Welcome to the Alan Watts Audio Experience; an Alan Watts Podcast for fans of one of the greatest philosophical geniuses of all time. Todays Watts Wisdom Classic is titled 'Life Is Not A Journey' - one of Alan's most listened to and adored clips ever.
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpaUICxEhk
TRANSCRIPT:
the existence the physical universe is
basically playful there is no necessity
for it whatsoever it isn't going
anywhere that is to say it doesn't have
some destination that it ought to arrive
at but but it is best understood by
analogy with music because music as an
art form is essentially playful we say
you play the piano you don't work the
piano why music differs from say travel when you
travel you are trying to get somewhere
one doesn't make the end of a
composition the point of the company of
the composition if that was so the best
conductors would be those who played
fastest and there will be composers who
wrote only finales people go to concert
just do one crashing chord because
that's the end say when dancing you
don't aim at a particular spot in the
room that's where you should arrive the
whole point of the dancing is the
parents now but we don't see that as
something brought by our education into
our everyday conduct we've got a system
of schooling which gives a completely
different impression it's all graded and
what we do is we put the child into the
corridor of this grade system with a
kind of comma on kitty kitty kitty and
yeah I go to kindergarten you know and
that's a great thing because when you
finish that you'll get into first grade
and then come on first grade leads the
second grade and so on and then you get
out of grade school you've got high school
and it's revving up the thing is coming
then you're going to go to college and
by jove then you get into graduate
school and when you're through with
graduate school you go out to join the
world and then you get into some racket
where you're selling insurance and
they've got that quota to make and
you're going to make that and all the
time this thing is coming it's coming
it's coming that great thing the success
you're working for then when you wake up
one day about 40 years old you say my
god I've arrived I'm there and you don't
feel very different from what you always
felt by expectation look at the people
who live to retire and put those savings
away and then when they 65 they don't
have any energy left they're more or
less impotent and they go and rotten and
old people senior citizens community because we've
simply treated ourselves the whole way
down the line we thought of life by
analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage
which had a serious purpose at the end
the thing was to get to that end success
or whatever it is or maybe heaven after
you're dead but we missed the point the
whole way along it was a musical thing
and you were supposed to sing or to
dance while the music was being played
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