Watch What Is Really Going on - Akira the Don, Alan Watts

You can’t

You know, you can’t eat 10 roasts of beef in one day

Can’t live in six houses at once, can’t drive three Rolls Royces at the same

time

What are you to do?

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

Well, you just go make more money, put your money back

Invest in something else, it’ll make more

You don’t give a damn how it’s made, so long as they make it

You don’t care if they foul the rivers, put oil fumes throughout the air

everywhere, kill off all the fish

So what?

So long as you see these figures happening, you’re not aware of anything else

So you see, you went out to do a self-improvement thing

Making money, you see, is a measure of improvement, a measure of your economic

worthwhileness

Or at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be, it isn’t anything of the kind

But you went out, in other words, for the status, instead of for the actuality

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

You do art, you’re a musician

Why do you play music?

The only reason for playing music is to enjoy

If you play music to impress an audience

Read about yourself in the newspaper, you’re not interested in music

So in the same way, why do I come and talk to you?

'Cause I enjoy it

I like the sound of my own voice

I’m interested in what I’m talking about, and I get paid for it

Now, that’s smart in this life

You get paid for what you enjoy

So here’s the situation, you see

The whole idea of self-improvement is a will-o'-the-wisp and a hoax

That’s not what it’s about

Let’s begin where we are

What happens if you know, if you know beyond any shadow of doubt that there is

nothing you can do to be better?

Well, it’s kind of a relief, isn’t it?

You say, «Well, now what will I do?»

Because we are so used to making things better

Leave the world a better place than when you found it sorta thing

I want to be of service to other people, and all these dreadfully hazy ideas

But supposing instead of that, seeing that there isn’t really anything we can

do to improve ourselves or to improve the world, if we realize that that is so,

it gives us a breather, in the course of which we may simply

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

Watch what is going on

Watch what happens

Nobody ever does this, you know

Nobody ever does this, you know

Therefore, it sounds terribly simple, it sounds so simple that it almost looks

as if it isn’t worth doing

But have you ever just watched?

Watch what’s happening and watch what you are doing by way of reaction to it

Just watch it happen, and don’t be in a hurry

To think you know what it is

In other words, people look, so that’s the external world

Oh?

How do you know?

The whole thing, from a neurological point of view, there’s a happening in your

head

That you think there is something outside the skull is a notion in your nervous

system

That may or may not be, but it’s a notion in your nervous system

You think this is the material world

Well, that’s somebody’s philosophical idea

You think it’s spiritual

That too is somebody’s philosophical idea

This real world is not spiritual

It is not material

The real world is simply…

So could we look at things in that way, without fixing labels and names and

gradations and judgments on everything?

But watch what happens

Watch what we do

But watch what happens

Watch what we do