Alan Watts, "Still the Mind: an introduction to meditation"

I read Watts' "Still the Mind" over a period of several months and finished this evening. The experience of reading the book varied, from feeling meditative to thought-provoking, but it was enjoyable.

Part I: The Essential Process of the World, gently suggests and leads one to an alternate view of things, based much more upon perception than belief. This vital stage-setting comprises more than half the book, and I'd often find myself stopping after a few pages or even paragraphs to meditate on what I'd read. Not that the ideas were new, but Watts has a way with words that was fresh and perfectly expressive. And he asks lots of questions, many of which I'd considered myself, but enjoyed revisiting. The second chapter, entitled "Meet your Real Self" was also familiar, but the logical leading was often too slow for a nimble mind, especially one who'd travelled that path before.

Part II: The Essential Process of Meditation, is a scant thirty pages. The first chapter, again, was logic-based, but had more creative directions. (And I was a bit tired when reading it this afternoon.) Watts begins, I am by nature a person who has the fundamental feeling that existence is extremely odd. This time, logic starts to blend with beyond-logic as he writes, and I was encouraged by what I read. Though I occasionally seek validation, more frequently my hope is for somebody who understands:

So, to put it in a negative way, you can't do anything to change yourselves, to become better, to become happier, to become more serene, to become more mystical. But if I say you can't do a damn thing, you can understand this negative statement in a positive way. What I am really saying is that you don't need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.

Which was also exciting because it reminded me of Trev's encouraging quote in response to my last post. Watts makes a point about how when we allow it, the thing will do itself, and "we" are left on the outside, as observers.

I don't want to sound as though I know everything, or at least have nothing to learn - however - experience tends to be my teacher, and the way it's worked out lately, most of what I read just gives me some company. If my experience doesn't support an assertion that is made about "how things are," it reads like story-telling; a fantasy not expected to be believed. The alternative is that something has a ring of truth to it: as Watts' comment (posted by Trev) that I keep returning to, that the universe is God playing hide and seek with Himself: it struck me as true even though I couldn't verify by experience.

Another quote in a smaller package, from "I Heart Huckabees": "When you get the blanket thing you can relax because everything you could want or be you already have and are."

The second chapter in Part II, as well as Part III, deal with the practices of meditation and contemplation, respectively. Again, a lot of familiar ground, but also some new ways of framing things, different ways of seeing. Despite being rather exhausted as I was reading (and now, for that matter), they were valuable and comforting: not asking too much of me, but fresh enough not to bore. (Several years ago I read several books on meditation and contemplation, coming from the Christian and Catholic traditions, hence the familiarity.) When I'm tired, my mind tends to whir, or fixate on a song, or some other annoyance which wouldn't be annoying but that I don't feel like thinking at the moment, and I end up telling myself to quiet down. Sometimes repeatedly. Another route, of course, it to focus on what's actually going on: clicking of keys, hum of the refrigerator, water dripping someplace, footsteps upstairs. But attention is tougher when one is tired.

Some thoughts, prompted by a comment by Watts that we are each a nerve ending for the universe:

If all that is going on is the universe trying to experience everything - and it experiences some things through me (the Julie channel!) and other things through other people, then there really is nothing wrong, per se, it is just experiences, a grand simulation. So each of us is just a portal or a window; chairness is experienced through chairs, stone-ness through rocks, and so on. Nothing is right, or wrong, it just is.

I am by nature a person who is interested in experience. No doubt school helped with this: what is it like to be in that space? what is it like to sit in that chair? what is it like to stand up there? what is it like to hold that? what is it like to drink from that? what is the experience? The ultimate goal Watts makes suggestions toward is just that: to be the observer, to be the one watching, to be the one experiencing. Still the mind, and what remains is not what we think is there, but what truly is.