Ways of Liberation & The Religion of No-Religion

“Symbols bear the same relation to the real world that money bears to wealth. You cannot quench anybody’s thirst with the word water just as you cannot eat a dollar bill and derive nutrition, but using symbols and using conscious intelligence has proved very useful to us. It has given us such technology as we have, but at the same time, it has proved too much of a good thing. At the same time, we’ve become so fascinated with it that we confuse the world as it is with the world as it is thought about, talked about and figured about, that is to say with the world as it is described. And the difference between these two is vast, and when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we’re not related to ourselves at all. We’re like people eating menus instead of dinners and that’s why we all feel psychologically frustrated.”

The following is an edited compilation of a few of Alan Watts’ lectures. A philosopher, writer, and entertainer, Watts is best known for popularizing Eastern philosophy in the West in the 1960s and 70s. As a member of the London Buddhist Lodge since a young teen, a holder of a masters in theology, an Episcopal priest, and a scholar associated with several institutions, Watts is uniquely qualified to discuss comparative religion. This edit sets a general overview of the ideas of the East in comparison with the religions of the West.

Part I: Three Models of the Universe

The Political Model

The Abrahamic Religions — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — ascribe to a Monarchical Model of the universe

There are various models of the universe which men have used from time to time, and the model that lies behind the Judeo-Christian tradition, if there really is such a thing, is a political model. It borrows the metaphor of the relation of an ancient Near Eastern monarch to his subjects, and he imposes his authority and his will upon his subjects from above by power, whether it be physical power or spiritual power.…if Christianity is a religion, if Judaism is a religion, and if Islam is a religion, they are based on the idea of man’s obedient response to a divine revelation…God is the monarch, and therefore between the monarch and the subject there is a certain essential difference of kind, what we might call an ontological difference. God is God, and all those creatures, whether angels or men or other kinds of existence that God has created, are not God. There is this vast metaphysical gulf lying between these two domains.

There are at least two other models of the universe which have been highly influential in human history.

The Dramatic Model

Hinduism and Buddhism hold a Dramatic Model of the universe.

One is dramatic, where God is not the skillful maker of the world standing above it as its artificer and King, but where God is the actor of the world as an actor of a stage play — the actor who is playing all the parts at once…Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance…In Hindu thought, every individual as a person is a mask; fundamentally this is a mask of the godhead — a mask of a godhead that is the actor behind all parts and the player of all games.

…the basic position of the Upanishads is that the Self is the one and only reality without a second — that all this universe is finally Brahman and appears to be a multiplicity of different things and different events only by reason of Maya, which is illusion, magic, art, creative power. So then it is basic to the Vedanta that Brahman — this intangible non-objective ground of everything that exists — is identical with the ground of you. And this is put in the formula: tat tvam asi (तत् त्वम् असि)…We should translate that into a modern American idiom as “You’re it.”

This of course is a doctrine which is very difficult for those brought up in the Judeo-Christian traditions to accept, because it is fundamental to Christian and Jewish theology that whatever you are, you are surely not the Lord God…We find it very difficult to express it in our religious language because we would have to say at that moment, “I have at last discovered that I am the Lord God.” We put people in asylums who discover this, if this is the way they express it, because it really is for us the one sure sign of being completely out of your head. Whereas in India when somebody says “I am the Lord God,” they say, “Well, naturally. Congratulations, at last you found out.”

…what the Hindu means by God when he says Brahman is not at all the same thing as a Jew means by the Lord Adonai; because the Jew and the Christian means ‘the boss’ to whom divine honors are due as above all others. The Hindu, on the other hand, does not mean ‘the boss.’ He doesn’t mean the king, the Lord, the political ruler of the universe. He means the inmost energy, which…dances this whole universe, without…the idea of authority, of governing some intractable element that resists his or its power.

Buddhism is an off-shoot of Hinduism. You could in a way call it a reform of Hinduism or Hinduism stripped for export…Buddhism is unlike other religions in that it does not tell you anything…It doesn’t require you to believe in anything. There could be no such thing as a buddhist creed..Buddhism does not have a doctrine in the same sense that Christianity has a doctrine. The word dharma…as used in the phrase Buddhadharma…means “method,” not doctrine, not law. It’s often translated “law” — That won’t do at all…

And so Buddhism is a method…It is basically a conversation, a dialogue, the beginning of which is not necessarily at all the same thing as the end…And so for this reason all Buddhism is a dialectic, a discussion, an interchange between a preceptor or guru or teacher and his student…and what are called the ‘teachings’ of Buddhism are nothing more than the opening phrases, or opening exchanges, in the dialogue…

…when anything, then, is taught, it’s taught in order to counteract something. You see, the Buddha taught that there was no self, and scholars have debated eternally whether he meant there was no ego in the sense of the superficial “I” centered on consciousness alone, or whether he taught that there is no self in the more classical Hindu sense of the Ātman — that is to say: the ultimate self, the divine, final reality which is in everybody, which is the root and ground of all consciousness everywhere. And some people, you see, have thought that he denied that. Well, he may very well have done so — but with the idea, you see, of correcting something.

…Buddhist teachers always work in oppositions… If a person asks you a question about philosophical matters, you should reply in terms of everyday matters…Or the other way around: if a person asks you a worldly question, you answer with a philosophical one…And so, once, when R. H. Blyth — who was a great Zen student — was asked by some students: “Do you believe in God?” he replied, “If you do, I don’t. If you don’t, I do.”

So by the exploration of the dialectic, the teacher — by talking this way, and talking that way — completely undermines you. That is to say: he digs out all the dirt from underneath you. And you drop, or think you do, because you’re used to having the Earth there. But when you’re in fully empty space, there’s nowhere to drop….So that levitation, you see, is something in mystical experience, like a sense of luminosity or a sense of transparency…

…And indeed, one might say Buddhism has nothing to teach. Nothing whatever. All it has to do is to get rid of illusions, and then the experience happens when the illusions are gone, just like the sun comes out when the clouds go away…

…the discovery which constitutes the foundation of Buddhism — the experience of awakening — can’t be stated. Or at least, if it can be stated, it can’t be stated in such a way that the mere statement will communicate the experience to somebody else. The experience itself is the culmination of an adventure, and one has to go through that adventure in order to come to it.

The Organic Model

Taoism is founded in an Organic Model of the universe.

A third model of the universe, which is characteristically Chinese, views the world as an organism. And a world which is an organism has no boss, and even no actor. This is because in any organism there is not really a boss or “top organ”…Fundamentally, this is the Chinese view of the world, the principle of organic growth they call Tao…This Chinese word is usually translated as “the course of nature,” or “the way,” meaning the way it does it, or the process of things. That is again really very different from the Western idea of God the Ruler.

…in a Chinese translation of the Bible, it usually says, “In the beginning was the Tao. And the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by it and without it was not anything made that was made.” So, they have substituted “Tao,” and that would have a very funny effect on a Chinese philosopher, because the idea of things being made by the Tao is absurd. The Tao is not a manufacturer, and it is not a governor. It does not rule, as it were, in the position of a king…

“The great Tao flows everywhere, both to the left and to the right.
It loves and nourishes all things but does not lord it over them.
And when good things are accomplished it lays no claim to them.”

In other words, the Tao doesn’t stand up and say: “I have made all of you, I have filled this Earth with its beauty and glory. Fall down before me in worship.” The Tao (having done anything, you know?) always escapes and is not around to receive any thanks or acknowledgement, because it loves obscurity…Tao, then, is not really equivalent with any Western or Hindu idea of God, because God is always associated with being the Lord…The Tao is not something different from nature, ourselves, and our surrounding trees, waters, and air. The Tao is the way all that behaves. So, the basic Chinese idea of the universe is really that it is an organism.

Part II: Ways of Liberation

So, these are the two other theories of nature that we are going to consider in the study of Oriental philosophy: the dramatic theory and the organic theory. I feel that ways of life that use these models are so unlike Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, that we cannot really use the word “religion” to describe these things…neither Hinduism, Buddhism, nor Taoism can possibly be called religions in this sense, because all three of them significantly lack the virtue of obedience. They do not concede the godhead as related to mankind or to the universe in a monarchical sense…

…they don’t involve that you believe in anything specific, and they don’t involve any idea of obedience to commandments from above, and they don’t involve any conformity to a specific ritual. Although they do have rituals, but their rituals vary from country to country and from time to time. …I prefer to call these disciplines ways of liberation.

Now, what is there in Western culture that resembles the concerns of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism? The trouble is, on the surface, they look alike [with religion]. In other words, if you go into a Hindu temple or a special Japanese Buddhist temple you will be pretty convinced you are in church — in sort of a Catholic church, at that, because there is incense, chants, bowings, gongs, candles, rosaries, and all the things that one associates with a theistic, monarchical religion. Yet, that is not what is going on. Even though the image of Buddha may be sitting on a throne, covered with a canopy, and royal honors being done, there is no factor of obedience. Probably the nearest thing to these ways of life in the West is, perhaps, psychotherapy in some form, although not all forms of psychotherapy. The objective of psychotherapy is, as you might say, to change your state of consciousness.

Fundamentally, these Oriental disciplines are concerned basically with changing your state of consciousness. However, here we part company because psychotherapy is largely focused on the problems of the individual as such, the problems particular to this individual or that individual. Instead, these Asian ways of life are focused on certain problems peculiar to man as such, and to every individual on the understanding that the average human being (and the more civilized he is the more this is true) is hallucinating. The average human being has a delusive sense of his own existence, and it is thus that the very word “Buddha,” in Buddhism, is from a root in Sanskrit, buddb, which means “to awaken.” To awaken from the illusion is then to undergo a radical change of consciousness with regard to one’s own existence. It is to cease being under the impression that you are just “poor little me,” to find out who you really are, or what you really are behind the mask.

Their objective is always not ideas, not doctrines, but a method, a method for the transformation of consciousness. That is to say, for a transformation of your sensation of who you are…in the view of these methods or disciplines, the ordinary person’s definite feeling of the way he exists and who he is, is a hallucination. To feel yourself as a separate ego, a source of action and awareness that is entirely separate and independent from the rest of the world somehow locked up inside a bag of skin is seen as a hallucination…You in your fundamental existence, you are the total energy that constitutes this universe playing that it’s you, playing that it’s this particular organism, and even playing that it’s this particular person. Because the fundamental game of this world, is a game of hide-and-seek. That is to say that the colossal reality, the energy that is everything, that is a unitary energy, that is one, plays at being many, at manifesting itself in all these particulars that we call you and you and you and you…and its fundamentally a game. And you can say that this goes really for all the systems that I’m talking about. It’s the basis of Hinduism, of Buddhism, and of Taoism, this intuition.

Part III: The Religion of No-Religion

… the whole approach, the whole result, of the bodhisattva doctrine in the art of the Far East is to create what the Spiegelberg has called the religion of non-religion: where the religion became so perfect that it left no trace…

..it’s like when you erect a building, while you are building it, you have all kinds of scaffolding up. That shows you that building is going on, but when the building is complete, the scaffolding is taken down. To open a door, as they say in Zen, you may need to pick up a brick to knock at the door, but when the door is open you don't carry the brick inside. To cross a river you need a boat, but when you’ve reached the other side you don’t pick up the boat and carry it. So the brick, the boat, the scaffolding, all these things represent some sort of religious technology or method, and in the end, these are all to disappear.

…the ancient idea of Buddhism is that Buddhism is a ferryboat. And it’s designed to take you across the stream from this shore (which is Saṃsāra; the rat race) to the other shore (which is Nirvāṇa). When you get on the other side, you get off the ferry. See?

But if you stay on the ferryboat, that means, you see, you’re in love with the ferryboat, and you’re in danger of becoming a religious maniac. And people do that, you see. You know how it is. You’ve probably had that experience. People who join a church and then become fascinated with all the things that go with church. They like Bibles — not just for what’s in them, but the smell of a Bible, the appearance of the Bible has something something holy and numinous about it. And they like crucifixes…Beautiful works of art; enameled, gorgeous things. And people with a great religious feeling love to think of those things, you see? And Buddhists, too, do that. They like their rosaries and their Buddha images and the smell of incense. And they get a kind of church-ification. The French have a wonderful word for those goods. They call them the bondieuserie. And it’s a little difficult to translate. Literally: “Good God-ery,”…So all these stores sell bondieuserie.

Now, while this, you see, is in its own way understandable, the whole point is that, in the supreme state of understanding, you get rid of bondieuserie altogether. That’s the religion of no religion, see? You don’t even have any beliefs. The whole creed, everything, is utterly surpassed. That means you’ve left the ferryboat and you’ve gone on on the other shore. You don’t carry the ferryboat with you. And so this religion of no religion is very pure, very transparent.…the supreme attainment of being a buddha who can’t be detected, who in this sense then leaves no trace.