puddingtime-org-zaewv0.txt (5102B)
1 [1]puddingtime.org 2 [2] 3 4 _____ _____ _ _____ ______ _ _ ______ ______ _____ _ _ _____ _____ _____ ___ ___ _____ _ 5 |_ _||_ _|( )/ ___| | ___ \| | | || _ \| _ \|_ _|| \ | || __ \|_ _||_ _|| \/ || ___|| | 6 | | | | |/ \ `--. | |_/ /| | | || | | || | | | | | | \| || | \/ | | | | | . . || |__ | | 7 | | | | `--. \ | __/ | | | || | | || | | | | | | . ` || | __ | | | | | |\/| || __| | | 8 _| |_ | | /\__/ / | | | |_| || |/ / | |/ / _| |_ | |\ || |_\ \ | | _| |_ | | | || |___ |_| 9 \___/ \_/ \____/ \_| \___/ |___/ |___/ \___/ \_| \_/ \____/ \_/ \___/ \_| |_/\____/ (_) 🔥🤘🏻🔥 10 11 July 14, 2025 12 13 [3]What is practice 14 15 Al and I went to a dome show at OMSI called "Trust the Universe: The Philosophy 16 of Alan Watts." Up front, because reviews are thin on the ground, I would 17 recommend against it: It's only 45 minutes long, feels pretty disjointed, and 18 the psychedelic visuals are sometimes a little campy. When the lotus position 19 guy sort of gets sucked up into the mandala having dissolved his own ego I was 20 annoyed. 21 22 I find Alan Watts engaging. He was a gifted explainer who could make heady, 23 paradoxical ideas flicker into solidity and coherence. There are a few moments 24 in the show where his ideas do come together and you get a sense of what he was 25 about, particularly about teaching and spiritual practice. 26 27 It ended up giving Al and I something to think about afterward. She's a member 28 of a local Zen center. I've never really felt very compelled to take up a 29 formal practice. Certainly nothing like Soto Zen. I have some contradictory 30 feelings about it that the show resurfaced, because Watts saw some spiritual 31 practice and relationships with teachers as a sort of revolving door one could 32 never get out of if they don't push us toward our "oh, it's in here" moment. 33 34 I guess I've always felt like big changes and shifts are "it's in here" 35 moments. There are lots of techniques and approaches to get us to those shifts, 36 and a skilled coach, mentor, teacher, or counselor can help us to or through 37 those shifts, but my moments of radical clarity have always come just bumping 38 into life. It's interview season right now, for instance, and I have been 39 reminded of the "pouncer" and "stalker" learning styles. I think in life 40 matters I've turned out to be a "pouncer." 41 42 But I also think there's value in spiritual community -- even having a teacher 43 -- because to be raised in a liberal society in the 21st century is, regardless 44 of your ideological tilt, to be coached toward profound egoism and a kind of 45 selective sollipsism. Finding someone to trust and someone willing to work 46 through our egoism and self-protection can be helpful. I know I've benefitted 47 from it when I've been stuck on something, even if the benefit I got wasn't a 48 resolution, so much as an ability to sit with the discomfort of a lack of 49 resolution. 50 51 I titled this post "What is practice?" because I'm not always sure. If I ask 52 that question of a Soto Zen practitioner I'll get a kind of answer. If I ask 53 three Soto Zen practitioners, I will likely get three different answers. If I 54 widen my survey to different sects, still more answers. If I ask the person 55 trying to sell me a mindfulness app, there will be another answer, and since 56 there seem to be dozens of those people, probably dozens more answers. 57 58 I think for now my working definition is "whatever grants you the most ability 59 to sit with your thoughts and feelings in a place of remove from them, but 60 engagement with them." For some people, that will involve very austere forms -- 61 Al says at her Zen center you can opt in to a firm rod on the shoulder if your 62 form slips -- and for others not anything like that at all. I'm most in a 63 "practice mindset" when I'm running, doing some kinds of writing, and playing 64 some kinds of games. 65 66 Those aren't buttons I can push -- click I am running so I am correctly engaged 67 with my thoughts and feelings -- because I find myself sometimes a mile down 68 the trail having been eaten by a narrative instead of understanding where a 69 narrative came from -- but they're the most reliable cues to get to the right 70 relationship. 71 72 So, I don't know, I said I wouldn't recommend that dome show. I suppose if you 73 have a few Alan Watts books sitting around, or care to undertake some internet 74 research and are careful to avoid what appears to be a recent trend of people 75 making Alan Watts deep fakes that spout mysticism, you could sort of rig 76 something up for yourself with headphones and a good screensaver. But it did 77 remind me of a few questions about practice and mysticism I hadn't thought 78 about for a while. It did smell a little like weed in the dome theater, though. 79 80 81 82 powered by [4]LMNO.lol 83 84 [5]privacy policy · [6]terms of service 85 86 87 References: 88 89 [1] https://puddingtime.org/ 90 [2] https://puddingtime.org/signin?goto=/what-is-practice 91 [3] https://puddingtime.org/what-is-practice 92 [4] https://lmno.lol/ 93 [5] https://lmno.lol/blog/privacy-policy 94 [6] https://lmno.lol/blog/terms-of-service