As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable?
But suppose you could answer, “It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much more interested in what’s happening now.” How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of galaxies—how is it conceivable that the incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?
—The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Many many years ago, Alan Watts had a little program on public radio station KPFA in Berkeley. At the end of a show one evening, the engineer forgot to turn the sound off in the Mr. Watts’ studio. Mr. Watts had a friend with him and was very likely a bit in his cups – he did enjoy his wine as well as women – and his friend, possibly overcome with the experience of having been part of a real live radio broadcast, decided to perform oral sex on Mr. Watts and went to work with great abandon.
Broadcast out over the airwaves, across the gleaming currents of the Bay waters and the night shining breezes coming through the Gate, was the sound of Alan Watts in the tiny Berkeley studio moaning,”Oh yeah, baby. That’s so good, baaby, ooooh yes …”
This is my kind of Buddhism.