Dmitrije Mitrinovic
In 1932, after leaving school and lacking of any open path into higher education, Alan’s father gave him a job in his office, raising funds for London hospitals. Laurence was also now accompanying him to the Buddhist lodge, and he eventually became the organisation’s treasurer. Watts describes him as a ‘serene, quiet man… I really cannot imagine a more companionable father”.
With his father’s encouragement, he designed his own higher education, via Nigel Watkins and ‘the most magical bookshop in the world’, Watkins’ Bookshop. Although, as Watts confesses, most of the contents were then (as now) ‘superstitious trash’ , he was carefully guided in his reading by Nigel Watkins, who was “worth at least twenty academically accredited professors...instead of giving lectures and holding seminars, he simply tells you what to read.”
It was around this time that he was introduced to a seminal figure in his education, Dmitrije Mitrinovic, a Yugoslavian, “ who as very probably a high initiate into the mysteries of the universe’. He was a “stout Slavonic man with a completely shaved head, black wing like eyebrows and entrancing eyes.
“He wore an exalted bowler hat, cutaway morning coat and striped trousers. He carried a walking stick with an amber handle always paid his bills with crisp white five pound notes and smoked very fat Virginia cigarettes…he resembled Gurdjieff...I loved him and feared him for my Buddhist and Theosophical friends were of the opinion that he was a black magician”
Mitrninovic, according to Watts, belonged to the class of such legendary figures as Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Aleister Crowley, Meher Baba , Alice Bailey and Jiddu Krishnamurti . He was also one of the founders of the New Britain movement, which agitated for a radical change in economic organization – partly a form of Guild Socialism, partly a movement for a federated Europe. The movement urged the government to use force to stop Hitler’s refortification of the Rhineland , after the teaching of Lao-tse , to eliminate problems at the beginning when they are weak.
“ But all this was to no avail” wrote Watts, “ and I dropped out of politics.”
Mitronivic invariably began his activities at his home in Gower Street, Bloomsbury, late at night and would arrive among his disciples at 11pm – annoying for Watts since he had to take the last train back to Chislehurst on a train that left before midnight.
The group was studying the psychotherapeutic techniques of Alfred Adler and Trigant Burrow. Burrow argued in ‘The Social Basis of Consciousness’ that the ego personality was a socially implanted fiction and not a psychophysical entity. This fitted in nicely with Watts’ Zen inclinations.
Christmas Humphries was by this time joining Watts in training budokwai, judo and fencing.
“Such practice taught me how to use my feet, how to dance, and above all, how to generate energy by following the line of the least resistance” ( a principle of Taoism). With the help of Humphries, at the age of 20 he completed his first book, ‘The Spirit of Zen’ (1935)
‘The Sprit of Zen – “A Way of Life Work and Art in the Far East’ is very much a beginners’ book, but an extraordinary one for someone barely out of school. Much of the material of this short work – barely more than 100 pages – is simply factual, and relying entirely on second hand sources.
‘Life in a Zen Community’ and ‘Zen and the Civilization in the Far East’ are both quite dry to the modern reader, especially since now much is known about Oriental Religion. In 1935, however, very little had been published in the West about the subject and so would have appeared much fresher to the contemporary reader.
However the early part of the book, ‘The Origins of Zen’ – which is mainly, but not entirely historical – and ‘The Secret of Zen ‘ - sees Watts feeling his way through the meaning of Zen, already shows his trademark freshness of understanding and clarity of expression. Watts himself later admitted that he was ‘ somewhat unsatisfied with the general presentation of Mahayana philosophy in the first chapter’ but his grasp of difficult Eastern notions of being were remarkably precocious.
He starts by expressing the key facts about Zen - that it is ‘markedly different from any other form of Buddhism’, pointing out that it ‘there is no doctrinal teaching, no study of scriptures, no formal programme of spiritual development’ and noting that it does not attempt to be intelligible, that is not capable of being understood by the intellect.
“Zen cannot be made to fit into any ‘ism’ or ‘ology’’ it is alive and cannot be dissected and analysed like a corpse”.
“If one stops to consider one’s emotional and intellectual reaction to a symphony while it is being played, to analyse the construction of a chord, or to linger over a particular phrase, the melody is lost”.
The problem of life in the West was excessive self-consciousness.
“For once we imagine we have grasped the truth of life, the truth has vanished, for truth cannot become anyone’s property, the reason being that truth is life.
He points out with the peerless confidence of someone barely out of his teens, how followers of Buddha have hitherto got it wrong –
‘They have revered and depended upon the records of his ( the Buddha’s) sayings as if they enshrined his wisdom, yet in so doing, they have made those records not only a shrine but the tomb in which the dead carcass of his wisdom is buried. “
He punctures one of the main misconceptions about Zen, that it is about living a monastic, solitary life of self-discipline –
‘There is nothing other-worldly about Zen, for it is a constant attitude of mind just as applicable to washing clothes as to performing religious offices”
He reinterprets the popular conception of karma and reincarnation, pointing out that it does not imply literal rebirth or the transmigration of souls, that the cycle of rebirth ( which supposedly takes place until your karma is perfect) actually means that to be “reborn is rather to be under the illusion that a continuing ego survives from moment to moment, to feel that I who sit here are truly I who came in the door ten minutes ago”. Zen, he stresses, emphasises egolessness and change, not supernatural activity.
He begins to work out the idea that appealed to him throughout his life and teaching, the strand in Buddhism, tariki (as distinct from jariki) which suggests that religious discipline actually has very little to do with enlightenment, quoting Master Te-shan saying
“ Nirvana and Bodhi (Englightenment) are dead stumps to tie your donkey to. The twelve divisions of the scriptures are only lists of ghosts and sheets of paper to wipe the dirt from your skin. And all your four merits and ten stages are mere ghosts lingering in their decaying graves. Can these have anything to do with your salvation?”
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