Alan Watts professed not to be a guru. Well, guess what, Alan… you are a guru to me! Actually, you’re more like a kami, for you still talk to me once a week from beyond the grave, courtesy of ipod…
Today Alan was talking of the Relevance of Oriental Philosophy, and some of what he had to say struck me as relevant to the prospects of Shinto as a green religion. Here’s my transcript of a small portion of his talk …
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‘Man is a little germ that lives on an insignificant planet that revolves around a little sphere that exists on the outer edges of one of the smaller galaxies.
God, what a putdown that is. But on the other hand I am absolutely amazed to be in such a very odd situation… and the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird.
As Aristotle said, wonder is the beginning of philosophy, because it strikes you that existence is very, very strange. Even more when you realise that in a world with no eyes, the sun would not be light. And in a world where there are no soft skins, rocks would not be hard. Nor in a world where there are no muscles, rocks would not be heavy. Existence is relationships, and you are smack in the middle of it.
So there is obviously a place in life for a sense of awe and astonishment at existence. And that is also a basis of respect for existence. We don’t have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. A materialist is a person who loves material. But in the culture we call materialistic today, we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gas. This is not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material.
Respect is based on wonder, on feeling the marvel of a pebble in your fingers.’
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Awe – respect – harmony. Is this not the model we have to get back to, and is it not a model that Shinto can help us develop?
Last week Aike Rots gave a talk about the green connection of Shinto at Kyoto University, pointing out that it is often linked with a nationalistic view of Japanese having a special feeling for nature. Environmentalism in the West is linked with the left; in Japan that is not the case. Rather than saving the whales, it’s Japan’s ‘special’ traditions that people here want to save.
Like Alan Watts, Green Shinto takes a firmly universalist stance and believes that regardless of nationality we are all in the same cosmic boat. Awe is universal. Wonder is universal. Nature is universal. Let’s make Shinto universal too.
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You can listen to the weekly Alan Watts ipod here. There are also numerous Alan Watts’ videos on youtube: this seven-minute one is rather good, about the limitations of the human mind, but nearly all of those listed on youtube are worth the time IMHO.
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