The world is you—From ‘The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are’ / Alan Watts
Since its release in 1966, the classic masterpiece “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are / Alan Watts” continues to sell well today. It explains the world as follows:
A person who doesn't know cats watches a cat repeatedly pass by through a narrow crack in the wall, making U-turns.
Seeing this, the person judges that the event called “head” is the cause of the event called “tail.”
This absurd judgment arises from failing to grasp the wholeness—that the head and tail are one, belonging to a single cat.
Observing through a narrow crack in the wall is remarkably similar to how humans perceive the world through conscious attention.
When we focus on something, we cannot see everything else on Earth. It's like shining a flashlight on one spot in a dark room.
This very act makes us forget that the world is one interconnected community when viewed as a whole, leading us to divide it into separate parts and see them piece by piece. Unconscious of our arbitrary categorization, we cannot conceive of it as a unified whole.
But step back and think calmly: in reality, your world—everything you feel, your relationships, society, the world, what meets your eyes—is all you.
Read more
Desire arises from expectations we hold for ourselves. Things like, “I should be able to become this wealthy.”However, expectations for ourselves also involve assigning meaning to ourselves. For ex...
In Japan, spiritual spaces come in two main forms: temples and shrines.To many visitors, they might look similar.But in Japanese culture, these two places belong to completely different spiritual t...