said the thing is that if you think that are only five notes you can't hear
if you think that only five colors you can't see
moment you say this is a problem we have in music that we've got a notation
which is our
a chromatic scale
and the stave the way we can write music is limited to that possibility
but there are all kinds of subtleties between every one of our notes
same way in writing our rhythm we have to go in steps from how note half note quarter note eighth note sixteenth notes on and we can increase the value of each by one half by dotting it
but that's the limit of our rhythmic expression
whereas in all oriental music
you have an infinite continuum both of tone and rhythm
they make the most extraordinarily complicated rhythms and the way you learn music is not from notation not from measures but from the living body of your teacher demonstrating the ways of playing instruments so you follow the teacher the man
instead of what it says in a book
so
the whole principle then is one of
i'm not a success in life through not pushing it around through not trying to govern it
he tells a story as a matter of fact johnson has a very funny trick a lot of his wisdom he puts into the mouth of confucius
he said the confucius was one day doing this and he ran into loud sir they had an argument and loud sir one than the next time he talks about confucius are teaching lots of doctrines
this to the immense confusion of everybody but it said one day confucius was standing by a river where there was a tremendous cataract and plunging down and he suddenly saw an old man coming out of the forest who fell into the river and suddenly disappeared into the cataract and he said oh
oh dear to bad probably some old fellow tired of life who want to put an end to it all the next moment way downstream the old man gets out of the water and starts bouncing along and confucius is amazed that he sends one of his disciples that to catch this fellow for he disappears he said so i was thinking that you would
going to commit suicide and i suddenly find that you came out of that cataract alive do have some special method by which you do this now i have no special methods said the old man i just go in with the well and come up with the swell because i don't resist the water i entirely identify myself with water
is utterly utterly relaxed does rolling around in the term and not resisting in any way and so he has preserved
he goes with a stream roles with a punch or whatever you want to call it
again of course there is exaggeration
in a story of this kind
just as this exaggeration and the story of the hunchback of the tree and so on
because
true will way or letting go non-interference it doesn't mean for example flab enos
a lot of people when they think they're relaxing merely become flabby
and if that is so you know you would
the perfectly relaxed person would slowly become jello
and would spread out on the floor and finally drip through into the basement

relaxation you see is this is simply something that happens when there's too much yang and you too much of the positive you need to balance off to the in
and the trouble is that human beings in their anxiety to control things exhibit too much young too much aggressiveness too much of the mail principle they need the balance of the female
and so all these exaggerations in the direction of let things go let things happen don't interfere
stressing the in point of view to compensate for the excess of again
and furthermore the difficulty always comes i remember reading a book called you must relax
the difficultly always arises when one feels i must relax i've got to let go and let things happen
how on earth do i do it
i
even in trying to relax i'm all tense because i'm anxious that it must happen and maybe it won't and how do you do it you see
if you can't
achieve will weigh like that
what you have to understand is that you don't you don't have to do anything there is no method as the old man said
that the meaning of would or when you call the dow is walter or lawless it means that is no method in it
that you can master and do it what you have it's all based on understanding or what are psychologists call insight that
you have to find out
that there is
nothing that you do
as an sauce and cause of action separate from everything else
when you know that that there is no separate acting you then there is no need to try to relax
the thing you you have to see is that the flow of the dow as i said yesterday with the illustration of the bit people swimming in a strong stream that the flow of the dow goes on anyway
just like the flow of time for example you can get out of the present moment
you can think about the past and you can think about the future
but since you do that thinking now
the president is inescapable
all right now the present moment it does doesn't that it has a sense of flow
time is going along life is going along time actually the clock time is simply a measure of flow a way of going tick tick tick tick and counting the ticks and say well we've lived through so many tics
ah
but nevertheless this this the real time as distinct from this ticking thing is it is a flowing
and yet it still isn't that fascinating
if it moves but you're always there it's always now never get out of now
right now if you can feel that see that you can't get out of now
and you never will ah
z now realize that what we call now is the same thing as dow
the dow the course of things the eternal now the presence of god anything you want to call it see that's now and you can't get out of it
so there's no need to get with it because you can't get out
think that's beautiful you just relax and do are their ah ha ha ha
so that that's the principle of flowing you can make her all kinds of very clever ways of postponing finding this out
it's terribly simple but you can say well this is a very spiritual matter and i'm an uninvolved person and it'll take me a great deal of time to realize this and more than an intellectual way that's an excuse for playing your own game
i'm not finding this out there are all sorts of elaborate ways of doing that and you can put it off by indulging in the most complicated systems of spiritual culture and yoga and so on and so forth and that's all right i have an objection to are putting it off if that's what you want to do
do but actually it's always here now just as you can't get away from now who can't get out of the dow
that's the humor of the whole thing
and that's why to answer
ah as is beautiful light touch
the he says
the on is white without a daily bath the crow is black without being painted in inc
and this is the same saying you know is and xin
in this spring landscape
there is nothing superior nothing inferior flowering branches grow naturally some short some long
are they say a long thing is the long body of buddha a short thing is the short body of butter
there are therefore you see blondes and brunettes
fat people and skinny people tall people in shock people
couch of people vulgar people
even the christian him says the rich man in his castle the poor man at his gate god made them high and lowly an order their estate
we don't sing that now because we've got too much social functions
in that
in i think i'm i probably read this passage yesterday maybe i didn't have die he had a jersey drawn to as this to say about it

those who say that they would have right without its correlate wrong or good government without its correlate misrule do not apprehend the great principles of the universe nor the nature of all creation i might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of earth or of
negative principal in without the positive young which is clearly impossible get people keep on discussing it without stop
such people must be either fools or knaves
of course one could always reply to a dancer that they have to be fools and knaves so that we can recognize the existence of sages
ha ha ha

mr miller mannequin
yes he did he has it in another way here
speech is not mere blowing of breath it is intended to say something only what it is intended to say cannot get be determined
it is their speech indeed or as they're not can we all can we not distinguish it from the chirping of young birds
how can dow be so obscure that there should be a distinction of true and false how can speech be so obscured that there should be a distinction of right and wrong
where can you go and find dow not to exist where can you go and find that words cannot be proved
by are inadequate understanding and words are obscured by flowery expressions hence the affirmations and denials of the confusion and the medallion schools each denying what the other affirms and affirming what the other denies each denying what the other firms and affirming what the other denies brings us only confusion there is nothing which is not the
this there is nothing which is not that
what cannot be seen by that the other person can be known by myself hence i say this emanates from that that also derives from this this is the theory of the interdependence of this and that
nevertheless life arises from death and vice versa possibility arises remain possibility and vice versa affirmation is based upon denial and vice versa
which being the case the true sage rejects all distinctions and takes his refuge in heaven that's in the universe
for one may base it on this yeah this is also that and that is also this this also has its right and wrong and that has its right and wrong does then the distinction between this and that really exists or not when this the subjective and that the objective are both without their correlates that is the very access
of dow and when that access passes through the center at which all infinities converge affirmations and denials like blend into the infinite one hence it has said that there is nothing like using the light
see the axis of the opposites is the perception of the polarity
they
difference between them is explicit but the unity of them is implicit
the difference the explicit difference between two ends of a stick but the implicit unity that they are ends of the same stick you see
so that's the access the axis of dow is the you might call it the secret conspiracy
that it lies between all polls and all opposites which is implicit esoteric or what have you want to call it that they're fundamentally one
so that unity
whether it's between you and the universe
or whatever polarity you want to take it is not something that has to be brought into being
if one brings it into being one assumes that it doesn't exist that's called and then putting legs on a snake or a beard on a eunuch
ah there's something unnecessary easy
so it exists it is always there and you can see it so vividly and actually put your almost almost put your finger on it and sense it if you understand that the movement of the dow is exactly the same thing as the present moment
now of course who try to grab the present moment
and gets get ready get ready with the ought to clapper and say now
it's gone
the finer and finer you draw the airline on the watch to don't know exactly when now is you could eventually get the bible you can't see it at all the but if you leave it alone and you don't try to grab the moment as it flies but it's always there so you don't have to market
and have to put your finger on it because it's everything that there is and so the present moment sudden expands and it contains the whole of time all past or future everything you never have to hold onto it

this is key a in san francisco you've been listening to a lecture by the late alan watts entitled wisdom of the ridiculous if you'd like catalogue of all the available once lectures you can send a stamped self-addressed envelope to m e a box three or three sausalito calif
kenya that's m e o box three or three sausalito california