Speaker & Worship Leader:- Ruby Johnson
The ocean is an object of both wonder and fear. Its rhythm clears the mind and soothes jangled nerves. But underneath its glassy surface, whole ecosystems go about the business of eating and being eaten. What can this contradiction tell us about the nature of being human
Video to come.
Audio to come
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Today’s main topic is an edited version of a talk given by Alan Watts, called “Love of Waters”
Ruby Johnson © 6 April 2025
I love that in this talk, Alan takes us from such calming thoughts, to such dark ones, and then back again. We are all intimately linked to the ongoing cycle of life and death. You might object to the idea that humans necessarily have to harm other animals – this talk doesn’t really make specific allowances for vegetarianism for example. But looking at the big picture, each of us needs to consume parts of the living world to keep on going. Our church takes up space that other beings could have lived on. In that sense, our lives prevent other possible lives from happening. We are all eating life, until one day, we are eaten.
A couple of years ago, I was thinking about the Book of Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve, and the fall of mankind. The couple eat the fruit of knowledge from the tree of good and evil, but in gaining this knowledge, they damn mankind with original sin and with morality. It struck me that this story serves not only to explain why humans suffer, but also perhaps why we suffer differently from the other creatures of the Garden of Eden. We suffer, as the name of the tree indicates, because we have knowledge. We know that we are going to die one day. And unlike other animals, we not only know things, we also know that we know things. This made me wonder if the price that we pay for being such amazingly creative and intelligent animals, is the anxiety which we often suffer when we think about our thoughts. When I discovered this talk, I was delighted to find that Alan had come to the same conclusion. It was as if I had found an intellectual kindred spirit, despite his having passed some 50 years ago.
There is a Buddhist concept called the “second arrow”. When we encounter an experience in life that brings pain, it is as if we have been shot by an arrow. When we worry, become anxious, and ruminate about that experience, it is as if we are shot by a second arrow. While reacting to pain is inevitable, to some degree, we get to choose our reactions, and that will determine how painful that second arrow is. This is what Alan means when he says “Objecting to pain is pain”. Our desire to gain control over life, by overthinking, means that the second arrow is often even worse than the first one. Human thought is a valuable tool, but it is just that – a tool – and any tool can be dangerous if we turn it on ourselves. It strikes me then, that choosing a career in academia – essentially professional thinking – might have been a questionable choice.
This idea of thought as a mere tool sheds light on another gem from this talk – that our consciousness is superficial. As far as we can tell, we are different from other animals because we know that we know – in other words, we have the concept “I”, as in “I am”. But we often take this “extra circuit” of consciousness to be the entirety of who we are. In other words, we identify entirely with the little voice in the back of our heads that says “I know that I know”, instead of recognising that we are in fact, also the stream of feelings and experiences that that little voice is commenting on. As Alan says, we treat our consciousness as if all the feeling were in the tips of the fingers, rather than in the palm of the hand. Language shows how disconnected we are from our bodily experiences: if I ask you “Do your thoughts think themselves?” you would say “No, I think my thoughts”. However if I asked you “Do you beat your heart?” you would say “No, my heart beats”, as if you had no part in the process. But your heart, like your brain, is definitely you, isn’t it?
When you really think about it, it’s hard to figure out exactly where “you” end. “You” are your thoughts. But your thoughts are only produced in relation to your brain, which is a part of your body. Your body is definitely also “you”, even when you aren’t conscious of what it’s doing. But your body can’t exist in a vacuum. I mean, literally, if you stepped into a sealed vacuum chamber, you would explode. You need air pressure from the atmosphere around you to keep on existing. Now, you’re not aware of the relationship between the air and your skin, but you’re not aware of the relationship between your mind and your body either. We could keep going with this all day. Ultimately, everything, and everyone, exists in relationship with everything else. I think that our world would be better, and that we might suffer a little less, if we remembered that.
Links
Chalice Lighting:- “Who We Are Called to Be” By Pat Uribe-Lichty
Closing Words:- from “45 Quotes From Mr. Rogers That We All Need Today” by Geoffrey James