Now, for our regular Sunday morning presentation of lectures by the late Alan Watts. We'll hear this morning part three of the seminar entitled, Reflecting the Mirror. This seminar has four parts, and the third part this morning, then next Sunday morning, part four. Lectures by the late Alan Watts on Sunday mornings on KSAN, Reflecting the Mirror, part three. Before we begin, a brief reminder that a catalog of all of the available tapes of lectures by Alan Watts is yours, from MEA, Box 303, Sausalito. That's a catalog of all of the Alan Watts lectures, MEA, Box 303, Sausalito. We've been going into the problem of reflection. That is to say, a mirror is, of course, originally a reflecting thing, and a person I'm going

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to talk about a good deal this morning, a Chinese philosopher by the name of Zhuangzi, once said that the perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. It receives but does not keep. And throughout the literature of both Taoist and Buddhist mysticism, there are constant references to the mirror as an analogy of the mind. There's a poem which says, well, the water is used equally with a mirror. The wild geese have no mind to cast their reflection. The water has no intent to receive their image. This again is a poem which somehow represents the attitude of Zen. There is a lot of reference, too, in Zen to the image of the moon in the water. And the phrase, the moon in the water, is used to typify the attitude of the man who

[02:31]

has attained absolute perfection in swordsmanship, because he doesn't hesitate if he's attacked. He has no need to think what to do. What he does by way of defense is so simultaneous with the attack that there's no interval. So in the same way, when the moon rises, all pools instantly are reflected. They knew, of course, in those days nothing about the speed of light. But as soon as the moon is there, it's in the water, and there's no hesitation. So they would say the mind, the original mind in us, is like that. It doesn't hesitate. It doesn't dither. And when you hear a Buddhist talking about the virtue of detachment, not being attached to this world, you must not understand that to mean that good Buddhists don't enjoy their dinner or that they have no sort of pleasure in life.

[03:35]

What attachment means is exactly what we mean today in our colloquial speech by a hang-up. To have a hang-up is as it were to be trying to slide something across a surface, but it's so gritty that it catches. It doesn't slide smoothly. So the psychological term blocking, when someone says you're blocking, that means... So the psychological term blocking, when someone says you're blocking, that means attachment in the Buddhist sense. The word in Sanskrit, klesha, has the sense therefore of clinging. Not attachment in the sense that you love someone, but that you're hung up. So that when you would be challenged by circumstances to act, you don't know what to do and you

[04:39]

dither around because you're trying to think out what the right thing to do is. So that's a hang-up. So the ideal of the Zen Buddhists and the Taoists, the ideal of the man who is not hung-up, is one who responds to all situations in the same way that when you clap your hands the sound comes out immediately without hesitating. Or if you strike a flint, the spark issues at once. There is no interval. But you see, this is a different thing from being in a hurry, because the spark is in no hurry to come out of the flint, there's no rush about it. It's simply the spark coming out is the same thing as hitting the flint with the iron. When you put the two hands together, the two hands coming together is the clap. There is no interval between. So in that way, then, the response of consciousness to circumstance, or noh shofuni, they call it in Japanese, the unity of mind and form, which is the required attainment for one who

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acts, say, in the noh plays, this is what is being aimed at. And so all sorts of dithering, shall we say calculation, get in the way of the non-attached or the completely flowing life. Calculation, of course, I remember a passage in Kumaraswami's essay on what is called in India, sahaja, which is the natural life, where he says, it is a perpetual, uncalculated life in the present. Now, everyone has, of course, read the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew and the Sermon on

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the Mount, where Jesus advises his disciples not to be anxious for the morrow, to consider the lilies or flowers of the field, how they grow, they don't work, they don't spin. But Solomon, in all his glory, was not clothed like one of those. And so if God clothes the grass of the field, which lives for a moment, you know, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, faithless ones? And I have never yet, in all my experience of clergyman, I have never yet heard a preacher go to work on that text and really dig it. They all say, well, this is very beautiful, but of course it's not practical. And it's amazing that this passage can be read again and again and again, whereas people

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will take seriously all Jesus' jokes about sex, which come somewhat earlier in the same chapter. They don't take this seriously at all. They just toss it off, because it's the most subversive passage in the Bible. It really cuts at the root of civilization entirely, or does it? Centuries before Jesus, the Chinese Taoists were saying similar things, in opposition in a way to the Confucians. The Confucians believed in laws, in ritual, in ceremony, in filial piety, and in telling people that they ought to practice charity and duty towards one's neighbor. And there's a famous passage, which is quite apocryphal, because they didn't live at the

[09:04]

same time, where Laozi and Confucius had a conversation. And Confucius is trying to explain to Laozi what charity and duty to one's neighbor is. And finally, Laozi says, what stuff. Sir, you are causing great confusion to the people. Look at the sun and moon. They are unswerving in their regularity. Look at the trees. They grow upwards without exception. Look at the birds. They always flock together at the same seasons. Be like these. As for your attempt to eliminate selfishness, this is a positive manifestation of self. You are like one who beats a drum in search of a fugitive. Alas, sir, you have brought much confusion to the empire. So you know, when someone's running away to escape the law, and the officers are beating a drum as they come after him, he always knows where they are, you see? So the same way to try to be unselfish is the most selfish ideal.

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Because you think, my goodness, wouldn't I be great if I were unselfish, you know? I were a really nice guy and helped everybody else. And so by having ambitions of that kind, you become a real rogue. You become a hypocrite. And you must note that all preaching, telling people how they ought to be, only leads to hypocrisy. Because you do it, you follow the advice of the preachers, either because you want to keep out of trouble, because they threaten you with hell if you don't behave properly, or because you want to be admired. And you can think, you know, to yourself, well, I don't have motivations like that. I really love other people. Under certain circumstances, yes, you do. But you could be put to the test, and certain circumstances might arise where you don't love other people at all. So, the attitude of the Taoists, as against the Confucians, was that all this discussion

[11:21]

of righteousness and propriety and so on was doing nothing but getting mankind deeper and deeper and deeper into trouble. So Lao Tzu says, when the great Tao lost, that is to say, when people no longer followed the natural way, the course of nature, there came duty to man and right conduct. When there were troubles in the state, we began to hear of loyal statesmen. When the family was deranged, we began to hear of filial sons and daughters. And so it seems to be said, in a very odd way, that it's the rules that make the trouble. And ordinary common sense tells us that the trouble comes first, and then thereafter, the rules. Because things have gone astray, and the elders say, oh, the young are going to the dogs, we have to lay down the law to them. But it is not as simple as that. You can see, I saw a headline the other day, which said, Cops Riot in Haight-Ashbury.

[12:29]

And there is a very curious thing, whereby, after a while, the law, that is to say, authority and crime, form an alliance with each other. And the more you attempt to suppress crime, the more you stir it up. So that, I just want to ask you to consider, what kind of person would volunteer for service on a vice squad? And you have a criminal, obviously. You have a very deranged person. And so, we tend, you see, as time goes on, that official types, people who are enforcement officers, begin to be the same kind of people as criminals. So that the law enforcement and crime reinforce each other all the time.

[13:37]

They have an alliance. It's a symbiotic relationship. Because lots of symbiotic relationships are contests. And so, eventually, what happens is, that the government is the most successful group of gangsters. And when we know, we only have to read the history of Europe to realize that places like France and England and Germany, and so on, particularly Italy, they were originally just bands of brigands. And sudden brigand got stronger and stronger and stronger, and at last, he was the government. And it still goes on. So the Taoists were trying to say to governors, look, lay off. Please leave things alone. Their idea, you see, Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching as a manual of advice to emperors.

[14:39]

And he says, in other words, that the emperor, although he is above the people, they should not feel his weight. Govern a great state as you cook a small fish. In other words, if you have a small fish like smelts in the frying pan, you don't keep jostling them with a pancake turner, because the fish will just fall apart. You have to cook it very gently. See, less cooking is better than more. That's how the Chinese produce such beautiful vegetables. They hardly cook them at all. They have a method of heating them through very quickly, and then serve it at once so that they're very crisp. Less cooking is better than more. So less law. When about 250 BC, a new dynasty came into power in China. It was called the Han Dynasty. And it followed the Qing Dynasty.

[15:44]

The Qing Dynasty lasted for 15 years. The Han lasted for 500. The Qing Dynasty was a dictatorship. And this grandiose military emperor was going to found a dynasty that would last for a thousand years. And he legalized in every direction. He made laws and laws and laws, and caused only the right books to be allowed. Most of them were burned, and heaven only knows. When the Han Dynasty came in, they simply wrote all the laws off the books. They repealed everything. They kept about two laws against robbery and murder, or something like that, and that was it. They wrote them all off. And that was one of the most stable and creative epochs in Chinese culture. So it was very close to anarchy. And you must understand what anarchy is, in the true sense. Anarchy is not someone with a grisly beard and a bomb running around, trying to blow

[16:45]

up airplanes and stop the public functioning. Anarchy in the West was invented by Prince Kropotkin, who was a great Russian aristocrat, who had a theory about that the state is simply a nuisance, and that there simply should be no government in that sense at all. So that in other words, if you're driving down the road, and you see a rock on the road, you don't wait for the Department of Highways to get rid of it, you just stop your car and shove it over. And if everybody does things like that, you see, then things will go along, and everybody will feel responsible, because there's no government to say, you do it, you see. Now when you start thinking about that, you realize this is probably something to be said for it, but you can't take it quite literally. Because of karma, that is to say, because once you've started to interfere with the

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course of events, you're stuck with it. It's like it's an awful sticky business for us to get ourselves out of Vietnam. Once we've interfered there, see, we're terribly involved, in all sorts of ways. And sometimes, of course, it is better, you know, it's like a marriage, where both husband and wife are trying desperately to make the marriage work, and as a result of that, they get more involved, and more involved, and more involved with each other, until they're both living in a wall-to-wall trap and loathe each other. And the only thing is to simply go in and break it up, at all costs, you know, just get out of it. Because when people get more and more involved, under the supposition that they're doing the right thing, and they try to love each other, they don't love each other. And when you pretend to love someone, who you don't love, all you do is create hatred.

[18:53]

Because you don't like what you're doing, and the person very well knows that you are loving them, not because you really do, but because you think it's your duty. And so they feel guilty, and it's a mess all around. So it's completely absurd to be dishonest with your emotions, with your feelings. So people say, well, but what if nobody delivers the mail? What if nobody wants to be the milkman? What if there are no garbage collectors? Mustn't there be some people who do their duty every day and hate it? Okay. Think ahead a little. All that resentment piles up and piles up and piles up. And one day it has to blow itself off. So you've had your mail delivered, your milk delivered, your garbage collected regularly, all these things have been done for you, and it goes on for about 20 years.

[19:56]

See? Meanwhile, everybody's getting more and more bored and frustrated and whatnot, and suddenly the bombers are over you. And the whole life is blown to bits. Practical, eh? You know, we're out of our heads, absolutely. We've been lucky in this country. The Swiss have been lucky for a hundred years. The Swedes have done fairly well by minding their own business, and we were far enough away so that nobody could reach us. But all that's over, technologically. And even if we don't suffer the consequences from an external enemy, we've brewed up plenty of trouble back here at home, and nobody knows what the answer to it is.

[20:57]

Oppenheimer, shortly before he died, said that it's quite clear that the world is going to hell. The only chance it might not, is that we don't try to stop it doing so. It's a beautiful Taoist remark. So, Zhuangzi has some things to say about this that are very interesting. Do you realize how one's character is lost and where knowledge leads? A man loses his character through the desire for fame, and knowledge leads to contention. In the struggle for fame, men crush each other while their knowledge is but an instrument for scheming and contention. These two are instruments of evil and lead one away from the moral life.

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Those who rely upon the arc, the line, compasses, and the square to make correct forms, injure the natural constitution of things. Those who use cords to bind and glue to piece together, interfere with the natural character of things. Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting humanity and justice, have lost the original nature of man. There is an original nature in things. Things in their original nature are curved without the help of arcs, straight without lines, round without compasses, and rectangular without squares. They are joined together without glue and hold together without cords. In this manner, all things grow with abundant life, without knowing how they do so. They all have a place in the scheme of things without knowing how they come to have their proper place. From time immemorial this has been so, and it may not be tampered with. Why then should the doctrines of humanity and justice continue to remain like so much glue

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or cords in the domain of Tao and character to give rise to confusion and doubt among mankind? The lesser doubts change man's purpose, and the greater doubts change man's nature. How do we know this? Ever since the time when Shun made a bid for humanity and justice and threw the world into confusion, men have run about and exhausted themselves in the pursuit thereof. Is not then humanity and justice which have changed the nature of man? People with superfluous keenness of vision put into confusion the five colors, lose themselves in the forms and designs, in the distinctions of greens and yellows for sacrificial robes. Is this not so? Of such was Li Jiu, the clear-sighted. People with superfluous keenness of hearing put into confusion the five notes, exaggerate the timbres of metal, stone, string and bamboo, of the huang zhong and the tai lu, which are ancient musical instruments, their standard pitch pipes. Is this not so? Of such was Xue Guang, the music master.

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People who abnormally develop humanity, exalt character and suppress nature in order to gain a reputation, make the world noisy with their discussions, and cause it to follow impractical doctrines. Is this not so? Of such were Sun and Xue, people who commit excess in arguments, like piling up bricks and tying knots, analyzing and inquiring into the distinctions of hard and white, identities and differences, wear themselves out over vain, useless terms. Is this not so? Of such were Yang and Mo. Therefore, all these are superfluous and devious growths of knowledge, and are not the correct guide for the world. He who would be the ultimate guide of the world should take care to preserve the original nature of man. Therefore, with him, the united is not like joined toes, the separated is not like extra fingers, what is long is not considered as excess, and what is short is not regarded as wanting. For duck's legs, though short, cannot be lengthened without dismay to the duck, and a crane's

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legs, though long, cannot be shortened without misery to the crane. That which is long in nature must not be cut off, and that which is short in nature must not be lengthened. One should not worry about changing them. It would seem that humanity and justice were not part of the nature of man. How worried these teachers of charity are! Now, the charitable men of the present age go about with a look of concern, sorrowing over the ills of the age, while the non-charitable let loose the desires of their nature in their greed for position and wealth. Therefore, it would seem that humanity and justice were not a part of human nature. Yet from the time of the three dynasties downwards, what a commotion has been raised about them. There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone and tolerance. There has never been such a thing as governing mankind. Letting alone springs from the fear, lest men's natural dispositions be perverted, and tolerance springs from the fear, lest their character be corrupted.

[26:18]

But if their natural dispositions be not perverted, nor their character corrupted, what need is there left for government? Of old, when Yao governed the empire, he made the people live happily. Consequently, the people struggled to be happy and became restless. When Ch'er governed the empire, he made the people live in misery. Consequently, the people regarded life as a burden and were discontented. Restlessness and discontent are subversive of man's character, and without character there never has been such a thing as stability. When man rejoices greatly, he gravitates towards yang, the positive pole. When he is in great anger, he gravitates toward yin, the negative pole. When the equilibrium of positive and negative is disturbed, the four seasons are upset, the balance of heat and cold is destroyed. Man himself suffers physically thereby. It causes men to rejoice and sorrow inordinately, to live disorderly lives, to be vexed in their thought and lose their pattern and norm of conduct. When that happens, then the whole world seethes with revolt and discontent, and we have such

[27:25]

men as the Robert Ch'er and the Confucian teachers, Tsung and Ch'er. Offer the entire world as rewards for the good, or threaten the wicked with dire punishments of the entire world, and it is still insufficient to reform them. Consequently, with the entire world one cannot furnish sufficient inducements or deterrents to action. From the three dynasties downwards, the world has lived in a helter-skelter of promotions and punishments. What chance have the people left for fulfilling peacefully the natural instincts of their lives? Therefore, when a gentleman is unavoidably compelled to take charge of the government of the empire, there is nothing better than inaction, letting alone, wu-wei in Chinese. By means of inaction only can he allow the people to fulfill peacefully the natural instincts of their lives. Therefore, he who values the world as his own self may be entrusted with the government of the world, and he who loves the world as his own self may be entrusted with the care

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of the world. Therefore, if the gentleman can refrain from disturbing the internal economy of man and glorifying the powers of sight and hearing, he can sit still like a corpse or spring into action like a dragon, be silent as the deep, or talk with the voice of thunder, the movements of his spirit calling forth the natural mechanism of heaven. He can remain calm and leisurely, doing nothing, while all things are brought to maturity and thrive. What need then would have I to set about governing the world? You know, that was one thing that, when Eisenhower was president of the United States, somebody had a slogan, just before the next election, which was, let's keep the White House empty for another four years. And his reign was really rather peaceful.

[29:29]

And what the point here is, you see, that rulers, if somebody has to be in charge of a social function, say like the district or the county sanitary inspector, now there's a useful man, but he doesn't go riding around in splendor with escorts of police on motorcycles and reporters and cameras all over the place. And so, in the same way, Laozi and Zhuangzi are saying that anybody who governs should be very anonymous, there shouldn't be a fuss made over him, he's just like any other person going about his daily business. But the moment you start to make the central controller of everything and you blow fanfares and you make up a big thing and say, you know, the United States, hooray, hooray, hooray, or whatever the country is, then you're in for trouble. So govern a great state as you cook a small fish.

[30:32]

Now, let's go, let's look at that from the point of view, not of the political state for the moment. I don't want to get into a long discussion of politics, but let's look at it from the point of view of the human being. Your organism is like a country, and do you have a boss in your body? There's a long passage in Zhuangzi about the organism, and it says that although it all seems to function together, which part of it do you prefer? Is there a kind of hierarchy of preferable parts of the organism? I've told some of you the argument between the head and the stomach, and the argument is that obviously the stomach is fundamental because it's the place where all food is digested and it supplies everything. And so, therefore, the stomach is the really important organ, and the head is simply the

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manufacturer on the end of the alimentary canal which feeds the stomach of a seeking device, complicated seeking device for finding food. Now, the other argument is the argument of the head. The head says, no, not at all, although I evolved later than the stomach. The stomach was my forerunner, like John the Baptist for Jesus Christ, and really the stomach is simply a gadget which serves the needs of the brain. The brain is culture and is the fine arts and is religion and music, and the stomach is just lower things, and you put food into your mouth, you know, and that's necessary. It's good for you. Now, you're not supposed to enjoy it because you're supposed to enjoy higher things. So everybody is eating Wonder Bread and hot dogs and things, saying that it's a plain living and high thinking, see? Well, in a way, you can argue both points of view with equal validity.

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Say, yes, the brain is the main thing about man that's important, or you can say, oh, the brain is just an adjunct to the stomach, that's all it's... You can argue it both ways, because there is no final truth about the matter. The interesting thing about a human being is that all his organs are mutually necessary to each other. It's true, you can get around with an amputated leg. It's true, you can function if you're blind. But with severe limitations, because all the organs are in a relationship. This is what we mean by an organic relationship. Everything is dependent upon everything else. Everything goes with everything else. And just as you don't find anywhere in nature a creature which is just a head, see?

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Imagine human heads suddenly coming into existence and rolling down the street, being alive and talkative, see? It's absurd. Imagine just a pair of legs someday you meet, running along. It's ridiculous. So then in the ordering of this marvelous thing, you do really have a democracy of a certain kind. It's not like a voting democracy. It doesn't elect a president. But it all works together if left to itself. Now, occasionally, of course, we do salvage somebody's life by surgery and make a very rough, abrasive interference. But we are nowhere near the situation where everybody in the world is surviving because

[35:05]

surgically interfered with. And we run into a danger, incidentally, through medicine, that we are beginning to see coming into the world now. That if we patch people up all the time and don't let them die, we begin to get not only the population problem, but an enormous population of completely bored old people who are just vegetating and who are, you know, they've brought up their families and they've done all these things for them. They've raised their children and that's great and so on. Then at the end of their term they impoverish their families by having to be maintained on the end of tubes in hospitals for an unspeakably long time. I mean, where does the duty to one's children or duty to one's parents come in here, you see?

[36:12]

Now, therefore, what is the practical outcome of this? That's what everybody's going to ask. What should you do about it? Now let's examine that question. What do you mean, the practical issue of all this that I'm saying? What do you mean by practical? Lots of people say, I'm a practical man. I believe in getting things done. And all you philosophers, you just sit around and talk. You don't do anything. Come on, show us what we ought to do. Well, I have to say, what do you want to do? Where are you going? What do you think? What do you mean by practical? Well, you know, everybody knows what practical is. Oh, do they? Well, you say practical is what's productive. Productive of what?

[37:21]

Well, the sort of things you buy in a grocery store. Do you think that's practical? Well, you're supposed to survive, aren't you? You have to eat. Oh, so you mean that what you want to do is you want to go on. Now, how would you like to go on? You want more of it. You want more life. You want more time. Why? Well, we don't think about that. Everything just wants to go on. It's what we call the instinct for survival. That's the only value we have. It's the only thing that anybody will agree about, that we ought to go on. But when you come to think about it, it's very odd. Because here, there are thousands and thousands of creatures in nature, which just go poof like that. That's their whole life. Poof. Poof.

[38:24]

But boy, what a gas that must be when they do it, see? The Zen poem which says, the morning glory blooms for an hour, yet differs not at heart from the giant pine which lives for a thousand years. Now, the reason that we all want to go on, and we are concerned with survival all the time, animals are only concerned about survival when they're directly challenged. And they are quite content when they are fed to loaf and do nothing. They will lie on their backs and go to sleep or contemplate the stars or listen to the sound of the river. Human beings feel guilty when they're doing that. They go, oh, I ought to be up and doing something. I ought to buy a job, because, you see, if I don't, I'm wasting time. And I'm not filling my barn up, I'm not filling my bank account up, so that when the awful awfuls happen, there'll be something there. So, the reason we want to go on surviving is that we live in an impoverished person,

[39:33]

and therefore are always wanting something more to happen. See, it's, if you never are nourished, you're perpetually hungry, always looking for it. Maybe tomorrow I'll get a good meal, see? But when you've properly fed, you're not hungry anymore. So even Confucius said, a man who understands the Tao in the morning may die with content in the evening. Now, are you all ready to die? What would you do? What would you say? You know? Is there something you have to do? Supposing we suddenly got on the radio that the bomb was going to land in 15 minutes. Are you all ready to die? That is a rather peculiar instance, because there's just nothing you could do about it. But supposing it was something where you thought you could do something about it. And what does one have to do to be prepared for death?

[40:40]

Well, normally you say, I've got to get my affairs in order, see my wills all right, and things tidied up, and all the personal papers thrown away, and whatever it is, so that my successors will be in position. But also people think, well, some people want to go to the priest and confess their sins, others want to have at least one more roll in the hay, or whatever it may be to get ready to die. Now, there's a corny hymn, which they sometimes sing in church. It says, redeem thy misspent moments past, live every day as if thy last. Now that has a kind of a wrong twist in it, which is a guilt take. You may die at any moment, so make your peace with God. Ask for the forgiveness of your sins, you see, and that's a kind of a dreadful thing to hang up everybody with, that monarchical theory of the government of the universe.

[41:45]

But to be ready to die at any moment is to be always completely in the present. To live this time is not going to be any other time, face it. You could say, oh well, tomorrow I will reform. Tomorrow I will maybe save up enough to do this, that, and the other. There is no tomorrow. In a sense there is a tomorrow, but that tomorrow, as I've often said, is only usable by people who know how to live today. They are the only ones who have any use for making plans. People who live for tomorrow have no use for plans at all. Plans don't ever do them any good. They're never there.

[42:49]

Or somewhere else, off. So, when you have a whole culture built up, you see, on the supposition that, well what it's like is this. There was a great Russian writer, forget his name, said this whole philosophy is turning everybody into caryatids. You know what a caryatid is? A caryatid is a pillar of a building carved in the shape of a human being, or an animal, which is therefore used as a supporter. He says, you're turning the whole human race into caryatids, who will hold up a floor upon which future generations will dance. He said, as long as you think that way, it will always be that way. So the future generation, when it comes, that'll be a floor, then there'll be caryatids there, and another floor. Whoops! Caryatids there, and another floor.

[43:52]

Zip! Caryatids. And this is called progress. And the caryatids, you know, they feel the weight, you know, they always look depressed and holding up. So one's children, when one's always saying to one's children, look how much I've done for you, look at all the things I did for you, etc., etc., etc., all they do is they learn to say to their children, look how much I've done for you, etc., etc., etc., and nobody ever gets there. So now, you see, if you listen to this sort of thing, this Taoist attitude of what you might call, it's very permissive. It's saying, let go, stop all this. Awful hang-up. And then, what happens? See, everybody comes to me and says, you've been talking these kind of things.

[44:53]

And all our children are falling apart, they're all doing this, see? And they're not delivering the mail, even if they do take jobs at the post office, when they get a load of samples, it's just, the mail carriers sell it somewhere, or drop it in the ditch. They're terrible, see? Well I say, yeah, but they take me too literally, because that's the trouble with everybody, they're looking for something to do. What shall we do about it? See? That was what I started with. What is the practical thing to do under the circumstances? You know, does it mean overthrow the government and have none? Or does it mean have a different kind of government?

[45:54]

What are we going to do about it? What I'm saying is, there is nothing you can do about it. That anything you do about it will all make it worse. Even if you make a big show of doing nothing about it, and you, you know, that's also doing something about it, see? This is terribly important to understand, at this juncture in the history of the world, that anything you do about it will make it worse. Now, then we get, we get into, there comes into effect a principle, which I will call the power of not doing. This is Taoist. Not doing, wu wei, which means, really, not forcing.

[46:56]

Not inaction. It means action in accordance with the flow of nature, as distinct from action against the grain. So not doing is, of course, proceeding with one's, whatever you do every day. And in the understanding that you are not going to change the world. Simply not. And the world has to be allowed to deteriorate, or whatever it's doing, in its own sweet way. Now the minute lots of people start doing that, things start to change. But they change of themselves. Nobody forces it to change. That's the, that's the only change that can be correct. That which is zi ran, which means self-so, of itself. And zi ran in Chinese means nature. What happens of itself. So this, for everybody involved in the present crisis of the world, which is just, of course,

[48:04]

terrifying, what's going on. But you must understand, basically, there isn't anything you can do about it. And if you go on a crusade to do something about it, you'll just create more trouble. But if you lay off, and thoroughly realize in your heart, that it can't, that you can't do anything about it, that is going to change you. And you're going to become a peaceful person, and an honest person, and you'll stop being a prig, and a hypocrite, and a bore. Because you're not, or equally, you must understand, you're not going to change yourself. I met a couple last night, who I've known for a long time, and hadn't seen them in a long, in quite a while. And they were just delightful. But I remember way back when, they were all unhappy, and striving, and quarreling, and

[49:10]

just, just nobody home. But what happened was, the lady in particular, realized she couldn't make herself any different than she is. And she gave up. And she is just charming. You know, you get to, you get to realize this more, when you're past the middle of life, past 45 or 50. And you get a little bit cynical, and you realize that, you're going to be the same old fool you always have been. And I always tell young couples about to get married, that don't ever look upon your wife or husband as someone with good potentiality. Always assume that they are going to get worse as time goes on, and find out whether you could possibly live with this person when they've thoroughly deteriorated.

[50:12]

That's the only, only sound judgment for going to marriage. Now, it sounds very cynical, and it sounds as if I were against higher things. But this is the only way to get to them, see, by acceptance of oneself. And that does not mean, you see, a lot of people accept themselves by going around writing four-letter words all over the walls. That's not accepting yourself. That's making a big show of accepting nature, you know. That's laying it on. That's blowing a trumpet before you cast your arms in the temple box. That's not the way. So you can't follow this philosophy as a form of protest. You simply can't do it. It won't work that way. It's just realizing that the ego has no reality whatsoever. It's like a line of latitude. You can't do anything with it.

[51:15]

And if you try to use your ego to change things, all you will be doing is you'll be straining and straining and straining to make something happen which can't happen. And all you'll be doing is wearing yourself out with a strain. Then you'll be at, be of a nasty disposition, go around making trouble. That's why Puritans are always cruel. Part 3 of Reflecting the Mirror. Part 4 will conclude the seminar, Reflecting the Mirror, next Sunday morning on KSAN in San Francisco. Again, a reminder, you can get a catalog of the recorded lectures of the late Alan Watts by writing MEA, Box 303, Sausalito. That's MEA, Box 303, Sausalito.

[52:13]

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