Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Truth
  • Life is a Game: Alan Watts & Happiness

Life is a Game: Alan Watts & Happiness

6 Nov ’11 3 Comments Written by Juliet Bennett

I have noticed that in times I’m feeling down, reading or listening to Alan Watts makes me happy again. Why? His deep bellowing laugh and sense of humour? Maybe that’s part of it. But really it’s his philosophy, it just “clicks” with me. It makes me feel good. Life is a game, says Watts.  When I hear his words the dramas of my ego disappear into the cosmic drama I’m a playing. I remember that everything I know and think, is just a question of how I am looking at it.

In his book The Meaning of Happiness, Watts recaps the two most common types of books on happiness:

  1. those that tell us how to become happy by changing our circumstances
  2. those that tell us how to become happy by changing ourselves

His book falls into neither of these two categories:  ‘it is possible in a certain sense to become happy without doing anything about it.’ [1] Watts explains that he sees happiness as ‘not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realized through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it.’ [2]

Happiness, says Watts, starts with total acceptance: a ‘yes-saying to everything that we experience, the unreserved acceptance of what we are, of what we feel and know at this and every moment.’ [3]

It is only when you seek it that you lose it... Like your shadow, the more you chase it, the more it runs away. [4]

Life and happiness is ‘unusually complicated because in fact it is unusually simple; its solution lies so close to us and is so self-evident that we have the greatest difficulty in seeing it, and we must complicate it in order to bring it into focus and be able to discuss it at all. This may seem a terrible paradox, but it is said that a paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention… Nothing could be more obvious and self-evident than a man’s own face; but oddly enough he cannot see it at all unless he introduces the complication of a mirror, which shows it to him reversed. The image he sees is his face and yet it is not his face, and this is a form of paradox.’ [5]

In The Nature of Consciousness Watts explains that in his philosophy ‘there is no difference between the physical and the spiritual. These are absolutely out-of-date categories. It’s all process; it isn’t ‘stuff’ on the one hand and ‘form’ on the other. It’s just pattern— life is pattern. It is a dance of energy. And so I will never invoke spooky knowledge. That is, that I’ve had a private revelation or that I have sensory vibrations going on a plane which you don’t have. Everything is standing right out in the open, it’s just a question of how you look at it.‘

We are expressions of The Transcendent playing a game of hide and seek with Itself:

‘You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate “you” to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real “you” is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For “you” is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.’ [6]

 

As in this symbolic representation of John Wheeler’s “Participatory Universe”, we see ourselves as the reflexive eye that has emerged within life’s story, and looks back at where it has come from. So… if you’re feeling down, remember:
Accept your self, just as you are.
Accept the world, just as it is.
See the connections.
Live. Die. Hide. Seek.
Don’t chase happiness, express it.
Life is a game, have fun with it.
Participate. Play.

[1] Alan Watts, The Meaning of Happiness: The Quest for Freedom of the Spirit in Modern Psychology and the Wisdom of the East (London: Village Press, 1968). p. xi.
[2] The Meaning of Happiness. p. iv.
[3] The Meaning of Happiness. p. vi.
[4] The Meaning of Happiness. p. xxi.
[5] The Meaning of Happiness. p. xxiii.

[6] Alan Watts, The Book : On the Taboo against Knowing Who You Are (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969). p. 118.

Truth
Alan Watts, social construction
Similar posts
  • Business leadership in climate change — I am consistently surprised by the initiative and leadership taken by businesses to address the climate crisis. Not all businesses obviously (e.g. ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and the other vested interest that have funded climate denial movement and created vast climate confusion), but MANY businesses and business analysts, scholars and consultants are doing a extraordinarily better job than many governments [...]
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]F... — On 15 April 2016 the so-called “Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015″ was “Lapsed at prorogation” and the current status on the bill is (thankfully, at this stage) “Not proceeding”. I’m not sure whether this is a permanent status, or whether they just ran out of time and will return to the bill later…  When I see the word “fairer” associated with this bill [...]
  • A new lens to view the world: the wor... — My PhD is essentially an exercise in communicating and examining the potential for an  alternative worldview to the mechanistic materialism offered by process philosophy to contribute to addressing structural forms of violence and working toward peace. Process philosophy is too rarely taught in university philosophy as the current fashion there is divided between analytical or postmodern navel gazing. Yet process [...]
  • Thoughts on a morning walk — On my walk this morning: –       I realised that truth, reality, and illusion, are completely relative and self created –       the truth of a religion is truth for that person, it is made real by the stories that are told, and because each moment is in a way timeless, these truths are eternally real –       yet when truths are examined [...]
  • Boundaries between Self and World — “Your skin doesn’t separate you from the world; it’s a bridge through which the external world flows into you, and you flow into it.” More Alan Watts? Yes, it’s always a good time for more Alan Watts. Over and over and over, repeat. “The whole world is moving through you, all the cosmic rays, all the food you’re eating, the [...]
Chicago, Rednecks & Reading the Signs
Poetry, Creativity and Storytelling

3 Comments

  1. Chris Birdsall
    26 Dec ’12    

    Thank you SO much for posting this. I have been having a hard time with life the past few months; depression, loss of my job, beginning a new career, beginning a new relationship only to have it end abruptly etc… Today, Christmas of 2012, I have been sad but after reading this, I have realized my need to “lighten up.” It’s just another day. I love Alan Watts and have been reading and listening to him for a couple of years now. – Chris

    Reply
  2. alexander Kesselaar
    12 Apr ’18    

    Accept your self, just as you are.
    Accept the world, just as it is.
    See the connections.
    Live. Die. Hide. Seek.
    Don’t chase happiness, express it.
    Life is a game, have fun with it.
    Participate. Play.

    Is this your quote? I absolutely love it.

    Reply
    • Juliet Bennett
      28 May ’18    

      Thanks Alexander! Very much Watts-inspired, but I believe I put them together 🙂

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • Big History Blog Series: Chapter 1 – The Big Bang
    25 Mar ’10
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Related posts

  • Alan Watts
    • Alan Watts Fan Club
    • Retreat from the city: Watts’ mountain cabins and old ferry-boats
    • Do you know the secret? The “Law of Attraction”… what the bleep?!
    • Commemorating 100 years of Alan Watts
    • The woe of efficiency
  • social construction
    • Preserving “The Pyramid” – the reason things are the way they are…
    • Have you met TED? Introducing “Narratology”
    • Social Construction of the “Self”
    • Poking Fun at Society’s Stories
    • Education, Work and the Social Distribution of Knowledge

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress