And if there is anything objectionable (not that I detect anything, but like I said, my brain is shot), some kind of slant or bias in the writing, it doesn't matter much to me, because I've got the ideas and concepts that I need. In simple yet beautiful language, Alan Watts offers a explanation on how these thoughts arises due to illusions of language and the idea of the self. But I've been unwell and unable to do much work or thinking at all, even what is required for my day-to-day life, and it really feels like a godsend that someone has done exactly the work that I would have wanted in exactly the way that I would have done it and it's just fallen into my lap. A number of very interesting insights, unfortunately couched in an overwhelming amount of unfounded speculation, illogical and mystical concepts, and baseless assumptions. I honestly think that if I had spent many years studying East Asian philosophy (drawing from literature and other sources as well, as Watts does) and compiling my findings into a short book, I would have come up with something very similar.

This echos the opening line of the Dao De Jing, which says, “The Dao that can be named, is not the true Dao. I’m not well read enough in these subjects to object to this characterization, but one is definitely left with the distinct impression that Watts’ views and traditional ones may have significant departures. Live in the present, because the present is essentially all there is; the past and future are mental memories that we evoke in the present. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The book also has an open/non-judgemental tone about it that sees the beauty and the divine in every man-made religion.When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. If you are the type of reader that highlights the important parts, i would suggest just dipping this entire book in yellow dye. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. Many Zen practitioners, seeing this paradox, resolve it through zazen, which is a strict meditative discipline.

What we are remembering about the past is happening right now and thus becomes part of our present experience. Beside the examples of saints and heroes I feel ashamed that I amount to nothing, and so I begin to practice humility because of my wounded pride, and charity because of my self-love. Applied in terms of religion, everything around us is God the Father, and our thoughts and mental words are "the Son who must be crucified if we are to see the Father, just as we must look at reality without words to see it as it really is. Put this one up there with Untethered Soul and The Echart Tolle books and Robert Wright's on Buddhism.Alan Watts is an ex Episcopal priest who converted to Zen Buddhism and then to Taoism, and then sort of moved beyond both in his own way. As is evident from his forgettable arguments about determinism, his own admittance of the relevant concepts' reliance on intuition and not intellectual argument, and the vast number of assumptions he makes without evidence, this is not meant to be considered a 'scholarly' work at all, despite the scientific references within. 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.

This inaccessibility of the philosophy could explain why it didn’t become the dominant understanding in most religions, since most people couldn’t reach past the metaphors and so, instead, hung onto them as literal truth.

We are anxious not only because we are not living in the eternal now but because we think there is a separate I.