Al and I went to a dome show at OMSI called “Trust the Universe: The Philosophy of Alan Watts.” Up front, because reviews are thin on the ground, I would recommend against it: It’s only 45 minutes long, feels pretty disjointed, and the psychedelic visuals are sometimes a little campy. When the lotus position guy sort of gets sucked up into the mandala having dissolved his own ego I was annoyed.
I find Alan Watts engaging. He was a gifted explainer who could make heady, paradoxical ideas flicker into solidity and coherence. There are a few moments in the show where his ideas do come together and you get a sense of what he was about, particularly about teaching and spiritual practice.
It ended up giving Al and I something to think about afterward. She’s a member of a local Zen center. I’ve never really felt very compelled to take up a formal practice. Certainly nothing like Soto Zen. I have some contradictory feelings about it that the show resurfaced, because Watts saw some spiritual practice and relationships with teachers as a sort of revolving door one could never get out of if they don’t push us toward our “oh, it’s in here” moment.
I guess I’ve always felt like big changes and shifts are “it’s in here” moments. There are lots of techniques and approaches to get us to those shifts, and a skilled coach, mentor, teacher, or counselor can help us to or through those shifts, but my moments of radical clarity have always come just bumping into life. It’s interview season right now, for instance, and I have been reminded of the “pouncer” and “stalker” learning styles. I think in life matters I’ve turned out to be a “pouncer.”
But I also think there’s value in spiritual community – even having a teacher – because to be raised in a liberal society in the 21st century is, regardless of your ideological tilt, to be coached toward profound egoism and a kind of selective sollipsism. Finding someone to trust and someone willing to work through our egoism and self-protection can be helpful. I know I’ve benefitted from it when I’ve been stuck on something, even if the benefit I got wasn’t a resolution, so much as an ability to sit with the discomfort of a lack of resolution.
I titled this post “What is practice?” because I’m not always sure. If I ask that question of a Soto Zen practitioner I’ll get a kind of answer. If I ask three Soto Zen practitioners, I will likely get three different answers. If I widen my survey to different sects, still more answers. If I ask the person trying to sell me a mindfulness app, there will be another answer, and since there seem to be dozens of those people, probably dozens more answers.
I think for now my working definition is “whatever grants you the most ability to sit with your thoughts and feelings in a place of remove from them, but engagement with them.” For some people, that will involve very austere forms – Al says at her Zen center you can opt in to a firm rod on the shoulder if your form slips – and for others not anything like that at all. I’m most in a “practice mindset” when I’m running, doing some kinds of writing, and playing some kinds of games.
Those aren’t buttons I can push – click I am running so I am correctly engaged with my thoughts and feelings – because I find myself sometimes a mile down the trail having been eaten by a narrative instead of understanding where a narrative came from – but they’re the most reliable cues to get to the right relationship.
So, I don’t know, I said I wouldn’t recommend that dome show. I suppose if you have a few Alan Watts books sitting around, or care to undertake some internet research and are careful to avoid what appears to be a recent trend of people making Alan Watts deep fakes that spout mysticism, you could sort of rig something up for yourself with headphones and a good screensaver. But it did remind me of a few questions about practice and mysticism I hadn’t thought about for a while. It did smell a little like weed in the dome theater, though.