The end of the Alan Watts poem...
You got almost all of it. In full it was:
I went out of my mind and into my senses
by meeting a Magpie who mixed up his tenses
Who muddled distinctions of nouns and of verbs
and insisted that logic is bad for the birds
With a poo-whee-cluck and a chit chit chit
grammar and meaning don't matter a bit
the stars in their courses have no destination
the train of events arrives at no station
The inner and ultimate self of us all
is dancing on nothing and having a ball
so with chit for chat
and tat for tit
this will be that
and that will be it.
The man's wit and wisdom is still the deepest most timeless of at least the 20th century. His brand of Zen eliminated anxiety and depression, as I have personally found out.
Weightless Albatross
coluber2001 wrote:As I vaguely remember, there are two schools of Zen that practice opposite techniques. One emphasizes meditation while the other one practices the "immediate" technique. This latter one uses koans and other more relentless methods to trick the acolyte past his ego.
Wasn't it the Sixth Patriarch, Hui Neng, who heard a pebble or something hit a stone, and he was immediately enlightened? While in the mediatation room and all the other monks were meditating, Hui Neng would just be looking up and not paying attention at all. The Master had all the monks write a poem so he could pick his successor. Hui Neng's cut right through the illusion of ego, and of course he won.
I've probably bungled this up, but it been a while since I read it.
When I cited Alan Watts' "out of my mind and into my senses," it was from a poem he wrote. I think it was called "Birdle Burgle" or something close. It goes:
I went out of my mind
and into my senses
by meeting a magpie
who mixed up his tenses,
who muddled distinctions
of nouns and verbs
and insisted that logic
was bad for the birds.
The stars in their courses
have no destinations;
the train of events
will arrive at no station.
The inner and ultimate self
of us all is dancing on nothing
and having a ball.
etc. etc.
That's all I can remember, but it's the major part.
Watts may have been a drunk, but back in the sixties he was one of the few mystics around.