The House We Live in; 8; Alan Watts

Man, man's God, the world between, in this post-atomic age. In the cog of the University of Pennsylvania probes these areas with his guests today, author, and authority on Asian Theologies, Alan Watts. Professor Alan Watts, it's an enormous pleasure to have you here today. The program is the House we live in, the inquiry is man's relation to environment. The mode of inquiry has been to ask natural scientists to establish for us the environment, life, the evolution of man, to ask theologians to tell us what have been the historical concepts and contemporary concepts of God-nature man. In the sequence of religions, we've had discussions of the attitudes of primitive societies of Judaism, of Christianity, of Hinduism, and today now we discuss Zen Buddhism.

For me, this is an enormously important program. I have a sense of it being a culmination. I know that there are special problems in discussing Zen that it might perhaps not even be described as a religion. There's no concept of God, no concept of sin or salvation, no soul. And I also know there are very great difficulties in discussing it because it is claimed that it is not a meaningful to discussion. Nonetheless, in spite of all these difficulties, I think the fact that in Japan, through Zen Buddhism, there has been created the most elegant, the most wonderful, the most enduring physical environment, I think that is a product of man, it behooves us to understand what attitudes have produced this relation to the physical environment and this specific physical environment. And of course, the urgency of this problem, the West, is manifest. We must understand man's role in nature. We need this to have our destruction. We need this to create noble and noble and physical environments.

So it's great pleasure in anticipation that I wait to hear you discuss Zen Buddhism. Well I think the first thing that we must remember is that all those Zen exists today primarily in Japan. It's a product of both India and China. And you're perfectly right in suggesting that it's not a religion. I call it by a different term altogether, the word I use is a way of liberation. And to put it very briefly, I would say the function of a way of liberation is to release human beings from certain illusions that come about as a result of their taking what you might call a myopic or short-sighted view of human existence in this world. And generally speaking, the most usual form of this short-sighted view is taking seriously what should be taken as play. You know when kids play cops and robbers and they sort of forget it's a game and they take the side, they're on, cop or robber too seriously, it always ends in bloody noses.

And so at the basis of both Indian and Chinese philosophy, and especially the form of Chinese philosophy called Taoism, T-A-O, there is the fundamental conviction that the universe is a form of play. That doesn't mean it's in sincere but that it's functioning, it has no purpose in the future, it's like music. In other words, we don't play music in order to reach the end of the piece. If we did, we played as fast as possible or just cut out all the intervening movements and play the final chord. But just as the purpose of music is every moment of its unfolding and this is playing, so in both Indian and Chinese philosophy there is a view of the universe's play. Now the problem is that in certain ways human beings come to take it seriously and so lose their heads. If we go to Chinese philosophy, there is the basic concept underlying almost all Chinese

philosophy of what is called the yang and the yin. You know these two principles, the positive and the negative. And the original meaning of these words is the south and north sides of a mountain. The yang is the side towards the sun, the south and it's bright. The yin is the side towards the north and it's dark. Now you see, imagine a one-sided mountain. It's something that we simply can't conceive, both sides go together. And so this fundamental insight of Chinese philosophy might be called, realizing that underneath every conflict, every opposition, there is a fundamental harmony. And as is put by the old philosopher Laoza, who is the supposed founder of Taoism, when all the world recognizes goodness to be good, there is already evil. When all the world recognizes beauty to be beauty, there is already ugliness, thought

to be and not to be arise mutually. So that in this view there is no basic conflict between being and not being, between life and death, between spirit and essence. And well those concepts don't quite enter into Chinese philosophy you see. They don't even have a word which would mean spirit in the same sense as we mean spirit. We can trust spirit with matter or form with substance in the sense of stuff. And they don't do this. You see words mean different things according with what you can trust them, whether we can trust man with woman, it wins one thing if we contrast man with animal, it means another. And so in the same way this feeling of the fundamental unity of all opposites is the very groundwork of Chinese life. And we can of course pose the opposition to the Western view, yes, now in the Western view, we take the conflict of good and evil very seriously.

Traditionally we regard good as the absolute and evil as something finally to be eradicated. But in Taoist thinking this would be like trying to arrange a room so that everything in it was up and nothing was down. And it's very difficult to imagine what such a room would look like. So with this basic thought in mind, we could say the game of life consists in taking sides. You know in words of Lewis Carroll, Tweedle, Darwin, Tweedle, Dee agreed to have a battle. Because you can't have a war unless you can have a field of battle. And this is a symbol of a unity underlying all conflict. And the task of a way of liberation is you might say to use a phrase we use at my native country Britain to make a man a good sport in all the contests of life. So that though he may fight very hard for a certain cause, he knows that deep down underneath

everything, all oppositions are based on a fundamental harmony. And that's the awakening that is involved. You see awakening is a crucial term in Buddhism. The word Buddha, the title of the founder of Buddhism, means the awakened one, the man who woke up. And he awakens from what in the Sanskrit Indian languages called Mahya, M-A-Y-A. The world illusion, that's not the illusion that, you know, mountains and trees and stars and men exist. It's the illusion that they exist separately. Yes. Well, this again is an opposition, isn't it? The Western Transcendental View of Man apart from nature is absolutely in country distinction to this Eastern view of a unity within which man exists and we are concerned with man because we are man, but the unity pervades us. That's right. You see when Zen came to birth in China. This was approximately a 500 AD and it grew its period of formation was from about 500 to 900.

And it resulted from the confluence of Buddhism from India and the native Chinese philosophy of Taoism. Now just immediately after that period of great fruition, the Chinese started to produce their incomparable landscape painting. It was very, almost black and white, very, very restrained use of colour, where the landscape as such came to be an icon. Yes. You might say the whole, there is a spiritual symbolism in a certain sense in the art of Zen, but it always uses the naturalistic object. Yes. Well, the natural object. Yes, the natural object. And in the landscape, the human figure is always fitting into the scene rather than dominating it. Absolutely no such tradition in the West at all. Well, not until we felt Chinese influence. That's right. You see, all watercolour painting in the West is the result of Chinese influence. But whatever the impact upon watercolour painting, the impact upon philosophy was very, very, very small. Yes. But there still is, I don't think any comparable sense that a man can express his

unity with nature in some composition, either in painting or in the creation of a garden. But this is absolutely central to the eastern view. Now, this is true. I'm reminded in your mention of gardens of a celebrated story about a clergyman in the West. You see, he was making his rounds, and he stopped at the front gate of an old gentleman with a farm. And he looked at the new garden the man had made, and he said, well, my man, that's a wonderful job that you and the Lord have done with this piece of land. And the man said, yes, Reverend, but you should see it when the Lord had it to himself. And in this curious way, the man doesn't realise that he is also, the Lord still has it to himself. And that man is, as it were, a mobile, intelligent plant, an organising plant, introduced into this garden. Now, by contrast, the whole attitude of both the Taoistic philosophy and Zen Buddhism is that man is not separate from his natural environment.

He is very much in it. In the same way, for example, my fingers can move and be articulate. Each one of them can move by itself, but just because they are joined to the hand. And the hand, because it is joined to the whole physical organism. And in turn, the physical organism can be unique and individual and different. Just because it's united with its whole environment. In other words, our skin is not seen as the boundary between man and the world. But what joins man to the world? This discussion of the relation of man to nature, this concept of the relation of man to nature reflected in the garden, again, shows an appreciation of one thinks of the very quintessential statement of Western man, which I think is the Renaissance Garden, Volovico, Versailles, and so on, there isn't any doubt about the statement. This is transcendent man standing, making his impact in nature, establishing his ridges stencils upon the reluctant nature.

In contrast, in Japan, one sees under China, earlier in China, one sees man using nature as an artist to speak to man of some concept of order, which concept might be God. Yes. But man is an agent in the process and a participant, whereas in the Renaissance, man is the prime agent and the product and the fact of justification. Well, there are two stories I can think of, which illustrate this very well. In the English version of the New Yorker, Punch, I saw a joke some time ago of a garden of tulips, all standing in rows, and a parade sergeant who was gardening, standing and saying, and, and on the other hand, to go over to Japan, there's a famous story about the great team master, Riku, and he was a boy in the study in gardens. His master told him to sweep the path, and he swept this gravel path beautifully, cleanly. And the teacher came out and said, no, it's not right. That's not clean yet. So he swept it again. Still, not

approved by the teacher, well, he said, I've swept it twice. And now, what do you expect? And the teacher took hold of a branch and shook it, and some leaves fell on the path. And he said, that is a clean path. Sort of the perfect imperfection. Yes. I wonder when's came this Eastern view. Why is the world divided so simply? And we would certainly say the transcendent view is Western. And the sense, this unitary view of man is a participant, this view of the cosmos is a unitary thing with man is a participant agent is, I think, uniquely Eastern. Can I offer this? I am sure have no satisfactory explanation, but this has come to me, that we certainly know that the agriculture of Japan is probably the most productive per unit of area in the world. And the scenario which corresponds climatically to Scotland, north-tempered climate, they're able to get three crops a year from the soil. And it's been suggested, this only comes from

an people who have an extraordinary cue at the process of nature, that they do understand well the soil, germination, growth and harvest. They do understand well the nature of winds and snows. There is a sense of what this wind will bring, the nature of the snow, all of the natural phenomenon are very, very well understood. I'm advised that this is actually reflected in the language, where the word wind and the connotations of wind, the colorations of wind have about 40 descriptive terms. Now, is it possible to conceive that the pressure of men upon soil, the necessity to understand this process well, the necessity, the learning of the natural odd on this laws, this extended into language, this then reflected immediately into art, that this would be a process by which the whole thing would be symbolized in religion. Could one sense such a development? Yes, I think so. It's true, as you say, that the Japanese through the influence of Zen, through the influence of Taoism, have got a certain

feeling of adaptation to their land, not only have they managed to farm it marvelously, but also to build houses that had any rate in the old world of Japan quite apart from what's happening today. Yes. Work completely harmonious with their surroundings. You could say the house never stood out like a sore thumb. It always fitted the landscape. And in this way, within the limits of a culture that did not have technology, they performed marvels of conserving their natural resources. This is a very critical word, isn't it? This is a productive of conservation to understand well that which one can be produced, but to also understand how easily one can deplete exactly, you can serve everything. I mean, if you're gardening and you're pruning bushes, you cut up the twigs into small pieces and throw them on the soil where they act as compost. Yes. Everything is saved. Well, I have a sense that if ecology has a meaning to me as

the interdependence of organisms, microorganisms and the environment and among each other, but if ecology has any real meaning in terms of man that is an ecology involving human beings, I can't think of any more appropriate place than in the agriculture of Japan. And if you can think of art, if I think of art at least in terms of man and environment, it seems to me the best expression is the art of the garden art of Japan. Yes. And what is so important is that it doesn't exist to make barbecues, to facilitate some sort of togetherness at all. It has at its best in the gardens of Rio and G and days and in, I weight your correction and on pronunciation, sure and in. In these gardens, one knows that they're designed to speak to man of God, that they are contemplative places designed by priests for contemplation by priests and this seems to be an entirely different role from back which the garden has had. It has a role as a metaphysical symbol in the way that I think no other garden has. Yes. I wouldn't, it might be a little confusing to say that these gardens are places for the

contemplation of God because the word God has associations in the West, which are rather different from what a Buddhist wouldn't understand by the highest reality or the ultimate reality behind all nature. I should have said as a boson light. Well there is an important difference. You see, the West tends to think of God as the architect of the universe. As one outside it who plans it and builds it and puts it together as a construct. Now for the Eastern thought when we use an equivalent word for God, the Chinese Tao, it means the way of things. And here is not the idea of construction but rather of growing. Now if we watch for example a rose going from bud to full flower and we have a fast motion movie that makes it all visible in one act. We see it opening all together from the center outwards. That's the growing motion. But the making

motion would be like making an artificial flower where we bring the petals from different places and stick them all together. So God the creator who is essentially the architect is quite a different concept from Tao the grower of things. And so with this point of view the man tries to mold his environment by a growing technique rather than a making technique. And in other words he when he gets an area in which he's going to make a garden he asks the area what sort of a garden do you want to become? What sort of a shape does this bush want to assume? And when he gets rocks to put in the garden instead of sticking them down somewhere and planting moss on them he first of all leaves the rock in a place where moss will grow and then very carefully puts the rock in the right place and goes around the edges and works and works until it

looks as if it had always been there. But this is all done within a symbolism is it not? It isn't exactly symbolical. The peach tree for instance symbolized immortality. Yes but that is a popular symbolism that has nothing to do with zen. Zen is completely non-symbolic. A lot of people you know the characteristic method of teaching in zen is very curious. You know when we come to someone and ask a question like what is God or what is man we expect a straight philosophical or theological answer. But you go to a zen but it's then say now that to quote a particular story. I understand said the questioner that when this body crumbles to ashes and the whole universe is burned up in the end of things there is one thing that remains. What is that? And the master replied very casually. It's windy a game this morning. Now he wasn't saying that the questioner was a windbag. He wasn't using the wind to

symbolize some sort of reality behind all things in a pantheistic way. He was pointing directly without philosophizing. Without saying anything about it he was pointing to this actual concrete world in which we live. Now the point is if you observe the concrete world as it is you will find yourself joined to it. But if you are too confused by our way of thinking about it you will find yourself disjoint because you see all thinking is classifying. All thinking is is assigning words to bits of nature. And if we believe the words too much we begin to think that nature really does consist of separate things. This is the existence and the essence again. Yes. You see a thing is a unit of thought. It's a think. And anybody say a human body is as many things as you can think about it. Yes. And so we don't want to confuse our thinks with the actual world just as when we measure cloth and say it so many inches long a cloth a piece of

cloth 36 inches long isn't 36 different bits. And the trouble is that language and social convention makes us think of nature as separate bits. Now I accept this rebuke. I didn't understand that these gardens were not I assume these gardens were symbolic but this is not so. But nonetheless there is evocation is understood. You spoke of existence will which actually is a phrase used by Lucan. It's a very great American architect. But these gardens are induced. I meant to evoke if not enlightenment at least the contemplation for which might be coming. Yes. This is true. After all they are created after the model of the great song landscapes of the Chinese painters. Yes. And their function is of course in the crowded city of Japan to create the atmosphere of vast mountain landscapes. To evoke in other words the mood called Sabi or solitude. And but they don't you see they are not symbolical in the ordinary

way. They create a state of mind. They create an atmosphere in which one can be clear headed. There's the Zen phrase mushin which in Japanese literally means no mind. Doesn't mean being thoughtless in our sense of the word. They're kind of stupid without a thought in your head. It means being clear-minded so that one's mind is like a mirror and reflects accurately whatever comes in front of it. And so when this is called mirror like wisdom and when this mood is created by the garden then you know there's a Zen story which says when I first began to study Buddhism being just an ordinary person I thought that mountains were mountains and waters were waters. When I had penetrated some way into it mountains were no longer mountains and waters were no longer waters. But when I had thoroughly understood the whole thing I saw again mountains are mountains and waters are waters. In other words Zen is a way

of seeing that life is answered. The problem of life is answered at every minute. This is what it's about. You could say in our popular phrase this is it when we say it is the it the very thing you see. We're here and now is the experience here and now is the important moment of life. Not just living as we say cuphead DM. Drink today for tomorrow we die. It's not that attitude. It's something much more interesting than that. That now is the point where the universe begins. Now is the point where it ends. And if you're not here you're crazy in the sense you're not all here. So one thing you notice about Zen people they're always completely present. They're never distracted. When you meet them they're right on the spot. And I've often thought this is terribly relevant for us because although it's our technology and so on gives us a

tremendous ability to plan for the future. And that's very important. Nevertheless to plan for the future is only important for people who are capable of living completely in the present. Because if you plan for the future and you can that's all you can do when what you're planning for happens you're not there. You're working for something else ahead of it. Would you like to continue the discussion about elements of Eastern concepts particularly Zen Buddhism to the West? Well as of course as you know there has in recent years been a great awakening of interest in Zen and other forms of Eastern philosophy in the Western world. And there are sometimes rather difficult for us to digest because we take them in an extreme sense. For example the thing I was just mentioning. If a Western person gets the idea that Zen is the philosophy of living in the present he thinks this is an excuse for the irresponsible life. Yes. And you know he can say well let's forget about the future. Let's not make any plans at all. And in this way he distorts it and we

have to be careful when we absorb foreign ideas that they don't make a sick like a diet that we are not used to. And but although these things will happen initially as these new ideas come to us the we'll get over it. We'll gradually become adapted to it. Well it seems to me enormously important that we do abstract something from Eastern philosophies although I think there is a reciprocity. I think these could well take some of the compassion and social consciousness which is part of the Western heritage and perhaps as great as accomplishment and we certainly could do well to have some sense of the relation of man in nature that this is a mutuality. This is a mutuality. Actually in a way you spoke of this earlier the difference between East and West is a matter of abstraction. It isn't so vast as one might imagine there are human beings everywhere and they are very very alike in many ways. And I could

point out I mean one of the best books that was ever written about Zen is called Zen in English Literature. Oh yes. And it uses to illustrate Zen simply the great poets and authors of the English tradition. It makes a point of wealth really. Yes. Yes. Blake. Even R. L. Stevenson Dickens and so on. Well that's that's a subject for another absolutely splendid program to find the strain of non-transcendo, non-transcendental thought in the Western religions. What of this this are actually we can presume that in Japan that as long as agriculture is so important and this acuity to the process of nature and the laws of nature is folklore that there will be a productive agriculture. There will be a beautiful agriculture because a beauty is simply a reflection of it's enduring qualities as elegance, this productiveness and presumably this will also reflect itself in the artifacts of man the gardens and so on. But what what what of the West we have seems to be no corresponding view at all that's

not true there are some average views but there isn't any corresponding view in the West in any mammoth sense that man is an aspect of nature, man participates in nature. It's true we have bulldozed the world around but we are going to have to find out the warning of every ecologist soil conservationist population specialist, entomologist everybody is saying you must wake up and discover that the physical world is your own body and the violence you do to it is violence done to yourself. In other words your body is bigger than this, every man's body is the whole world. When man destroys he also destroys himself, when man builds he also adds to himself. Professor Alan Watts I'm very much very very much indebted to you for this dissertation. I'm grateful to you thank you very very much. The At McCarg's guest today has been Alan Watts member of the faculty of the

American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco and author of many works including The Way of Zen, and the recently published This Is It. Ian McCarg is chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania, a landscape architect, and a city planner. Transcripts of today's program are available. If you would like a copy simply send your name and address to the house we live in, WCAU Television, Philadelphia 31. This is N-E-T National Educational Television.