The late Alan Watts is no doubt one of the most influential contemporary spiritual/ philosopher that has today garnered a good following in his thoughts. He is indeed one of those who has been able to bridge what the East and West has to offer in terms of spirituality and religion in the practicality of our daily life. I have read most of his works and am now following a group on the Face Book link entitled "Alan Watts creation." I joined this group out of curiosity to see if i could fit in with my limited understanding of the man himself. I was however able to visit his House Boat docked permanently at the Sausality Boat slip. The S.S. Vallejo si today upgrade to a tourist attraction status if it has not be turned into a restaurant already. I visited the boat sometime in 1983-4 when i was living in the area.
A few years later while I was living at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center as a Practicing student a couple of friends and I made a trip up the hill to visit Alan's memorial site which lay close by to the memorial site of the son of the Author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the sixteen years old was killed in an alley on Polk Street in downtown San Francisco or so I was told. My Zen brothers and I would normally have with us a bottle of 'Sake', or Japanese wine and a few joints of the best to set our mood in the right direction towards the dear departed Zen master's presence or we just needed a place to hang out reading poems and and reciting Haikus like we were real Zen Bums. And I later met his son who came to stay at the Green Gulch for a short time and i called him mark like everyone else. He was definitely not his as he was mostly quiet and reserved, kept to himself mostly, perhaps why he was at Green Gulch. So I never got to tell him how his old man's thoughts and ideas changed my life when I first read his book, The Way of Zen and the rest was history.
Here are a few questions raised by the group;
a) Can consciousness create consciousness?
b) Where does wisdom come from?
c) Has Alan Watts helped you in your day to day life and if so why and how.
and there is a host of other questions that is simply thrown in there to help stir the mind to think like Alan Watts would have wanted one to, or perhaps would have discouraged one to. But each to his own perception and understanding and in the spirit of being inclusive and sharing i decided to entertain myself by answering one or two questions and off course i came up against the die hard, I am ..that...I am individuals who quote God Himself in putting up a defense against a nonexistent offense. I most probably will withdraw my participation with this group as it is cluttering up my fb page with too many postings of irrelevant issues.
Yes I have set myself up to be sucked into the digital media world of communication like it is another addiction which occupies hours of my time every day. My intention in seeing that this has become a way of life now for me is to use the media as much as possible and tell my story, share my artworks and give my two cents worth of advice where it is needed and worth giving. At 71 I am entitled to be able to come to one or two conclusions about life and it it would seem a waste not to let it be known to the younger generations of my time. Against better judgement sometimes I will let my thoughts and feelings, talent and intuitions go if it makes sense and hope that they help to heal or cheer up someone far away unknown to me. As I have maintained in the past, my thoughts and actions are done out of the need to heal myself much more than others and they are also my own personal state of consciousness. What is right is always God's and what is in error is mine, for those who read my postings the choice is yours.
#Alan Watts,#Haiku,#Zen Bums,#The Way of Zen,#The S.S.Vallejo,#Green Gulch Farm, #Sausalito, #and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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