This document, "Talking Zen" by Alan Watts, is a collection of adapted lectures and seminar sessions delivered by Watts over nearly forty years, exploring the nature of Zen Buddhism. It's presented not as a historical account of Zen's evolution, but as a story of Zen in life, filled with insights, tales, and experiences. **Key Themes and Summaries by Section:** Introduction: Watts, in a 1937 article, defined Zen (from Sanskrit dhyana, meditation) not as a solitary contemplative exercise but as a constant attitude of mind that doesn't rely on scriptures, rites, or dogmas. He described it as a practice aiming to sweep away formulae and symbols that stand between the individual and enlightenment, using methods that might seem alarming or irreverent to Westerners, like making fun of logic or answering religious questions with commonplace observations or even rough treatment. The introduction by Mark Watts explains that the book synthesizes Alan Watts' further explorations of Zen from archival recordings of his talks. These talks were chosen for embodying the spontaneous and uncontrolled aspect of Zen. Picture Without a Frame: This early lecture (circa 1933) posits that the human mind makes sense of life by looking at it through "frames" (e.g., birth and death, societal roles). Rational knowledge itself is based on frames, distinguishing what "is" from what "is not". However, what is inside the frames remains elusive, leading to a feeling of emptiness, like a net being "a lot of holes tied together with string". Thought and language only have frame-terms. Watts suggests that knowing the universe in terms of frames is akin to the Indian concept of maya (illusion), as "measurement" (from the Sanskrit root ma) is essentially framing. When the angle of vision widens, a sense of futility can arise, which is the starting point of Buddhism. Despair can transform into liberation (nirvana, "to blow out"). A central problem in Buddhism is that desire (trishna) or seeking awakening (bodhi) thrusts it away. To imagine the self can deliver itself fosters the illusion of self. Zen masters like Rinzai and Bankei emphasized "not seeking". This connects jiriki ("self-powered") and tariki ("other-powered") Buddhism: deliverance comes from disillusionment with one's own efforts, trusting "other-power". Even "not doing" can be an effort if the underlying desire is to "get it". True self-surrender happens in an ultimate quandary where every choice is a mistake. Buddhist disciplines like meditation and koans aim to precipitate this "great doubt". However, trying to cultivate doubt artificially is like searching for something never lost. The state realized by sages is close to our ordinary mind. Nansen said, "Your ordinary mind is the Tao, and by intending to accord with it, you immediately deviate". Awakening is not a coveted prize or success; it's more like "ultimate failure" in those terms. Buddhahood lies outside the Wheel of Becoming's scale of values. A Buddha is buji ("nothing special") and doesn't measure; to a Buddha, thinking they are a Buddha is meaningless because there is no "he or she," no frame. The Psychology of Acceptance: This 1939 lecture discusses the simple yet elusive subject of humankind's spiritual life. The self, the "I," is hard to grasp, like trying to see one's own face without a mirror. "Spirituality" is defined not as occult but as a psychological adjustment to inner and outer worlds, being at ease with conscious perceptions and unconscious impulses. People lack this adjustment, feeling caught between opposites (pleasure/pain, life/death). Happiness is sought either by eliminating painful things or by psychological adaptation to accept pain. Religions and science often aim to remove painful events or help us forget them. However, some Eastern religions and modern psychology seek to accept pain without removing or hiding from it. Fearing pain and trying to escape it leads to an "infinite regression" (fearing fear, etc.), removing us from basic facts. Acceptance is a psychological technique to overcome escapism by relaxing mental tension. Philosophically, acceptance is justified because opposites are essential to each other (pain for pleasure, death for life). Denying an opposite is denying existence itself. Psychologically, acceptance allows repressed unconscious content to surface and be integrated. Jung's idea is to let things happen in the psyche, accepting the irrational simply because it is happening. This aligns with Advaita Vedanta (all things are Brahman) and Taoism (the mind as a mirror: grasping nothing, refusing nothing, receiving but not keeping). The Zen approach is to "go right down to the bottom of the furnace"—experience pain fully, embrace it. However, there's a snag: mastering the unconscious through acceptance can lead to inflation, the "mana personality" (imagining oneself a magician or god). Genuine acceptance is elusive if the motive is still escape (e.g., accepting neurosis to escape its pain). This desire to escape produces effort, which thwarts relaxation. One cannot "try" to relax. This predicament is recognized in Taoism and Buddhism: "If you try to accord with [the Tao], you will get away from it". The solution, Watts hints, lies in the Eastern understanding that there's only one ultimate reality (Brahman/Tao). This "life" includes all opposites; nothing can be added or taken away. "That is Tao". The feeling of being out of harmony with life, even worrying, is itself an expression of life. True acceptance is allowing oneself to be what one is; you cannot escape life or the Tao. The illusion (maya) of separation is also Tao. The only difference between an ordinary person and an enlightened Buddha is that one realizes they are a Buddha, while the other does not. This understanding comes of its own accord when one is free to be ignorant, for ignorance is also Tao. Everyday experience is a spiritual experience of the highest order. The aim of religion is to become what you are. This understanding leads to inner freedom, spontaneity, and reverence for life. Mythological Motifs in Modern Science: Humans cannot simultaneously be subject and object; the inner origins of thought and action must always be unconscious. Myth is the imagery projecting these ungraspable inner workings onto the external world. Science is a Western attempt to liberate from myth, but this is impossible. The parable of the king covering the earth with skins (West: mastering external world) versus putting leather on feet (East: controlling the mind) illustrates differing approaches to suffering. Hindu and Buddhist philosophies use maya (illusion) to suggest the world (or our thoughts about it) arises in our minds. The cosmology involves long cycles of incarnations (samsara) driven by karma (conditioned action) due to avidya (ignorance/unconsciousness). Avidya is ignoring the unity of all things and the inseparability of "I" from "thou". Yoga disciplines aim to still the mind and withdraw projection. Mahayana Buddhism critiqued the pratyeka-buddha (private Buddha) who withdraws into spiritual isolation, arguing this is becoming maya's worst slave. Complete self-control is self-frustration, like a spider caught in its own web (similar to the tyrant-king in the Arthashastra). The Bodhisattva returns to the world, realizing nirvana and samsara are not separate, and there's no escape because there's no one to escape. Science also dissolves maya (ideas about nature based on preconception) by observing facts. Scientists know their scales and hypotheses are projections, unlike ancient astronomers with zodiac signs. However, as science abandons theological myths (divine lawgiver) and then the "laws" themselves as constructs, and even "facts" as conventional units, it risks leaving us with nothing but the net of our own conceptual constructions, feeling estranged from a nature that seems to have no inherent order. The ambition for rational control, an extension of the Christian urge to subordinate nature, has exaggerated the human/nature dualism. Technology aimed at controlling the controller (humans) leads to a regulatory trap, like the pratyeka-buddha. The instrumentalist view (order of nature is our calculus) forgets consciousness itself is part of the world it describes, a product of spontaneous process. The pretension of consciousness to stand outside itself is a willful refusal to admit we can't get away from ourselves. Nothing entraps one so deeply in maya as trying to get out of it; nothing is so unconscious as aspiring to complete consciousness. A purely rational, unmythical picture of nature is the image of maya (measure). The limits of control are explored in cybernetics, human-nature inseparability in ecology, and psychiatry recognizes trust in the unconscious. The need for spontaneous, playful scientists suggests a reversal. Technology's logical goal (a push-button world) would become intolerable without a "Surprise!" button, mirroring myths of creation involving unexpected elements. Time and Convention (Five Broadcasts): These were KPFA broadcasts from 1954-1955. - **1. Time and the Moment:** Watts reflects on the Sunday evening feeling, a slowing down of time that can be a pause for wonder, for contemplating "what is" instead of chasing "what ought to be". Philosophy and religion should express the strangeness of being alive. Time is a measurement of motion in space; all motion is relative, definable only against something relatively still. There's no absolute motion or stillness. Our psychological sense of time is also relative (time flying/dragging). One can mentally adjust the perceived speed of time's passage. The "eternal moment" is a universal tradition, a keyhole into a world where time doesn't rush and life isn't static; this instant is the fulfillment of everything. Those who discover this become extraordinarily creative. A Buddhist priest told a bored judge, "Not twice this day: Inch, time, foot, gem," meaning every instant is a unique gem. This is found by living each moment without comparison. We live on two levels: relative purpose and absolute perfection of every instant. There is no other moment than this one; memories and anticipations are parts of _this_ one. Persisting in folly (like intense anxiety, since there's nothing else _now_) can lead to wisdom. - **2. The Illusion of Time:** Watts intuits a radical error in our understanding of continuous, one-way time, connected to our collective insanity. The belief that history fixes the present and prevents going back to correct initial mistakes is part of this. The survival instinct (going on in time) involves anxiety. Projecting satisfactions into the future and pursuing it at increasing speeds leads to monotony and makes life impoverished. True asceticism isn't forced but comes from realizing the future is a mirage. The urgent thing is not to stop wars but to stop monotonous, rhythmless, accelerating time, which is an illusion. The positive aspect of realizing we have no future (in the long run) is discovering "eternal life"—the timeless absolute, which is the present note/event considered by itself, not in relation to past/future notes in a melody. The fundamental reality is _this_ event, sufficient in itself. Seeing through the illusion of time ends temporal urgency and anxiety. To take time seriously is to have no time. - **3. Christianity and Nature:** Watts feels Christian only indoors; an incompatibility exists between Christian beauty and nature's beauty. He cannot relate God the Father or Christ to the actual universe he experiences. The styles are different: Christianity is architectural and courtly (God as monarch, rituals like court ceremonials, the cross's symmetry); nature (and Far Eastern art/philosophy like Taoism) loves flowing, jagged, asymmetrical forms. Natural forms are _grown_ from within, not _made_ as an assemblage of parts from outside. The Christian God is conceived as outside the made world; the Tao grows the world from within. Christian theology admits God's immanence in theory but emphasizes transcendence in practice. The Christian God is conceived as principles, lacking "inwardness" (mysterious, immeasurable, unpredictable self-generation) because He knows Himself through and through. Nature, however, is felt as moved from a deep inside that is also "my inside". The miracle of birth (growth from inward) is greater than revivifying a corpse. The cross, if it represents the Tree of Knowledge (mechanical understanding, turning inwardness to outwardness), needs to transform into the Tree of Life by "bending its boughs". - **4. A Cure for Education:** Education, conforming children to societal conventions, is necessary but often warps them, causing loss of spontaneity and innocence. One can go through life without "seeing through" the absolutes of conduct and feeling implanted in childhood, becoming like Pavlov's dogs. Qualities lost include integration (not being at cross-purposes), sincerity (not self-deceived), unselfconsciousness, and a feeling of integration with the environment, leading to metaphysical certainty (a feeling of inescapable naturalness, even when relatively "wrong"). Most civilized adults lack this and its accompanying gaiety, stuck in self-criticism. Other cultures have institutions for curing people of their upbringing. Western societies lack this largely because social/moral conventions are identified with God's will, the Absolute. This leads to moral fanaticism or violent reaction (throwing out God, the baby, with the bathwater, leaving convention itself as the absolute tyranny). The Church's concept of God's mercy offered an "out," but its God was never truly mysterious or beyond good and evil. The real adult initiation mystery is that the absolute is unconventional, beyond good/evil; societal rules are not nature's laws, and nature's laws cannot be gone against because we _are_ their process. This philosophy, though dangerous for the immature, is a release from self-contradictory conflict and self-consciousness. Modern secular relativists also deny this experience, confusing words with reality. Huxley's point: external Nature is supernatural; our mental "natural" world is dull. Both theologians and positivists confuse convention with reality. - **5. The Art of Nonsense:** Curing the warpings of education means being able to use what's learned without being bound by it. A liberated person is like an automobile (can leave the track), not a train on rails. The most important part of conventional upbringing is training in how we speak and think (language, code). People are frustrated when life doesn't "make sense" (order of events vs. order of thought). Watts gives an example of nonsensical speech to show how not using the code appropriately outrages us. There are different kinds of nonsense: "lalling" (playful sounds); alliterative association; common association; concealed association. The most difficult nonsense is a spontaneous series of words without any association, like Joshu's answer about a robe weighing nine pounds to a question about where the One returns to. Huineng said being "tied up in knots" is the compulsive linking of thoughts; not dwelling on each succeeding thought prevents knots. This haphazard thinking counterbalances connected thinking, making it a free instrument, not a habit. Life itself is haphazard, but we try to make sense of it by projection and selection. Events are selected bits of experience; their connection is in the mind that picks them out. Believing the connection lies in the "stones" (events) not the mind makes us lose freedom. Trying to fit haphazard events into code-patterns creates strain and conceals a natural harmony. This conflict arises from identifying ourselves exclusively with order/code. Jolting thinking out of ruts gives it freedom. Understanding the difference between thought-conventions and actual reality is needed first, then learning to let the mind wander with alertness. Biting an Iron Bull: Watts clarifies he's an entertainer, not selling Zen or converting anyone. Zen, a form of Buddhism originating in China (c. 500 AD) and transmitted to Japan (c. 1200 AD), is more akin to psychotherapy than a religion in the Western sense. Its objective is to fundamentally change one's state of consciousness and sense of personal identity, addressing suffering. This requires understanding a crucial state of mind similar to an infant's: undifferentiated awareness, with no names for feelings. Growing up, we learn distinctions, especially self from everything else, and forget the shared basis of things. This leads to "attachment" (klesha), or "hang-ups," getting stuck on learned distinctions like self/other and voluntary/involuntary actions. This confusion leads to the development of the "ego"—an abstract image of ourselves, a social convention treated as real, though it's inaccurate and incomplete. The feeling of ego is a chronic muscular strain learned from trying to perform spontaneous things to order. The ego is an "illusion married to a futility". Transcending the ego is realizing it doesn't properly exist. One should simply be aware of what's happening in the mind without effort or naming; this reveals the individual "you" as a figment of imagination. The "happening" (Tao, suchness) is a self-controlling process, and "you" are an aspect of it. The universe is playing hide-and-seek with itself. The idea of a "doer" for an action is a grammatical convention. "Stuff" is pattern seen out of focus. Gurus convince students they can't "do" anything to attain enlightenment because it's already there. The present doesn't come from the past; sounds come out of silence now and trail off as memories (echoes), like a ship's wake not directing the ship. Realizing the happening isn't happening to you because you are the happening leads to a synthesis of doing and happening. You are omnipotent as the universe, but not in your specific role. This leads to a "sticky place," the "mosquito biting the iron bull"—a dilemma that isn't there because the "someone" in the dilemma isn't there. The ego is a thought among thoughts, not a controller. Taoist Ways: Initially, Zen training discourages thinking and intellectualization because they create a gap between you and life, leading to "eating the menu instead of the dinner". The master aims to get you into the landscape of "what is". Later, one may realize thinking itself is also "what is". Taoism sees humanity as part of nature, not dominant. Chinese landscape paintings show the poet as a small part of a vast scene, unlike Western art. Nature is a self-regulating, democratic organism, the Tao. Following the Tao means wu wei ("not forcing"), acting in accord with the grain of things, like cutting wood along its grain or jiggling a lock instead of forcing it. Altering a situation (like an urban slum) requires sensitivity to its existing complex ecology. The apparent conflicts in nature (e.g., predator-prey) are part of a cooperative system of "mutual arising". Li (organic pattern), like markings in jade or grain in wood, is an order that is distinguishable but not rigidly definable or prescribable. Creativity involves this mysterious, impenetrable depth. Teaching creativity is difficult because a method would make it uninteresting. Thinking about thinking can be lived with spontaneity if symbols are not seen as escape routes, by knowing escape is impossible and there's no one to escape. The continuous self is an illusion; there is simply seeing and experiencing, without a separate seer or experiencer. The knower and known are "terms" or aspects of the single reality of experience, like two ends of one stick. Neurologically, what you experience visually is a state of your nervous system; your brain is what you see outside. The inside (you) and outside (world) are not separable; your inside is something the "outside world" is doing. When the "person in the trap" vanishes, you can play any life game, knowing the "haver" of experiences is an illusion. Swimming Headless: Te, often translated as "virtue," means excellence in the sense a plant has healing virtues or a tree excels at being a tree. Superior te is not conscious of itself as virtue. Fundamentally, all are in harmony with the Tao, like being in a river. Swimming with it, aware, gives one the river's force; swimming against it is futile pretense. Sailing by tacking (using wind to go against it) is perfection in Taoism. Te is intelligence creating cooperation without unnecessary effort, like a thistledown using wind or a sailboat using a sail. The Tao Te Ching can be a guide to mystical understanding, natural law, or political wisdom, advocating governing by not ruling (anonymity allows efficiency). The less you think about your body's government, the better it is. Hsin (heart-mind, psychic center) is key. Wu hsin (no-mind/heart) is a high state where the psychic center operates as if not there, like a mirror grasping nothing, refusing nothing, receiving but not keeping. This relates to hsuan (dark, deep, obscure), the "no color" quality of one's head from the eyes' perspective—invisibility or "headless-ness" is the secret of being alive. What you see externally is how it feels inside your head. Emptiness of the head/transparency of the eye lens is the condition of seeing. The human predicament is self-consciousness ("knowing that I know")—a blessing and a curse. Taoism deals with this by "floating lightly over it". Lieh-tzu riding the wind symbolizes a weightlessness from not opposing oneself. The "fall of humanity" was becoming anxious about being in control. Moral preaching arises when things go wrong. Lieh-tzu, after long waiting and practice, let his senses and mind go freely, feeling transparent and weightless, not knowing if he walked on wind or wind on him. The Chinese farmer story illustrates non-choosing, as one never truly knows if an event is fortune or misfortune. The psychology of Taoism sees no difference between observer and observed; we are the observation. Knowledge is not an encounter but like a flower expanding from its stem. Yang/yin are different but identical; boundaries join things rather than dividing them. The sense of "me" is the same as being one with the cosmos; the "other" turns out to be "you". Zen Tales: Education is a necessary evil that damages spontaneity; psychoanalysis is a fumbling attempt at a cure. Children are spontaneous, but self-consciousness arises when they learn rules. Self-consciousness (thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing) is humanity's glory and bane, leading to anxiety from the unpredictability of life and the inability to make perfectly foolproof decisions. Nostalgia for innocence is understandable but one cannot give up self-consciousness purposely. Zen training is about living spontaneously. Zen stories (mondo) from Tang Dynasty China are like jokes: they don't impart information but aim to produce sudden awakening (satori) by making a false problem disappear. Examples: - Akar cuts off his arm; Bodhidharma pacifies his mind by showing he can't find it. - Monk hesitates to identify a branch, gets whacked; another hits the master back with it, "getting out of the dilemma". - Goose in a bottle: officer asks how to get it out without breaking bottle/hurting goose; master distracts, then calls "Oh, officer!"; officer turns, "Yes?"; master says, "There, it's out!". - Monk asks Mugaku for secret teaching; Mugaku points to bamboo, monk doesn't understand; Mugaku remarks on tall/short ones, monk awakened. - Gotai answers all questions by holding up a finger; attendant mimics him; Gotai cuts off attendant's finger; boy tries to hold it up, it's not there, enlightened. - Monk misunderstands "Ping-Ting (god of fire) comes for fire"; second master repeats it, monk gets the point. Mondo create dilemmas or blockages, disrupting normal interchange to test if one can escape without hesitation (not necessarily quickly). Being off-balance is _bonno_ (worldly attachment/stickiness). Takuan's letter on swordsmanship emphasizes responding without thought, as instantaneously as sparks from flint. The apprentice swordsman, surprised constantly, gives up anticipating and becomes ready. The woodcutter and the Satori (thought-reading creature): woodcutter, furious and giving up, accidentally kills Satori when axe-blade flies off. Zen training is spontaneous within limits; sanzen (interview with master) requires fundamental honesty in a sticky situation. Asking God (or a Zen master) the "fundamental question" leads to self-questioning until no question remains. Zen discipline in monasteries (austerity, strict codes) often exists because many monks are there by family tradition, not personal search, and need to be taught how to think or cultivate a "great doubt" via koans (e.g., sound of one hand). Great doubt cannot be made to order. Vital/living knowledge is a mystery to itself, like an eye not seeing itself. If you knew the outcome, there's no point playing. There's no infallible technique for Zen; it's passed by osmosis. Technique is teachable, but "the thing itself" isn't. Realizing this, one may panic. Paradoxes like "not getting it is getting it" are games; when no method (positive or negative) works, one is in a quandary—the "ball of hot iron". Zen makes you do what you were doing (trying to control "me"), but consistently, to show its futility. We imagine separateness, but the real deep "you" _is_ this reality, playing a game of hiding from its own shadow. Recognizing all this as oneself is a relief and fun. Zen Bones: Watts begins by stating it's a "pity to say so" about Zen truths, as Zen is a way of life not expressible in concepts. Words and thinking have limitations. The universe is one great, unnamable energy (God, Brahman, Tao, Suchness, "da-da-da"). It's an on/off system (yang/yin); fearing "off" will triumph is an illusion. Death is the other face of energy, the rest/absence that produces presence. Waking to this, you realize you are a playing of this one energy and are relieved of fundamental terror. This doesn't mean no fear/anger, but being human, not a "stone buddha". A living Buddha feels pain. A Zen "understander" doesn't boast of satori or attainment. The mind is like a mirror (Chuang-tzu) or water reflecting geese without intention or retention. This is living without "hang-ups" (klesha), flowing like water, knowing life is an illusion and nothing is fundamentally to be afraid of. Fear passes like a cloud. The "void" in Buddhism is not ordinary emptiness but the most real thing, like a radio speaker producing all sounds. You can't make your mind an object of examination. Knowing you "don't know it" is best, as you aren't clinging to a concept. Trying to realize Zen by "doing nothing" is still trying to find it. "You cannot attain it by thinking, you cannot grasp it by not thinking"; both are attempts to move from the immediate now. Stopping thinking (the inner chitchat) is a prerequisite to contacting the "unspeakable world". In this nonverbal world, conceptual differences (self/other, life/death) don't exist. Zazen (sitting Zen) is practiced for this; "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep" (Hyakujo). Ordinary people, when hungry, think of other things. The goal of action is contemplation (Aristotle). Action is pointless if you think you're "going somewhere"; you're already there. The world without mental chatter becomes amazingly interesting; not naming things allows you to truly see them. Lao-tzu: "The five colors make a man blind". Zazen underlies Zen arts (gardens, tea ceremony, calligraphy, painting). Repeating a meaningless word (like mu, "no") can stop thinking and lead to fascination, then openness, then a preliminary satori. Grasping this spiritual experience makes it vanish. Zen discipline isn't masochistic "suffering builds character". It combines Zen flesh (knowing you are "it" and don't have to seek) and Zen bones (coming back to the world with this attitude without falling apart). Understanding Zen is dangerous if one cannot contain it (like a million volts through a shaver). A pratyekabuddha goes off into transcendence and is lost. A Bodhisattva returns because the transcendental and ordinary worlds are the same, seeing all beings as Buddhas. It's fantastic to see the Buddha nature in others, even when they deny it. A guru looks at the "Shiva in you" and says, "Come off it!". Enlightenment is not just in the transcendental but in the ordinary; these are concepts. Discipline is needed so the force of liberation doesn't shatter the world. Beyond ecstasy (soft flesh) are bones (hard facts of everyday life), but also soft facts. The ordinary and ecstatic worlds are not different. A sudden satori reveals "the ordinary old man"—little you. The mystic's vision of light eventually resolves into "us, sitting around here". In essence, "Talking Zen" demystifies Zen by presenting it as a practical way of shifting consciousness to overcome the illusion of a separate self and the suffering caused by clinging to fixed concepts and resisting the flow of life. Watts emphasizes direct experience over doctrine, the playful and spontaneous nature of an awakened mind, and the realization that ordinary life, when seen without conceptual overlays, is itself enlightenment. He uses stories, analogies, and critiques of Western thought patterns to guide the audience toward this understanding.