Alan Watts / Be Silent and Talk to Yourself / Original Audio/Video Remix

An homage to Alan Watts...be silent

I'm a big fan of Alan Watts.

For those who don't know him he's a philosopher/lecturer who primarily talks about buddhist and taoist ideas. More than ever we live in a fast paced world. Steemit is a fast paced world! Notifications, twitter, facebook, youtube, posts to write, shows to watch, life flies by in an instant and we often don't take enough time to reflect, look inside ourselves and truly understand what we need. This video is an excerpt from a lecture about meditation wrapped inside a story about a heron.

Give yourself permission to be the heron.

I have provided a transcription of the relevant parts for those who prefer to read/can't watch the video. It sounds much better coming from him though.

Transcription

There is the heron, standing quietly and serenely, watching the water. The whole meaning of this attitude to life is what is summed up in the entire eastern idea of meditation typified in these buddha figures. I want to try today, to explain to you something of the meaning of this attitude to life.
Fundamentally, meditation is not so much an exercise as it is a certain way of viewing one’s mind or ones consciousness.

You remember then that heron I showed you?

When that heron was watching the fish, it wasn’t looking all over the place, fish here ? fish here ? The heron was just quiet. And as it were, the whole area of vision is simply coming to the heron’s eyes.The moment it sees a ripple in the water it darts down to get the fish.

The more we tend to live in a world of thought, the more we tend to live in an abstract world that is removed from and has a gap between it and the real world of nature. And as a result of this we tend to live in a world that is in some ways unsatisfying, lacking in vitality and life. And also people tend to think all the time, this becomes for every civilized community, every civilized person a sort of habit which is like constantly talking to yourself.

Now of course when you meet me here on the t.v. screen, I’m always talking, or almost always. But I assure you I am not always talking. I am often silent because after all we have to be silent some of the time don’t we? In order to hear what other people have to say and therefore to have something to talk about.

You remember then that heron I showed you?

Talk to yourself.

Bring a lot of images before your mind which have nothing to do with what’s right in front of you. The function of this exercise, this posture, is to let the whole world come to you without interfering with it in any way, just sitting like that.
You may say, that’s a great waste of time, there are all sorts of interesting things in life of to do. Why just spend some hours sitting. The reason that I tried to explain is that, it is through this that one comes to have a contact, no longer with the world of abstractions, no longer with a world of thought, but with the world that actually is.