We have no assurance of a happy future, and if we make plans for a happy future, then we are making plans against reality, essentially. Such an instantaneous release of the problem comes from appreciating key insights about reality and the self. Can’t wait to come back to this book when I can look at it with a more critical and experienced mind. In this fascinating book, Alan Watts explores man's quest for psychological security, examining our efforts to find spiritual and intellectual certainty in the realms of religion and philosophy.

In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. Yet, if you look at a large amount of human activity, it does seem to fall into Watts’ diagnosis that we’re in a state of anxiety and hunger, for no discernible net benefit to happiness. Human beings in general, but particularly in our modern age, live in a near-constant state of dissatisfaction and anxiety. But Watts believes there is just one of us and this one includes the flowers, plants, animals and everything. Even if you were to take the less extreme position that, perhaps, we desire happiness in addition to some non-subjective things, it appears we often don’t even do that, failing to maximize our happiness even when there is no appreciable benefit to any other purpose we might have.That, despite our protests, what we are really motivated to act on isn’t happiness maximization, but a blind, Sisyphean quest for greater evolutionary fitness. Instead of a method, Watts argues that the problem can be resolved immediately the moment it is properly understood.

I should also note that if you are not hearing these things for the first time, you will probably find the book repetitive (though I found it rather calming).

Beside the examples of saints and heroes I feel ashamed that I amount to nothing, and so I begin to practice humility because of my wounded pride, and charity because of my self-love. He wrote over 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, the meaning of life, concepts and images of God and the non-material pursuit of happiness. I was expecting a thought-provoking question or two to rise to the surface, so I kept at it, but in the end was left with the distinct feeling that I'd just listened to a stoner with a big ego ramble on for a while. Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think.

Because if someone asked me what I thought of this book in conversation, that would be my likely response.

However, this makes the stunning revelations in the book less stunning than they would have been 60 years ago. However, I suppose I shouldn’t get too caught up in this contradiction, seeing as for a man who believed in the essential unexplainability of Zen, Watts’ himself wrote over twenty books about it. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.

He plays with thoughts like how a chess master plays with the figures on the board: while he dances around with ease along his thoughts, the patterns and conclusions are striking. He warns about the ever-quickening pace of society, brought on by technology, and how it takes us further away from our authentic experiences and more into planning and scheming for the future, which never ends. Vrlo napredna za svoje vreme (objavljena pedesetih), o bivstvovanju u sadašnjem trenutku (pre nego što se to počelo zvati ma-ma-ma-majndfulnes i krenulo da iskače iz frižidera sa ekrana leti po kući a ne možeš da ga ucmekaš tabalicom za muve). My sense is that the key difference between Watts’ appreciation of the present moment with the fluid unity of nature, and the anxiety-prone, analytical, ego-driven perception many of us feel stuck in, is one of attention.In spite of these similarities, however, Watts' fascinating blend of eastern and western thinking and his own distinctive turn of phrase give him a memorable voice all of his own.