How life began: Buddhism explains (video)

Alan Watts (alanwatts.org via KPFK); Video 1, 2; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

There are 31 categories of rebirth, countless worlds

This short video first shows who Alan Watts is, a self-described "spiritual entertainer." He is a British ex-pat who lived in Northern California and started a few shows to explain Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism or "Eastern Philosophy" to the West. He went way beyond the west. It all began at Pacifica free speech radio in Berkeley (kpfa.org), but only the Los Angeles station still broadcasts his talks every week, on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings. And it was on May 31, 2020 at 8:00 in the morning (archived for 90 days at archive.kpfk.org) that Watts made known the origin of life in the universe in Buddhist terms. This is often thought to be revealed in a sutra called "The Buddhist Genesis" or Aganna Sutta, but that is just the story of how life began on this earth, as it does again and again in a cyclical fashion every aeon. It is not at all how life itself actually began, a question considered impossible to answer -- but not impossible to discover or realize for oneself. Watts does an excellent job of putting it into words that one might realize why it could not be answered, why all our musings were in error and starting from incorrect assumptions. (The first assumption is turned on its head with the Buddha's unique teaching in all the universe through all time, the teaching of the impersonal nature of all existence called anatta or not-self). But Alan Watts here goes a little deeper to reveal our other assumptions that have prevented us from realizing what reality is. Here now, What is Reality: