Still the Mind

Summary

In this book Alan Watts, in essence, argues that by ceasing the relentless striving for control and allowing ourselves to simply be, we can rediscover the wonder of our existence and our unity with the world around us.

The main insight of this book is that you are not separate from the world, you are part of it. You are as much a part of the universe as a tree or a cloud.

We often forget this fact and act as separate units. This causes us to suffer in all kinds of ways. Meditation and spirituality are practices that try to help us heal this disconnect. Practices, which try to bridge the divide and make us realize that we are part of the world, not separate from it, again.

We should focus more on listening and observing instead of thinking and acting. It's about stilling the mind, doing less, but because of that being more connected to the world. It's also about reconnecting back to the Now, realizing that planning and reflecting are not life. Life is only happening in this moment. It's also about appreciating the little things, the "meaningless" acts of enjoyment, the play, the dance, the music, the art.

In the words of Alan Watts:

Some people think that to spend a lot of time gently humming nonsense to yourself is a waste of time. But ask yourself, What are you going to do with the time that you save?

Detailed Notes

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 phenomenon 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.

Publishers Preface

He spent nearly every morning alone, usually beginning with a Japanese tea ceremony followed by a period of meditation and contemplation. Then he would write. His writing and speaking grew quieter and deeper.

Introduction

Boom Recommendation: The Stages of Life – Carl Jung

Humans forget the natural marvel that they are, become disconnected from the world by their thoughts and egos. We can't stop thinking and that's why we miss how the world acts. Alan Watts taught people how to stop, and listen again.

Part I - The Essential Process of the World

Chapter 1 - Who We Are in the Universe

When you confer spiritual authority on another person, you must realize that you are allowing them to pick your pocket and sell you your own watch.

People have not improved very much, besides all the ideology and religions they practiced.

We are part of the universe as much as a flower is part of the field. The delineation of "us" ending at our consciousness and the boundary of our skin is not necessarily true. We are so much more than that.

How would you know you are alive unless you had once been dead?

What is in between something and nothing, in between being and non-being?

Plants and dolphins and other beings might have higher forms of consciousness than we do. How would we know, it's hard to know about a potato if it is conscious or not, it is certainly complex.

Humans can have empathy with all these forms of being. Energy in things that are alive can be related to, no matter it's shape as seen from outside. Putting yourself into the view of something else, is a powerful tool.

People play lots of weird games. Music, religions, companies.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

If you think that the greatest ideal in life is to be invulnerable, then you are on your way to becoming geological rather than spiritual.

Thought: I'd say that the better way to become invulnerable is one of active adaptation and evolution. A stone is not invulnerable in really long time frames. It gets eroded by the seas. Life as such is invulnerable, at least more so than a rock. Self perpetuating, continually adapting biomolecules are in a sense invulnerable to most things because they can overcome them.

Religions and societies all dance, the universe dances in lots of different ways and acknowledging this, that everything is just the universe "doing" it's thing is a very interesting idea.

Advancing technology runs into a problem, we have limited understanding of what we want and how things in the world hang together so with greater power to change things, we have the problem that we might change the wrong things or change them in the wrong way, leaving us worse off than without any changes in the first place.

It is very important to consider whether you want to control the direction in which you are heading.

Thought: To me this makes some amount of sense, it is similar to the notion of "not doing anything, sometimes is the wiser choice" that Nassim Taleb Champions. However sometimes our understanding is good enough and we do know what we want and how we want the change to happen and then changing things is perfectly fine. And the whole point of scientific progress is to find out more about how everything interacts with everything else so that we might wish for the right things in the right ways and then become able to also make those wishes come true.

Chapter 2 - Meet Your Real Self

There are two kinds of games — the games you play to win and the games you play to play.

Thought: on this also see James P. Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games" as well as Simon Sinek's "The Infinite Game".

Motion without an objective is dancing, is play and is different from "getting somewhere", different from wandering.

Why do you do anything? Well why not? Not everything needs a supreme reason, a motivation, a goal.

There is no distinction between us and our desires. We are at least partly our wants and needs.

Humans want to control their surroundings and their own life's. First this leads to wealth accumulation, then to manipulation of other people and the world around them. All of those are blind alleys.

Religion goes through evolutions, magical, then moral, then divine. But all of them suffer from the same problems, they don't address the feeling of inadequacy that humans have deep inside them. They just give different forms of controlling them. Meditation even is no different. You gain more control over things, but the question of how to use that control remains, what do you do with it?

Self Improvement approaches don't work, because there is nothing "separate" that can be looked at and improved. The looker is as much part of you as the improved and there is no division between them.

The person who is looking to end conflict is in conflict, and so the more you strive to stop the interior commotion, the more you are stirring it up.

Why do you do anything if there is no goal to be achieved by any of it? People like doing things. The experience itself is worth doing it. There is nothing beyond it that needs to justify a why.

Nature is exuberant, a vast celebration of energy.

The purpose of life is not in the future.

Your experience is something created within the mind, the feeling is a state of your neurons. Outside and inside world are intimately linked in this way, there is really no outside world you can experience "directly". So the world that you experience is as much part of you, the constructing of the world based on the stimuli your brain receives, as much part of you as the ego itself. The constructor and the construction and the person acting things out inside that construction, they are all equally parts of you. Just watch it happening, as it is happening. You are just happening. Without a goal, without anything, just like this.

Part II - The Essential Process of Meditation

Chapter 3 - The Philosophy of Meditation

The act of trying to get away from the mess that is you, is precisely the mess, namely you. There is no getting away from it. People are selfish, they wage wars, they are irrational and they die. All of those things can't be outrun, they are part of us.

Our idea of our personality and of ourselves includes no information whatsoever about the hypothalamus or even the brain stem, the pineal gland, the way we breathe, how our blood circulates, how we manage to form a sentence, how we manage to be conscious, or even how we open and close our hands.

Muscular straining doesn't help to concentrate, or get an orgasm, or an erection, or to remember something. These things have to happen 'on their own' without putting in effort and strain.

There is nothing you can do to fix yourself because you already are.

Meditation is listening to experiences.

What happens to you, and your reactions to it, the thoughts, feelings and emotions going through your head, the inner voice, just watch it closely, that is meditation.

Chapter 4 - The Practice of Meditation

When practicing and learning something we try to do it faster, in meditation, this makes no sense. Doing meditation faster is nonsense. Meditation is focus on the present, it is timeless.

You can't get anything out of meditation.

Breath can be both voluntary and involuntary. Paying attention to the breath, as it happens, without controlling it serves as a good example of this dichotomy. It's not "you" doing the breathing, yet you breathe. Or maybe it's precisely you who are doing the breathing.

When breathing in a meditative way, one can let out a hum, a noise, on the outbreath, just whatever feels good. When lost in that sound, one reaches a specific state of consciousness, that of samadhi, of flow, of worldly abandonment. One simply is, singing, chanting, breathing, and observing.

From ancient times people have discovered humming and singing and everybody used to sing while they worked. But you'll notice that today very few people sing at all; you have to make a point of it. People are afraid of their voices — that is their melodic voices as distinct from their spoken voice.

Some people think that to spend a lot of time gently humming nonsense to yourself is a waste of time. But ask yourself, What are you going to do with the time that you save?

Thought: This reminds me of the core lesson of Momo and the idea that having fun and filling time with things that are inherently enjoyable is an end in itself. It doesn't need to have explanations or a goal in mind.

Part III - Still the Mind

Chapter 5 - Contemplative Ritual

Meditation is the act of allowing one's thoughts to cease.

You cannot meditate. The you, the ego, dissolves once you truly meditate because you see it for what it really is, a bunch of thoughts, happening on their own. And there is nobody there to observe or watch them yet "you" are there observing them. Seeing the happen as they do. You don't meditate onto something, just as you don't breathe on something. You simply breathe and you simply meditate.

Religion can't be understood by words and Christianity has lost its magic together with its loss of Latin. The religious aspect is in the losing yourself in the sound, together with others.

To meditate, just sit, observe but don't judge your thoughts and as your body grows still, your mind does so as well, eventually. If there is a sound you would like to produce, do that. Humming to yourself, joyfully, a mantra, just for the experience of it, that is the natural and pure form of prayer, of ritual, of Meditation.