3 Things We Can Learn From Alan Watts

The freedom in letting go, the illusion of time, and our never-ending search for happiness - a look at three key ideas from Alan Watts.

In today’s post, we’ll be exploring some philosophical ideas from Alan Watts. Contrary to many of the people covered on The Philosophy of Things, Alan Watts was not an academic philosopher, nor an academic in any sense. He was an English writer, speaker, and described himself as a “philosophical entertainer”. His ideas were drawn from Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu philosophy, and he helped share these perspectives with a Western audience.

Being an autodidact, Watts was educated primarily in Buddhist thought. He wrote over 25 books and articles on philosophy, and often gave speeches which were recorded. The recording of his talks allowed him to garner a large posthumous following, with many of his speeches being very popular today. His talks are widely shared on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Alan Watts touched on a multitude of topics within the numerous speeches and books that he shared with the world, and although I’d like to, it would be impossible to cover all of them in today’s post. I would strongly urge anyone who enjoys this post to dive further in Watts’ philosophy through the variety of content available on the internet. In this post, I’ll be highlighting three of my favourite ideas and thoughts from Watts.

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The Illusion of Time

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.” - Alan Watts

Watts believed that time is an illusion. He liked to highlight the fact that, our culture within society is obsessed with time. Specifically, we’re obsessed with the past and the future, but very rarely with the present. Many of us rarely enjoy the present for what it is; the only thing we will ever have.

“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever.” - Alan Watts

For example, when we’re at home, many of us may stress about what we have to do at work tomorrow. When we’re at work, we may be stressing about things we have to do when we get home. When we have a vacation booked, we spend many days leading up to the trip looking forward to it and perhaps even stressing about things that’ll happen during the vacation, and when we’re actually traveling, we’re either dealing with travel-related stresses or we may yearn to come back home.

I have to personally admit, I’m very guilty of living everywhere but the present. One example of this is my relationship with waiting for things. When I order something online, for example, the “lead-up” to the item's arrival is often just as good, if not better, than the arrival of the item itself. When I get the item, the hype quickly dies, and I’m back to living in the future.

Alan Watts aims to highlight the fact that the present is all we have, and will ever have. The past and the future are merely illusions in our heads. The past was only experienced as the present, and the future will only ever be experienced as the present as well. However, if we live most of our lives everywhere but in the present moment, are we ever truly “living” or experiencing life to its fullest potential? Watts’ remarks are a crucial reminder to live in and enjoy the present moment.

“The future is a concept, it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That’s one the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.” - Alan Watts

Our Never-Ending Search for Happiness

Before I get into this next point on happiness, I must note that Alan Watts had a variety of views and ideas regarding happiness, fulfillment, and completeness. This is not a “be all end all” of his views on happiness, and I would urge everyone to dive deeper into his talks and works if the chance arises.

Personally, I believe Watts’ key to happiness revolved around a central theme of acceptance. The acceptance of adversity, the acceptance of the present moment, the acceptance of finiteness, and others, were all key themes brought up within his talks and literary works. Check out a few of the following quotes from Watts;

“What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present”

“If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death”

“All men suffer, but not all are unhappy, for unhappiness is a reaction to suffering, not suffering itself”

A key component of happiness is acceptance. For example, one must accept that things are fleeting and that duality is present throughout the universe. When someone experiences joy, they must also realize that joy cannot exist without sorrow. If we didn’t have this duality, neither emotions would exist. It’s sort of like black letters against a white page - in order to be able to read the letters, we must have a white page to provide some sort of contrast. In a similar sense, in order to experience joy, we must have something to contrast it against so that we can identify and differentiate it from other emotions, and that contrasting emotion, the “white page” in this case, is sorrow. Therefore, it could be argued that sorrow actually allows us to have joy. If we are able to embrace this duality that is present throughout the universe, it may allow us to live happier and more fulfilled lives.

Watts also brings forth the idea that it is crucial to be accepting of our true selves. In one of his talks, he describes the guidance he gives to newly graduated students who come to him for advice, many of whom are confused and lost as to what to pursue post-graduation. He asks his students what they would pursue if money didn’t exist. In other words, what they would truly like to spend their time doing. Many often reply that they’d like to be writers, poets, painters, outdoorsmen, and other types of similar jobs. These are typically jobs that don’t fit the standard definition of being a “high earning” position. To these students, Watts’ answer is simple; pursue the things that you just mentioned, and worry less about the money. He goes on to state that when someone solely pursues money, they risk wasting their entire life, as one would essentially be “doing things you don’t like doing, in order to continue living, in order to continue to do things you don’t like doing”. According to Watts, it’s better to have a short life full of things you like doing rather than a long life “spent in a miserable way”. He adds to this thought with the following; if you spend your life pursuing something that you’re genuinely passionate about, you’ll eventually become a master at it, which will naturally lead to money anyways.

The Freedom in Letting Go

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be” - Alan Watts

“In a relativistic universe you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And you know what swimming is - it's kind of a relaxed attitude with the water. In which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a certain giving to it.” - Alan Watts

According to Watts, the art of letting go can grant us a lot of freedom. When we “let go” of things such as expectations, attachments, feelings, beliefs, or anything else, it sets us free in a way.

In one of his talks, Watts describes the fact that if we seek or pursue something too hard, especially forms of pleasure, we can destroy the very thing that we’re seeking. Due to this, after every attempt to attain this thing, we end up disappointed. Many continue this cycle because they simply cannot achieve what they are pursuing, or they only attain a partial, half-baked version of what they seek, mainly because they are pursuing too hard.

As Watts states, “pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced when one is grasping it”.

To illustrate this point, Watts uses the example of a little girl who has just received a pet rabbit. She was so happy with the rabbit, and so afraid of losing it, that she accidentally squeezed it to death on the car ride home. He goes on to state that many parents do this to their children, and many spouses do it to each other. Watts says that many of us do this - we “hold on too hard”, and in doing so, we “take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is”. According to Watts, to have life and to experience its pleasures in their most genuine and satisfying form, we must let go. Once we let go, we are then free to experience life in its most organic and genuine way. The art of “letting go” isn’t to be confused with being non-participative, rather, it has more to do with not pursuing things too hard.

I really enjoy Alan Watts’ ideas and perspectives, and I hope some of you found a bit of value in today’s post. I wanted to end off the post with one of my favorite quotes from Watts. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always found a sense of solace from this quote. It might require a re-read or two, but I think it’s quite impactful.

“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.” - Alan Watts