On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid that you won’t make it, that you grab it too hard. You just have to have that thing. And if you do that, you destroy it completely. Therefore, after every attempt to get it you feel disappointed. You feel empty, you feel something was lost. And therefore you want it again. You have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating because you never really got there. And it’s this which is the hangup, this is what’s meant by attachment to this world, in an evil sense.
But on the other hand, pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced when one is grasping it. I knew a little girl, to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit, and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home in the car she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children. And lots of spouses do it to each other. They hold on too hard and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is. To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it. And then, you can feel perfectly free to have that pleasure in the most gutsy, rollicking, earthy, lip licking way. Whilst whole being taken over by a kind of undulative, convulsive ripple, which is like the very pulse of life itself. This can happen only if you let go.
–Alan Watts, the subject of a forthcoming documentary
Flying spaciously through what was born in spring and what died in fall. Through this incarnation and the next. Through Blake and Huxley. Through silent warehouse space and dust motes in sunshine.
On Joy and Sorrow
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall. ~Kahlil Gibran
“Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” — Henry Kissinger