Philosophy Friday : Alan Watts Zen Tales and The Limits of Exploration

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The word yoga, as most of you doubtless know, is the same as our word yoke. Y-O-K-E. And the Latin word iungere, to join. Join, junction, yolk, union, all these words are basically from the same root. And so likewise when Jesus said my yoke is easy he was saying really my yoga is easy. And the word therefore basically denotes. The state that would be the opposite of what our psychologists call alienation. Or what Buddhists call psychiatrist. The view of separateness the feeling of separateness the feeling of being cut off from being. And most civilized people do in fact feel that way. Because they have a kind of myopia attention. Focused on their own boundaries and what is inside those boundaries and they identify themselves with the inside. And they don’t realize that you cannot have an inside without an outside. That would seem Wouldn’t it be extremely elementary logic that we could have no sense. Of being ourselves. Of having a personal identity without the contrast of something that is not ourselves that is to say other.