The Unconvenient Audio Cassettes. Today's talk is Future of Politics, Part 3. Please remember we prefer that you don't make copies of this program off the air without express permission from the Alan Watts Institute. Now here's Alan Watts with Part 3, Future of Politics. Good afternoon, if I may bring you all up to date. I'm discussing The two marvelously opposed books out of Asia on political theory, the Arpataka from India and the Tao Te Ching from China, both written by highly perceptive people, taking the two opposite possibilities of political behavior.

[01:04]

The Artha-santra, taking the point of view of complete tyranny and absolute control, and what are the conditions of that. And the Tao Te Ching, taking the opposite point of view, apparently, of the curious situation in which the emperor himself is the great anarchist. and governs by not interfering, by letting everything alone. And the more skillfully the emperor leaves everything alone, the better the government. Because he makes an active trust in the people. And the only basis upon which a society can really exist at all is in mutual trust. And by making laws and having policemen, you're just kidding yourself. You're deferring responsibility.

[02:11]

As the author of The Power Within, that journal, The Spanish Explorer, says, the country is demoralized. When people treat the country as if it were an entity by itself, that would do things for you. Because then you fail to recognize that you all, to use that nice Southern expression, are the state. And it won't work, nothing will work, if we just leave it to George as it were. Leave it to the government. But then, if you just bring it to the government, the government becomes a business. The government becomes a vested interest in governing. And then, in accordance with the parable of the trees in the forest and who would be king of the forest, it was only the bramble who accepted the offer.

[03:24]

because the bamboo had nothing useful to do. And so in the same way, people who go in for government, take this for a moment. There's a very curious part in here. We say, we have a difficulty in this country because really good businessmen are so occupied with their business and doing a good job there that they won't accept government positions. And therefore, government positions lie open to second-rate individuals who are lousy politicians. Take law. A really good attorney is making so much money that a judge's salary is too small for him. And he'll only take a position on the court if he has that sort of vanity that he wants the honor of being a judge, the honor.

[04:30]

So, here's kind of a funny paradox. When people will not really accept the responsibility of governing themselves, Those who will accept the positionings of government will be game players and power seekers. And they will establish a racket that will make government a business separate from the business of the world, the business of everyday life, the business of going on. And they will try to control everything. So the only healthy, fundamentally healthy government is no government. But no government means everybody takes responsibility. And that's the real meaning of anarchy, Kropotkin's idea of anarchy.

[05:41]

The popular conception of anarchy is that there's somebody who goes around with whiskers on and a bomb. And to put this under everything, you know, is always destroying the organization. That's a joke. Kropotkin had a real sophisticated theory of amity that is analogous to Lao Tzu's philosophy in the Dali Jing, which is that the government is kidding yourself. For example, let's take the institution of daylight saving. This is a good illustration, I hope. In the summertime, we say we would have more hours of daylight if we got up one hour earlier. But instead of simply getting up one hour earlier, we change the clock. So then we say, well, we have reason to get up one hour earlier because it's the same time as before.

[06:44]

And so, in the same way, people would say, if God did not exist, it would be an episode of invention. See? So, we have these ways of kidding ourselves that something else is controlling us, because we ourselves don't want to take the responsibility. But basically, this absolutely has to be recognized, not only in matters of government and politics, but in matters of cosmology. See, we played the game that I came into this world. I'm the victim of circumstances. I didn't ask to be born. My father and mother were playing around and fell into some mischievous activities. And as a result, I'm here.

[07:48]

Too bad, you know. I'm the victim of circumstances. But as long as you play it that way, okay, you're the victim of circumstances. That's the role you play. You play, I complain. And if you find yourself victimized, it's only because you don't have the guts to get up and fight it out. Or whatever technique you use. There are all kinds of them. Violent, non-violent, every kind of way. But you are never really to the dictum, except by your own choice. And the game of life, you see, is a kind of a, what I call, a sort of flip-flop of our consciousness, this way, [...] like that, between thinking when in control and not in control.

[09:06]

And that goes back, you see, that is based on the fundamental game of hide and seek. Now you see it, now you don't. That is the cosmos. That is the very nature of vibration. When you listen to sound or you feel tuning, everything is going on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off. And by that means of on and off, you know that it's here. If it's on all the time, you forget it. If it's off all the time, you forget it. But if you keep repeating between the two, then you know it's happening. Here we are. You sit next to a girl in the movies, and you put your hand on her knee. And if you leave it there, she forgets you're there. But if you pat her, she lets you there, and you're interested. So it's written. But always there's a debate about it. And so, of course, too, because of this rhythmic nature of things, you could say that politics is the art of speaking on a hard bed.

[10:12]

There is no tribal tradition. You speak on the left, you go to the right, and then on the tummy, which is center, you go to the back, which is something different. And then you have to go to the left again, because it all eventually gets uncomfortable. So there is no solution. But the best solution is that people realize there isn't a solution that makes them adaptable. That makes them sit loose tonight. That makes them come off it. They don't get passionate about ideologies. Now this is one of the very serious problems in the year we have to consider, the contribution of the thought of Confucius as well as Lao Tzu to politics.

[11:14]

one may laugh a great deal about Confucius, because he is so smug and stuffy, and because Chinese Confucians were very, very picky and puritanical, and so absorbed with literacy But they didn't give sufficient studies in nature. These are their worst sides. But they also had something very communicable. Confucianism is a theory of social order, which has proved itself amazingly enduring for a reason. that it never claimed to be more than a social convention. It didn't claim to be divinely authorized.

[12:30]

Even though there were ceremonies. A Jesuit missionary, Matteo Ricci, instantly understood that he as a Roman Catholic could take part in Confucian ceremonies without compromising of his religion and he became a Confucian dignitary he wore the ceremonial robes and everything that went with being a Confucian because he understood that Confucianism is not a religion in the sense that Roman Catholicism claimed to be a religion to take part in a Confucian ceremony is exactly the same thing as, say, for example, paying respect to the American flag is in this country. Although some of us now may have certainly things to think about.

[13:37]

But the thing is that Matteo Ricci going to China thought that he could be a Confucian without in any way compromising his loyalty to the Pope, the Church, and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because what Confucianism constitutes is a social ritual. A method of morality, of law, which does not invoke the divine authority for its truth So you could say the Confucian idea of morals, of law, is purely conventional. But they know it. It's an agreement between human beings. And it is all based on a virtue called run.

[14:44]

The Chinese character is untranslatable. Some people call it benevolence, but that's not right. Best translation is human heartedness. But that means something that we can never put our finger on. When you say someone is really human, you name them. You don't know what you mean, quite. Because you're one of them. and you can never define yourself. That's part of the whole philosophy of Chinese thought, the recognition. There's a poem which said, it, which means the ultimate reality, is like an eye that sees but does not see itself, like a sword that cuts but does not cut itself. So you, as humane,

[15:49]

You never really know. You can't make an objective statement about what humanism is. And if you try to, you're going to lower yourself. Because you're going then to say, something which I can define, which I can put my finger on, that is me. So you see, in justice, there is a kind of judge who always gives his decision by the letter of the law. And he doesn't make a good judge. He's rigid, he's narrow. The finest judges are those who, as lawyers say in their own language, make decisions by equity instead of law. They have a feeling for... Like saying, oh, come off it, what is that? It doesn't matter what the books say, but what is the fair way to work this thing out? And a man who has that sort of sense makes for a great judge.

[16:57]

So Confucius had the feeling that the politic called Rome is exactly that kind of feeling of fair play, of humanness. And when his disciples questioned him and said, now, exactly what do you mean by this? He said, I want to find it. You have to know it. And now in the descending order of virtues, which he also taught, there comes righteousness, propriety, filial piety, and so on, all lower in ranking than humaneness, which he, as I say, he wouldn't define. So then, In this kind of thinking, Confucius is completely at one with Lao Tzu. Although Lao Tzu debates with him.

[18:02]

He says, heaven and earth are not humane. They regard human beings as straw dogs. That is to say, straw dogs are ritual animals. Dogs made out of straw, which are sacrificed, burned up in a certain ceremony. And so in the Christian Hebrew language, which is said, God is no respecter of persons. When there's an earthquake, he makes the selection between the good guys and the bad guys. Everybody gets to know him. In the storm at sea, everyone's equal. Lao Tzu argues against Confucius, or rather against Confucians. When they think they know what virtue is, Lao Tzu says, the highest kind of virtue is not virtue, and therefore really is virtue.

[19:15]

We know a kind of virtue. We cannot get rid of the concept of being virtuous and therefore isn't virtue. Virtue in Taoist philosophy, the word 德 in Chinese, means not virtue in the sense of being goody-goody, but when you use the word virtue in the sense of the healing virtues of a plant, almost magic, wonderful power. When you see an artist perform, you would say, he's a virtuoso. You see, it means virtue in that sense. So, when you know, or think you know what virtue is, and try to apply it, then you don't have it. Same way, Confucius wouldn't define the fundamental virtue. Because this is something you have only to the extent that you don't force it.

[20:25]

The minute you start forcing it, everybody detects that you're playing a false note. And they say you're not coming on sincerely, you're forcing it. And they recognize your charity as only charity. They recognize your love as only love. So we get into this frightful double-blind situation where people say to each other, do you really love me? And you can't answer that by saying, I'm trying very hard to. Either you do or you don't. And there's no way you can make it happen. You have to follow your heat. So Therefore, the Chinese have a philosophy of social and natural order that is quite different from ours because it is not based on the concept of law.

[21:41]

There isn't any word that the Chinese use or the order of nature, that is the same as our word law. They do have a word in Chinese that corresponds to law in the way we generally use it. The word in Chinese, zhe, shows when you go to the original pictograph, it shows a picture of a cauldron with a knight beside it. And I'll explain that in a moment. But the great Daoist philosophers speak of the Dao, of the course of nature, as being WUTSA. That almost means illegal. Not working by law.

[22:46]

So go back now. What does this character mean, the Column of the Night Department? It means that in certain ancient times, some emperors, governors, carved the rules of the laws on the sacrificial iron colons so that when the people came to make the sacrifice, they would read the laws. And certain sages objected to the rulers doing this, because they said, if you write the laws down, people will develop a litigious spirit. And Jesus said, what want are you lawyers? Because you're always eternally creating trouble by debating about the meaning of words. See? You can go on forever. Nobody can write a law so tight that a good lawyer can't write through with it with a six horses and a carriage. So when it said that there is no the Tao, the way of nature, the order of nature is Mutsa, it means that it's not formulated or not formulable.

[24:10]

Look at it in this way. Let's consider various Chinese words that mean order. There is, for example, the word 法, which is used to translate the Sanskrit Dharma, to mean the doctrine, principle of Buddhism. What does 法 mean? It doesn't mean people say the doctrine of Buddha is the law. And H.P. Kowalski, who promoted the whole theosophical movement which had incalculable effects on Western understanding of Buddhism, used the idea of law and said that the ultimate reality is not a god, either personal or impersonal, but absolute, immutable law. Now, this is nonsense. There is not that idea of law in Asian thought.

[25:15]

As something laid down, a bit, you know, like how to move on tracks that are previously established. There was a young man who said, Dan, it certainly seems that I am a creature that moves in a determinate groove. I'm not even a bot, I'm a cannon. Thinking, you see, of nature as a process of behavior which obeys rules goes back to the ancient Chaldean model of the universe which has moved into Hebrew, Persian, and therefore Western thinking, Egyptian thinking. that the universe obeys the will of the commander. The Chinese never thought that way.

[26:21]

Even the emperor moved in accordance with not the laws of heaven, but the principles, the notions, the spontaneous, because when you say in Chinese that something is so heavenly, there's this way of writing, it means the same thing exactly as if you put into position of the character of the heaven, the character of itself, what happens of itself, what happens spontaneously. So the idea of order is what happens of itself. Because you grow your hair without making plans to do so.

[27:28]

It happens of itself. And you have eyes without making plans. It happens of itself. And you do it beautifully. Wowee. So they feel, you see, that all things that happen happen excellently to the extent that they are custom to happen and not interfered with. There's a story, you know, about a young man that came in late one evening on the farm And they said, why are you late for dinner? And he said, well, I've been helping the millets to grow. And in the morning they went out and they found that all the millet was dead. Because what he had done, he had gone out and he had taken each little fresh shoot and pulled it up a bit, like this, all over the field.

[28:33]

He helped it to grow. Technology. So, in Chinese way of thinking then, you have words called law, order and so on that are quite different in meaning from ours. Let's take a number of these words just for illustration. The word 法. which translates the Sanskrit Dharma, the way of Buddhism, has the original meaning of a water level, establishing something by the level of water, balance. This has really nothing to do with law in the sense that somebody's sitting and saying, God damn it, you do what I tell you, and if you don't, I'll hit you.

[29:42]

It is balance in the sense of, look, there is a state of affairs, but there are certain conditions of life. They're not rules. It doesn't look like life because there is gravity, for example. And if you jump off a building, you'll fall down and hit yourself. It's not a rule that somebody imposes and says... It's not a rule imposed in a violent spirit. Gravity is just... the way things go. So that's the meaning of thought, you see, the water level. It's just the way things go. There's no spite about it. There's no pride about it. There's nobody going to be offended if you disobey it except yourself. It's just understanding the grain of things. So going from the idea of thought, the water level, to the idea of brain, you get the next word they use, which is lean.

[30:47]

And the word lean, meaning the organic pattern of the universe, has the original sense of the markings in jade, or the pattern of fiber in muscle, or grain in wood. You look at these patterns, you see the markings of jade and you say, shit, that's beautiful. But it's not symmetrical. It's like the pattern of a cloud. And you know that the way a cloud is organized, or the way a cloud in water is organized, is something that's not a mess. Now, how do you put your finger on the difference? between a mess, say a filthy ashtray, or a bunch of dirty dishes with food scattered all over it. How do you make a difference between that kind of company and the company of foam? You scratch your head with this thing.

[31:51]

Gee, I don't know. I just can't put my finger on it. There certainly is a recognizable difference, but I don't know what it is. And nobody ever will know. Because if you did know the difference, you wouldn't appreciate the difference. Because it's the same problem as you can't put your finger on yourself. If you could, you'd be an object and you'd be dead. You see? But just because there's something that you never can turn down, there's always this sort of wonderful, undefined, gorgeous thing that we'll call the lead. the organic pattern of the world. So then, the simple idea run in confusion-thinking, meaning humaneness or human-heartedness,

[32:59]

is called the Tao of Man. The other symbol, Li, meaning organic atom, can be called the Tao of Heaven, which means the universe at large. And in each case, you see, the Tao So the very first line of Lao Tzu's book says, the Tao which can be spoken, which can be defined, in other words, does not be a total Tao. So in the same way, the law which can be explicitly stated is not a just law. Because then you always, what always happens when you've got the law most explicitly stated is you run into bureaucracy.

[34:11]

You run into some wretched official who says, well, it says here in the rules that we can't do it this way. I'm sorry, we just have to abide by the rules. And you say, could I please speak to a person instead of a book? Haven't you someone, an authority above you? I have a thing going on with a telephone company at the moment. That I have an answering service. And they have to list this answering service number in San Rafael, where I don't live. And I say, can't you put my source of ego address next to the San Rafael number? They say, no, our regulations don't allow this. Why not? Well, they just don't. So I have to write to the Public Service Commission, to the chairman of the Pacific Telephone Company, and deride them for their irrationality before anything will happen. Because this is what it says this way in the book.

[35:15]

You are stuck with it. So this comes back to our terrible perennial problem of trying to work out a relationship between life and words. And words are being use the instruments for a way of understanding life, which is what we call conscious attention that takes it in. And in order to remember and keep track of these little grasps of comprehension, we use words to tag and file our experiences.

[36:29]

Therefore laws, therefore rules, therefore records, therefore IBM machines, computers, all these things to keep track of life in terms of scanning. Look at things this way. One by one, bit by bit, bit by bit, all together. See? Every kind of legal, academic, intellectual comprehension of life is based on scanning. Let me spell it out. Say, I don't understand how to dance. Draw me a diagram.

[37:42]

They say, well, when you want to waltz, it's like this. You put your feet into this, and you go one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. But other people, when they learn to dance, they don't learn to dance. They don't take any lessons. They just do it. And if they, you know, if they become conscious about it, they become honest. It's not through a process of analyzing the details, but practicing the feel of it. But so many people say, how do you do it? Show me, how do you try a play? How do you write advice? Would you give me a book about it? And the thing is, yes, we can write a book about it. We can reduce this process to an analytical, one-by-one, step-by-step way of doing your thing.

[38:44]

But you don't really understand it that way. You get it because you have a capacity for learning. Really good. which can work and function without having anything explained to it. And if you don't have faith in that capacity, you can never learn anything. That's why the psychologists have never really come up with a satisfactory theory of learning. They're always debating endlessly about how does one learn anything at all. And they never come up with a satisfactory explanation because we don't know. And we don't know for exactly the same reason, going back to this central principle, that the finger can't touch the finger.

[39:55]

You can say they're lighter than earth to faith. Faith, which means letting go and being here are exactly the same thing. And to the degree that you can't do that, you can't make faith, to the same degree you are in the act of committing suicide. Because the one thing about death, you know, we say there are two things in life that are certain. Death and taxes. And if you want to be absolutely sure about something, you know, you don't want any more uncertainty, shoot yourself. Because that's the way of putting yourself down. You're really talking on the wall. You're packed up. You've been listening to Helen Watts with part three from a seminar entitled The Future of Politics.

[41:33]

If you'd like to hear this lecture again on an audio cassette, or perhaps play it for a friend, you could get an audio cassette.

[41:42]

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