If you listen to Alan Watts, he tells you about expanding, rather than constricting. What does it mean? We all feel it, in one way or another, the tightening in the mind and body from various obligations, fears, and worries. The natural response is to cling, try to hold on. For example, as a teacher, I sometimes think in order to create a good lesson I need a lot of planning, and also anxiety, before entering the classroom. I have to prepare myself for the unexpected. But does the anxiety really help? And are my lessons more effective when I am anxious beforehand? It seems when I am in a more open and expansive state, some call this being in the flow, I am also more likely to complete various tasks more effectively. Of course, most importantly, the quality of my life is also better.
Over time these ideas, being in the flow, or the moment, have become cliches. A little bit hokey sometimes.
In Alan Watts book,The Wisdom of Insecurity, he explains the limitations of definitions and descriptions. You cannot fix what is fundamentally transient and flowing.
"It is like when someone points his finger at the moon to show it to someone else. Guided by the finger, that person should see the moon. If he looks at the finger instead and mistakes it for the moon, he loses not only the moon but the finger also. Why? It is because he mistakes the pointing finger for the bright moon.”
If language is the finger, then what is the moon? The moon is a great mystery. The Spirit of the Bathtub is part of that great mystery. It is, essentially, a spiritual book of nomadic travel. In the expansive tradition. Sometimes minimalist like Basho. Sometimes narrative and parable like. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.
"No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now"
(from Alan Watt's The Book: on the Taboo Against Knowing Yourself).
The Spirit of the Bathtub is now available from Apocalypse Party.
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Labels: alan watts, beginner's mind, Buddhism, marcus slease, never mind the beasts, nomadic travel writing, outsider art, the spirit of the bathtub, transient art, travel writing
