Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

a man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself, until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position.

Always have a large pinch of salt handy when you meet the fellow who talks about trying to renounce himself, to overcome his ego.

it is not everyone’s gift to be the contented fatalist, accepting himself and his limitations just as they are, knowing that he is a weed and not trying to be a rose. Some of us will always be trying—with an exasperating degree of relative success—to improve ourselves in one way or another, and no amount of self-acceptance will stop it.

Self-renunciation, self-acceptance—these are all names for the same thing, for the ideal to which there is no road, the art for which there is no technique.

People try to accept themselves in order to be different, and try to surrender themselves in order to have more self-respect in their own eyes—or to attain some spiritual experience, some exaltation of consciousness the desire for which is the very form of their self-interest.

The part of our self that wants to change our self is the very one that needs to be changed; but it is as inaccessible as a needle to the prick of its own point.

For the selfishness of the self thrives on the notion that it can command itself, that it is the lord and master of its own processes, of its own motives and desires.

Thus the one important result of any really serious attempt at self-renunciation or self-acceptance is the humiliating discovery that it is impossible.

A successful merchant will perhaps be less ready than a mere tramp to see that the same oblivion engulfs both of them.

to pretend to oneself that a life of constant self-frustration was in fact a great spiritual attainment.

for there are people who discover what was always close at hand only after a long and painful journey, and they remain under the impression that the most awkward road was the only road.

The main point is, I think, that the state metaphorically called death or self-surrender is not a future condition to be acquired. It is rather a present fact.

emotions appear only as manifestations of a state of tension and resistance.

If I did not dislike fear, it would not be fear.

The point is that our feelings are not really a kind of resistance, a kind of fight with the course of events. They are a harmonious and intelligent response. A person who did not feel frightened at the threat of danger would be like a tall building with no “give” to the wind. A mind which will not melt—with sorrow or love—is a mind which will all too easily break.

The point is that these ultimate feelings are as wise as all the rest, and their wisdom emerges when we give up resisting them—through the realization that we are simply unable to do so. When, for example, life compels us at last to give in, to surrender to the full play of what is ordinarily called the terror of the unknown, the suppressed feeling suddenly shoots upward as a fountain of the purest joy.

This willful, compulsive, moralistic approach to man’s transformation always obstructs it—for it still implies that very illusion of self-mastery which stands in the way.

But it is just when I discover that I cannot surrender myself that I am surrendered; just when I find that I cannot accept myself that I am accepted. For in reaching this hard rock of the impossible one reaches sincerity, where there can no longer be the masked hide-and-seek of I and Me,

Detachment means to have neither regrets for the past nor fears for the future; to let life take its course without attempting to interfere with its movement and change, neither trying to prolong the stay of things pleasant nor to hasten the departure of things unpleasant.

For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions.

For the curious thing is that you cannot get out of accord with it even if you want to; though your thoughts may run into the past or the future they cannot escape the present moment.

So become what you are.

Religion, with all its apparatus of ideas and practices, is altogether a pointing

You know that there is nothing to desire or seek for—that no techniques, no spiritual apparatus of belief or discipline is necessary, no system of philosophy or religion. The goal is here.

If you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself. But this needs a certain kind of concentration, because reality is not symbols, it is not words and thoughts, it is not reflections and fantasies. Therefore to see it clearly, your mind must be free from wandering words and from the floating fantasies of memory.’’

If you can concentrate the mind for two seconds, you can do it for two minutes, and if you can do it for two minutes, you can do it for two hours.

This is why it is quite literally off the point to time yourself, to compete with yourself, and to bother about your progress and success in the art.

This is because the so-called self is a construct of words and memories, of fantasies which have no existence in immediate reality.

We want to enjoy ourselves, and fear that if we forget ourselves there will be no enjoyment

Self-consciousness is a stoppage because it is like interrupting a song after every note so as to listen to the echo, and then feeling irritated because of the loss of rhythm.

So many Westerners who do this kind of thing are so self-conscious about it, so preoccupied with the idea of doing it that they never really do it at all.

I am rather leery of too much Zen—especially when it means importing all the purely incidental apparatus of Zen from Japan, all the strictly technical formalities, and all the endless and pointless discussion about who has or hasn’t attained satori, or about how many koans one has solved, or how many hours a day one sits in zazen, or meditation.

Therefore, the important thing is simply to begin—anywhere,

lest he forget that the responsibility not only for human prosperity but also for the order of the universe is his own.

For to try to say anything definite about the Tao is like trying to eat your mouth: you can’t get outside it to chew it.

almost all human beings make some sort of a distinction between the self that wills and acts, and the subconscious self that manages our hearts and glands and nerves. Such words as self-control and self-consciousness suggest this division of our being into two parts, knower and known, thinker and thoughts.

the problem is the pain of trying to avoid suffering and the fear of trying not to be afraid.

For, according to Lao-tzu, the way back, or forward, to harmony with the Tao is, in the profoundest and most radical sense, to do nothing at all.

the moment we begin to talk or think about it, it becomes immensely difficult to understand,

the way of deliberate imitation. This is to suppose that we actually know what the sane and natural way of living is, to embody it in laws and principles, techniques and ideals, and then try by a deliberate effort of imitation to follow them. This leads to all the contradictions with which we are so familiar, the contradiction of man bawling himself out—as well as up—for not doing what he tells himself to do.

the way of deliberate relaxation, the way of “to hell with it all.” This is to try not to control oneself, to attempt to relax one’s mind and let it think whatever it wants, to set out to accept one’s self as it is without making any effort to change it. This leads to a vast, sloppy, disorganized mess, or to a kind of compulsive stillness, or sometimes to an equally compulsive psychological diarrhea.

We have simply no idea of what the goal ought to be.

I have found out what I, what my ego, actually is—a result-seeking mechanism.

It is looking for results in terms of itself. It wants to get results from the process of looking for results. This is a hopelessly and wildly fouled-up feedback mechanism. There is, however, just this one possibility. It can realize the whole round circuit of the trap in which it lies. It can see the entire futility and self-contradiction of its position. And it can see that it can do nothing whatsoever to get itself out of it. And this realization of “I can do nothing” is precisely mui. One has mysteriously succeeded in doing nothing.

And we cannot make the Tao a goal any more than we can aim an arrow at itself.

We cannot find release until we have known the real extremity of our situation, and see that all striving for spiritual ideals is completely futile—since the very seeking thrusts them away.

Where do we go from here? We do not. We come to an end. But this is the end of the night.

His trouble is that instead of playing his part, his part plays him and makes him the laughingstock of all who see through his guise.

For the gods (or buddhas, or what you will) are simply our own innermost essence,

The swift, trackless flight of the arrow is used as an image of impermanence, of the passage of human life through time, of the inevitable truth that all things must at last dissolve, and “leave not a track behind.”