Who Wants To Be A Philosopher?, Alan Watts


Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. Other creatures may love and laugh, talk and think, but is seems to be that the special peculiarity of human beings is that they reflect; they think about thinking and know that they know. This, like other feedback systems, may lead to vicious circles and confusions if improperly managed, but self-awareness makes human experience resonant. It imparts that simultaneous ?echo? to all that we think and feel as the box of the violin reverberates with the sound of the strings. It gives depth and volume to what would otherwise be shallow and flat.


Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one?s own person. Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know. For the human organism is, apparently, the most complex of all organisms, and while one has the advantage of knowing one?s own organism so intimately from the inside ? there is also the disadvantage of being so close to it that one can never quite get at it. Nothing so eludes conscious inspection as consciousness itself. This is why the root of consciousness has been called, paradoxically, the unconscious.


The people who we are tempted to call clods and boors are just those who seem to find nothing fascinating in being human; their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. There is also something incomplete about those who find nothing fascinating in being. You may say that this is a philosopher?s professional prejudice ? that people are defective who lack a sense of the metaphysical. But anyone who thinks at all must be a philosopher ? a good one or a bad one ? because it is impossible to think without premises, without basic (and in this sense, metaphysical) assumptions about what is sensible, what is the good life, what is beauty, and what is pleasure. To hold such assumptions, consciously or unconsciously, is to philosophize.


--Alan Watts, from "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing

Beyond the Wall of Knowledge, Adyashanti


An intelligent mind realizes its own limitation, and it’s a beautiful thing when it does.

When you stop holding on to all of the knowledge, then you start to enter a different state of being. You start to move into a different dimension. You move into a dimension where experience inside gets very quiet. The mind may still be there chatting in the background, or it might not, but consciousness is no longer bothering itself with the mind. You don’t need to stop it. Your awareness just goes right past that wall of knowledge and moves into a very quiet state.

In this quietness, you realize that you don’t know anything simply because you aren’t looking back to the mind for its acquired knowledge. This quietness is a mystery to the mind. It is something unknown. As you go into depth, you literally go into a deeper experience of what seems to be a great mystery. Now the mind might come in and want to know what’s going on and start to define everything, but that’s not going to bring any more depth. The mystery just keeps opening to itself if you let it -- if you let go of control.

As acquired knowledge is left behind, what is found is that you have left your familiar sense of self behind. That self only existed in the accumulation of knowledge and experience. Something very interesting happens when you leave it all behind, because you are literally leaving your memory behind. You leave behind who you thought you were, whoever you thought your parents were, and everything else you thought and believed. Yesterday is gone. Then a very interesting thing starts to be noticed; you can leave all of that behind and still you *are* -- you are right here and right now. So what you are becomes even more mysterious.

When you realize that you can leave every self-definition behind and still you *are*, then you begin to see that these thoughts must not be what you are. In other words, who are you when you are not thinking yourself into existence? [...]

In that moment of recognition, you have already begun to move beyond the wall of accumulated knowledge. Then, if you don’t redefine this moment or rebox it in some concept, rethinking yourself into existence, your true state of being starts to present itself.

--Adyashanti, From "Emptiness Dancing"

Letting Go Of The Glory, Richard Carlson


There is something magical that happens to the human spirit, a sense of calm that comes over you, when you cease needing all the attention directed towards yourself and instead allow others to have the glory.

Our need for excessive attention is that ego-centered part of us that says, "Look at me, I'm special. My story is more interesting than yours." [...] The ego is that part of us that wants to be seen, heard, respected, considered special, often at the expense of someone else. It's the part of us that interrupts someone else's story, or impatiently waits his turn to speak so that he can bring the conversation and the attention back to himself. To varying degrees, most of us engage in this habit, much to our own detriment. When you immediately dive in and bring the conversation back toward you, you can subtly minimize the joy that person has in sharing, and in doing so, create distance between yourself and others. Everyone loses. [...]

Although it's a difficult habit to break, it's not only enjoyable but actually peaceful to have the quiet confidence to be able to surrender your need for attention and instead share in the joy of someone else's glory. Rather than jumping right in and saying, " Once I did the same thing," or "Guess what I did today," bite your tongue and notice what happens. Just say, "That's wonderful," or "Please tell me more," and leave it at that. The person you are speaking to will have so much more fun and, because you are so much more "present", because you are listening so carefully, he or she won't feel in competition with you. The result will be that the person will feel more relaxed around you, making him or her more confident as well as more interesting. You too will feel more relaxed because you won't be on the edge of your seat, waiting your turn.

Obviously, there are many times when it's absolutely appropriate to exchange experience back and forth, and to share in the glory and attention rather than giving it all away. I'm referring here to the compulsive need to grab it from others. Ironically, when you surrender your need to hog the glory, the attention you used to need from other people is replaced by a quiet inner confidence that is derived from letting others have it.

--Richard Carlson, From "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff..."

Rude Awakenings, Helen Keller


The example of the newly blinded man is so concrete, I wish I could use it as a type for all life-training. When he first loses his sight he thinks there is nothing left for him but heartache and despair. He feels shut out from all that is human. Life to him is like the ashes on a cold hearth. The fire of ambition is quenched. The light of hope is gone out. The objects in which he once took delight seem to thrust out sharp objects at him as he gropes his way about. [...] Then comes some wise teacher and friend and assures him that he can work with his hands and to a considerable degree train his hearing to take the place of sight. Often the stricken man does not believe it, and in his despair interprets it as mockery. Like a drowning person he strikes blindly at anyone who tries to save him. Nevertheless the sufferer must be urged onward in spite of himself, and when he once realizes that he can put himself in connection with the world, [...] a being he did not dream of before unfolds itself within him. If he is wise, he discovers at last that happiness has very little to do with outward circumstances, and he treads his dark way with a firmer will than he ever felt in the light.

Likewise those who have been mentally blinded "in the gradual furnace of the world" can, and must, be pressed to look for new capabilities within themselves and work out new ways to happiness. They may even resent faith that expects nobler things from them [...] How little we know ourselves! We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.

-- Helen Keller