Pleasure leads to preferences or pre-references, which lead to always wanting to be somewhere else, never being fully here now. How does a feelingfull person find a way out of the wheel of repetition?

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The Forum
The Watts Thread

........... I AM A NOUN
.................... Re :I AM A NOUN : Introduction to ALAN WATTS
.......................... The 2 page: TABOO AGAINST KNOWING WHO YOU ARE by Alan Watts
.......................... The 2 page: Extras
...................................... The 10 page TABOO
...................................... Watts on Death


EXTRA
Subject:
The 2 page version EXTRACTS FROM (and bits from me) on
Alan Watts :
The Book on THE TABOO AGAINST KNOWING WHO YOU ARE

on Language

As soon as one sees that separate things are fictitious, it becomes obvious that nonexistent things cannot “perform” actions. The difficulty is that most languages are arranged so that actions (verbs) have to be set in motion by things (nouns), and we forget that rules of grammar are not necessarily rules, or patterns, of nature. This, which is nothing more than a convention of grammar, is also responsible for (or, better, “goeswith”) absurd puzzles as to how spirit governs matter, or mind moves body.

... Scientists would be less embarrassed if they used a language, on the model of Amerindian Nootka, consisting of verbs and adverbs, and leaving off nouns and adjectives. If we can speak of a house as housing, a mat as matting, or of a couch as seating, why can’t we think of people as “peopling,” of brains as “braining,” or of an ant as an “anting?”

... We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.”

Afterthought

... It is doubtful whether Western science and technology would have been possible unless we had tried to understand nature in terms of mechanical models. According to Joseph Needham, the Chinese—despite all their sophistication—made little progress in science because it never occurred to them to think of nature as mechanism, as “composed” of separable parts and “obeying” logical laws. Their view of the universe was organic. It was not a game of billiards in which the balls knocked each other around in a cause-and-effect series. What were causes and effects to us were to them “correlatives”—events that arose mutually, like back and front. The “parts” of their universe were not separable, but as fully interwoven as the act of selling with the act of buying. A “made” universe, whether from God or the Automatic Model (monkeys on a typewriter), is made of bits.

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Appendix --- a few questions --- RS ---

So, apparently, according to modern scientists, our so called “solid” bodies are really whirling magnetic energy bundles with lots of space and lights flashing and things pulsing – almost see-through and transparent - isnt this something like we always imagined spirits are? (a quite impractical form for eating) (but maybe quite useful to explore as a green energy recource)

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I was thinking about how our senses are like peepholes cut out in a black blanket – I was thinking about the spaces between our senses : e.g. there must be vibrations between smell and sound – are there? do any animals sense that? .. (some animals have radar and sonar peepholes ... )

Most animals eyes arent focussed, they only recognise when something moves,... – why did eyes develop so unfocussed?? ... maybe it was more necessary to look all around and only recognise movement ... as a defense mechanism, for potential danger at distances further away than sound and smell? – ... whatever, it seems focussing came later ... (all predators ... maybe not true? ... the first maybe sharks, snakes?)

The Forum
The Watts Thread

........... I AM A NOUN
.................... Re :I AM A NOUN : Introduction to ALAN WATTS
.......................... The 2 page: TABOO AGAINST KNOWING WHO YOU ARE by Alan Watts
.......................... The 2 page: Extras
...................................... The 10 page TABOO
...................................... Watts on Death