The Wisdom of Insecurity

Product Information

If, instead, one stops trying to separate from these experiences, they tend to dissolve on their own quite readily. We have made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intelligible with the fixed. We think that making sense out of life is impossible unless the flow of events can somehow be fitted into a framework of rigid forms. To be meaningful, life must be understandable in terms of fixed ideas and laws, and these in turn must correspond to unchanging and eternal realities behind the shifting scene. But if this what "making sense out of life" means, we have set ourselves the impossible task of making fixity out of flux.” This chase for happiness will never be over. It’s just what society’s trying to sell you, because it still hasn’t managed to come up with a better way of giving you true fulfillment. Alan Watts was a philosopher, speaker and writer, who spent the majority of his life getting the Western world to open up to Eastern philosophy, primarily from 1930-1970. He had a long-time radio show at a stationin the San Francisco Bay Area, which is also where he gained a large following and wrote most of the over 25 books he published on topics like Zen, Buddhism, religion and spirituality. From a scientific perspective, this isn’t surprising. Since we evolved as survival and replication machines, happiness is not an end goal in our makers’ designs, but an instrumental one. If being more anxious made us slightly less likely to be eaten by a tiger, but it destroyed many moments of uncomplicated bliss, that would be a positive trade-off. Is There a Solution to the Happiness Problem?

The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” The constant overthinking that our brain does cheats us of other experiences that our body and our subconscious has to offer. A person’s full potential to lead a holistic life is defined by all these experiences and not only one. We have to slow down our constant thought processes.Anxiety, fear, pain and dissatisfaction arise not directly, but because of our urge to separate this experiencer from the experiences.

The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it. Leadership Journeys [135] – Manish Kumar –“You never get enough time to spend with your loved ones” To the extent that we can say ideas are technologies, this gives the impression that these “spiritual” technologies for living a vastly improved life have been widely available but very rarely employed. That depressing observation, has a few possible explanations. Many Zen practitioners, seeing this paradox, resolve it through zazen, which is a strict meditative discipline. Watts, for his part, does not suggest meditation as a resolution to the paradox.God will restore you. He will turn it around. He will vindicate you if you will be still and have faith.

Even if you were to take the less extreme position that, perhaps, we desire happiness in addition to some non-subjective things, it appears we often don’t even do that, failing to maximize our happiness even when there is no appreciable benefit to any other purpose we might have. Leadership Journeys [128] – Marjukka Niinioja –“I had to learn to stop myself from speaking to listen more.” Instead of a method, Watts argues that the problem can be resolved immediately the moment it is properly understood. “When light is brought, the darkness vanishes at once,” Watts explains. If you asked Americans what their religion was in 1948, more than 9 out of 10 would’ve told you they’re Christians. Today, almost 20% of them openly admit to having no religion, meaning they’ve either left church or are just not religious at all. What do you want in life? I don’t think it’s an unfair stretch to say that being happy and fulfilled is a big part of what we want from life. While I can imagine sacrificing my happiness for an even greater purpose towards others, I can’t see a reason to sacrifice my happiness without some greater benefit.

All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.” I do not believe, as he contends, that most Christians view the stories in the Bible as being merely metaphors for the process of insight he describes in his book. Many practicing Christians genuinely do believe in an actual future heaven and hell, as opposed to being an analogy for enlightenment and the vicious circles we engage in on this earth.

If there is a moment to be enjoyed, it must be a present moment. However, if we are continuously living in an imagined, abstracted future (or past) moment, then when those moments actually come, we will miss them if we are living again in another imagined moment. Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.” What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.” Thus far, I’ve focused more on whether this approach could help resolve the problem of happiness and why it might not be more widely practiced if it is indeed as useful as it claims to be. However, practical issues aren’t the only thing at stake here. Is Watts’ view of reality actually true? Hold on, hold on – do you see what’s happening here? This is exactly the way we talk ourselves into getting on the hedonic treadmill– that is doing things you don’t like, to buy things you don’t need, to go on living, to keep doing things you don’t like.

While Watts’ thoughts seem closer to the mark on actual Eastern religious viewpoints, I think it’s also clear that this isn’t how most of those religions are widely practiced in Asia. Traveling in Asia makes it clear that most Buddhists and Hindus there are engaged in superstitious rituals with a more literal interpretation of scripture than Watts’ winking at the reader suggests. Why Isn’t This Approach More Widespread? The first, is that the tools don’t work. Despite all the false profundity of the writing, they hinge on an incorrect premise. The nature of reality and human existence doesn’t fit with this picture, or if it does, there is nothing we can do about it. To Watts, the problem of happiness is like the Polar Bear Game. This comes from that game where both players try to last as long as they can not thinking about polar bears. Unfortunately, the only way to win is not to play! For as soon as you try to play the game you’re inevitably going to think about polar bears. Alan W. Watts’s “message for an age of anxiety” is as powerful today as it was when this modern classic was first published. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.”