Watts conclusion in ‘The Meaning of Happiness’ is that any attempt to ‘find’ happiness is doomed.
“Any attempt to discover happiness is also an easy way to go crazy, and the world today is a crazy place because people are trying to do it. We are a collection of people running wildly around in circles in frantic pursuit of our own selves and the picture is not particularly edifying.
“Yes, if we could see ourselves from a psychological standpoint, we would think we had walked into bedlam. We should see men running away from their own shadows, men trying to jump off the ground by tugging at their shoelaces, men trying to see their own eyes and kiss their own lips. We are running away from our front in order to catch up with our back, with the result that, for us, happiness is always somewhere in the future, just around the corner perhaps, but always beyond.
“For to accept the Grace of God as you are now, without any ‘improvements ‘and dressing up in more respectable clothes is to realize that all the cherished ambitions of self interest, all your efforts to make yourself great, are vain. You have to come down to the level of worms and dust which have not a particle of your cleverness, yet exist by the grace of God…it would be well for those who struggle so hard in the squirrel cage of duality to accept, to find wisdom and to be happy to remember occasionally those words (of Jesus) ‘Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature’ ”
He was generally dubious about Westerners who aligned themselves too closely with Eastern ideas.
“The wisdom of the East is something…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Alan Watts, Shaman - Book Serialisation. to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.