Beyond Theology - Alan Watts

[Dogensoto]

Well, I'm now reading through the book again (along with other things) Very difficult to actually find suitable quotes as each is to be found in a wide context and seems to lose potency when quoted separately. Nevertheless just a two sentence quote here.

To be quite sure, to be set, fixed, and firm, is to miss the point of life. For living and being is a perpetual abandonment of the known and fixed situation.

This is from Chapter 1, "The Chinese Box". This sort of box is one that contains smaller boxes, and perhaps can then find itself in a bigger box itself! Quite suggestive of how our thoughts and concepts can morph according to context!

Anyway, maybe more further along.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Dogensoto

To be quite sure, to be set, fixed, and firm, is to miss the point of life. For living and being is a perpetual abandonment of the known and fixed situation.

yeah definitely resounds from chapter 76 of the tao te ching. Here is a relevant conclusion from that passage:

So that which is rigid and unyielding is the student of dying
That which is yielding and weak is the student of living

[Dogensoto]

I may have mentioned reading also the Collected Letters of Alan Watts. I'm slowly ploughing through and must say that those written in his "christian years" are quite a revelation. These years spanned 1941 to 1951 and included the five years spent as a priest in the Anglican Church (in the USA) The content throws light upon his "Beyond Theology" book.

[Redchic12]

Wow didn’t know he had been a Christian or a priest.

Love the quote!

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

Wow didn’t know he had been a Christian or a priest.
Love the quote!

To clarify - he was an Episcopalian priest at one time, not to be confused with Catholic.

[Dogensoto]

Originally Posted by Redchic12

Wow didn’t know he had been a Christian or a priest.

Yes, this was after his initial immersion in mostly "eastern" thought. But his Christianity was very much of the "mystical" side, but he was at pains to point out - again and again - that this was very much in line with the deeper teachings of Christian theology as properly understood. Obviously he had no time for what he called "exoteric" (popular) Christianity of the mainly Protestant Fundamentalist variety. A brief excerpt from one of his letters (from 1947)

.......involves a hardening and conventionalizing process which renders all popular religion (whether Christianity or Buddhism) superficial — an imperfection which is simply inevitable, but which we must no more resent or deplore than the fact that children of six cannot be taught the calculus. When certain persons insist that this exoteric religion is the whole truth, and that there is no other way of salvation, we have fanaticism, which is also almost inevitable .....

Eventually he began to seriously question his vocation, to reconcile his own beliefs with that of the Church, and (as his daughter Joan writes) "had to acknowledge that he’d been so drawn in to the dogma of Christianity as to lose his own identity therein. He had created a trap for himself, trying to lead a Christian life, yet, within the Church, living a communal and unconventional lifestyle."

All quite interesting. I think we all need to find our very own path, time and place - this rather than simply being given one by the culture and circumstances into which we are born.

[Redchic12]

Dogensoto…….......”involves a hardening and conventionalizing process which renders all popular religion (whether Christianity or Buddhism) superficial — an imperfection which is simply inevitable, but which we must no more resent or deplore than the fact that children of six cannot be taught the calculus. When certain persons insist that this exoteric religion is the whole truth, and that there is no other way of salvation, we have fanaticism, which is also almost inevitable”.

Yes I definitely agree with this statement.

Thank god he had the strength and courage to leave, otherwise we would t have been given the benefit and inspiration of his talks.

[Dogensoto]

I've drifted a bit from reading through the "Beyond Theology" book again, more into the Collected Letters. These letters are so good and while easily identified as being by the one who wrote the various books on zen and what-not, nevertheless reveal another side to Alan Watts.

[Miss Hepburn]

Ok, you convinced me ...I ordered his Collected Letters.

[Dogensoto]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Ok, you convinced me ...I ordered his Collected Letters.

The early ones are to "Mummy and Daddy" (and he continues addressing them as such!) but they get interesting when he begins to study for the priesthood. I'm now into the post priesthood period, 1951 onwards.