Letting go = spiritual awakening: Alan Watts

There, there. - But I want a self!

(Alan Watts Daily) Alan Watts (alanwatt.org, alanwatts.com) explains why most people never survive their spiritual awakening.

If identification with ego, soul, and self are based on ignorance (avijja, not knowing, not understanding, not penetrating that, ultimately speaking, there is no self wrapped up in these forms or these feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness or outside of these), then losing that seems to the logical mind as "death."

It may be ego death. But death is always wrapped up with rebirth. When there is no further rebirth to endure, no more samsara, that is not death. That is liberation (vimutti, moksha, freedom, emancipation). All phenomena is characterized by Three Marks of Existence.

I've always fancied myself more of a Taoist.

While the words of Alan Watts are very beautiful and his understanding (intellectual grasp of Eastern philosophy) very tidy, it is wrong. It is incomplete.

Alan Watts is not enlightened, nor to our knowledge did he ever claim to be. He is reciting a definition of "enlightenment" or "awakening" that is quite valid in Hinduism and therefore in Mahayana Buddhism. This is the whole idea that life is Brahman (GOD) at play (lila) in a great drama pretending to be that Atman (individual soul or self). Life is but a dream.

It is a dream but not in this way. We do not awaken -- in the sense that the Buddha or Awakened One meant -- to ourselves as GOD looking for another good time by dipping into Maya (Illusion) again in endless cycles of time (samsara).

This is not what the historical Buddha (Siddhartha "Shakyamuni" Gautama) taught at all. In fact, he went to great pains pointing out the faults in the Vedas (the ancient "Knowledge Books" of the Brahmin priestly caste).

Former CIA agent on perception vs. perspective

The Brahmins chewed up Buddhism, regurgitated it, and incorporated what they liked, dismissing the rest, ignoring or purposely avoiding the Buddha's criticism of their schemata and depiction of reality. What the Buddha taught, ultimately, was that ALL phenomena, all things, are beset by three characteristics. And Brahmanism (or the Old Vedic Religion that Hinduism points to as its roots) cannot accept any of these three, except by ignoring or changing their meaning. These the Buddha called the "Three Universal Characteristics of all Existence."

Three Marks of Existence

1. All things are impermanent -- not only the phenomena we see and regard as material, physical, and tangible but more importantly all that we regard as immaterial, personal, and effable, namely, the Five Aggregates clung to as self. (See the Heart Sutra, which countless sing without ever making the effort to comprehend).

2. All things are disappointing -- that is, they are incapable of ever fulfilling us, satisfying us, satiating our craving once and for all. They are unsatisfactory, painful, suffering.

3. All things are impersonal -- that is to say, there (ultimately speaking) is no soul, no self, no atman. What we find and cling to as this "self," this "soul," this "ego" or "personality" or "essence, our True Self," is in fact the Five Aggregates clung to as self (our bodies, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness).

• Theravada Buddhism -- in distinction to Mahayana, Hinduism, Brahmanism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Zen, and Vajrayana -- is a movement principally interested in what the historical Buddha actually taught. This is found in the Pali canon in the lingua franca the Buddha spoke in ancient Magadha.