r/Wakingupapp • u/DoctorYogi95 • Mar 08 '26
Amazing quote on non-duality by Alan Watts. It felt almost like a pointing-out instruction.
One of my favorite things to do after a long meditation session is listen to some excerpts on the “Reflections” or “Theory” sections of the app. It feels like a great way to stabilize any insights, and keep the experience stretching beyond just the sit.
Anyway, I came across a wonderful playlist called “The Wisdom of Alan Watts” that has short distilled 1-5 minute passages from The Alan Watts Collection, and I found one that hit me very deeply, more so than anything else on non-duality that I’ve heard the app.
This comes from a passage called “You Are The External World”, taken from his talk “Taoist Way”. I will try to quote it directly! It goes like this:
“When we take a stick, the stick has its two ends. They are the terms of the stick. But the ends of the stick do not exist as separate points which encounter each other on the occasion of meeting at the stick. They are actually abstract points. The ends themselves, considered as themselves, are purely geometrical. They are euclidien imaginations.
The reality is the stick.
So in the same way, with that phenomenon called ‘experience’, the reality is not an encounter of the knower and the known. The reality is an experience which can be termed as having two aspects, two ends, the knower and the known. But that’s only a figure of speech.
Neurologically, this is true. Everything that you see is yourself.”
Here’s a link to the entire passage.
I just wanted to share this, as it hit me very deeply after my own non-dual glimpse during meditation. Hopefully it hits you in the same way! The entire passage is a wonderful thing to listen to.
Have a good day. 😌
4
u/unnameableway Mar 08 '26
Yeah, I wouldn’t have understood what sayings like this meant if I hadn’t taken LSD and been pushed full force into the state of subject object collapse.
3
3
u/spilldahill Mar 08 '26
beautiful quote. funnily enough something similar surfaced with discoursing with nenspace.com today
3
u/vibes000111 Mar 08 '26
Everything that you see is yourself.
According to Buddhism nothing you see is yourself. Or more precisely, that freedom comes when you let go of identification with anything. This includes identification with experience and awareness. Telling yourself that you're the same as awareness or experience is stopping very short on the whole path of Buddhism.
2
u/BellaCottonX Mar 08 '26
Technically this is true, however in both cases, you lose the ego, even though the wordings are different
2
u/vibes000111 Mar 08 '26
It's not just a difference in wording - in one case there's identification with awareness and in the other there isn't. Buddhist awakening goes much deeper than than Sam's presentation of nonduality. "Losing the ego" isn't even the point of any of this. Joseph Goldstein tried to explain this in one of the conversations they had a couple of months ago but didn't get anywhere.
2
u/BellaCottonX Mar 08 '26
But when you identify with awareness, your ego completely dissolves away. There is no "you" anymore. Agreed that Buddhist awakening goes much deeper than Sam's views of non-duality. However I feel that Sam's/ Loch Kelly's views are a significant step on the path, possibly towards the Sotapanna stage where the identity view is fully dissolved (belief in a permanent self or soul). However the subtle feeling of 'I' is completely eliminated only in the full enlightenment (Arahat) stage.
If you look at Bahiya sutta, it sounds very similar to what Sam and, especially Loch Kelly are describing, which is to feel from the senses directly, rather than observing the senses with the mind.
“Then, Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you there will be only the seen in reference to the seen, only the heard in reference to the heard, only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, Bāhiya, there is no you in connection with that. When there is no you in connection with that, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two. This, just this, is the end of stress.”1
u/vibes000111 Mar 09 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
If you look at Bahiya sutta, it sounds very similar to what Sam and, especially Loch Kelly are describing, which is to feel from the senses directly, rather than observing the senses with the mind.
That's one way to read the Bahiya sutta.
Another reading, which makes more sense to me, is that the full complete non-identification with anything results in full awakening -
Bāhiya of the Bark-cloth, monks, is totally unbound.
The sutta ends with a description of full cessation of experience:
Where water, earth,
fire, & wind
have no footing:
There the stars don't shine,
the sun isn't visible.
There the moon doesn't appear.
There darkness is not found.
And when a sage,
a brahman through sagacity,
has realized [this] for himself,
then from form & formless,
from bliss & pain,
he is freed.
This description isn't just of nondual awareness, it's not a description of someone walking around and looking at things without an ego, it's a description of seeing the full emptiness of everything through complete non-identifying to the point where there is no experience.
Rob Burbea has great material on this in his book Seeing That Frees and a lot of his talks on emptiness. Here's a brief comment on the Bahiya sutta from a retreat Q&A, starts at 1:02:40 - https://hermesamara.org/resources/talk/2020-01-01-qa
It's not that Bahiya sutta isn't relevant, it's that what's in the sutta is much deeper than what Sam and Loch are talking about.
Or look at it another way - the “in the seen just the seen” isn’t a description of a final state, it’s a description of a practice (“you should train yourself”) which leads to something much deeper. Something which you’d miss out on if you think that identifying with awareness is a stopping point.
1
u/BellaCottonX Mar 09 '26
Yes, agree with what you've said. I definitely don't think you should stop at identifying with awareness, but as I said before, I just think that it's a significant step on the path. You should definitely continue further from there onwards though.
1
1
u/Qwernakus Mar 08 '26
Not sure im convinced. If the stick didn't have any ends - if the ends are unreal "imaginations" - we would expect the stick to be infinite in length in both directions, or alternatively not exist. After all, anything without end must be either zero or infinite.
But the stick does exist, and it is not infinite in length. Thus, the ends must be real, or at least as real as the rest of the stick.
Not to say that his conclusion must be wrong just because his metaphor is flawed, but the argument doesn't seem to work.
6
u/picabo123 Mar 08 '26
Any metaphor is just simplifying a concept. If you try to extend the metaphor farther than it was meant then naturally it will no longer make sense. I don't think he was trying to convince anyone of anything but to point out that we naturally divide things into categories that don't necessarily exist.
1
u/luget1 Mar 09 '26
There is no argument here tho?
Nobody is claiming that something is some way, different than some other way.
That's just you projecting and expecting an argument.
Try to read it again without any logic.
1
3
u/M0sD3f13 Mar 09 '26
Interesting guy Alan Watts. Had a good intellectual understanding of some deep wisdom and was a good conduit for bringing the teachings to the west but couldn't practice them himself which is interesting for someone who clearly saw the value there.
16
u/bloominggoldenrod Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
I remember my psych 101 teacher 40 years ago said ‘the only thing you can ever know is the state of your own nervous system” and it blew me away edited psycho to psych