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O R I E N T A L P S Y C H O L O G Y
By Alan W. Watts
1939
THE PRACTICE OF ORIENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY
*
the mind, not only for comfort and efficiency, but also
Chuang Tzu says that when a drunk man falls out of a cart
TO EXTERNALS. Active.
(7) Concentration on any given subject to be successful
must be relaxed. No one can concentrate by an effort of
will, because attention is directed to the effort instead
of to the object of concentration. Whether the object
of concentration be a book, a problem or anything else.
It is important to remember that concentration is not
a direct but an indirect mental achievement; it is
not a faculty that has to be summoned in order to do a
certain task. It is rather the act, the result or the
description of doing that task in an uninterrupted, even
and continuous way. If for some reason the task in
question is unedifying and boring, concentration will
only be achieved by the immediacy mentioned in (6).
The trick is to place your attention on the task before
resistances have time to accumulate, but if you do this
by a sudden, hurried, violent effort it will bounce back
and hit you in the face. Let the mind approach it with
the heavy, evenly and uninterruptedly moving firmness of
a large, deep river. Once you get the feel of that flow
it will stimulate your imagination and you will not want
to get out of it; you will enjoy it almost sensually,
and it will no more be your nature to turn back from the
object of concentration than for a river to flow backwards
to its source. If you want to practice this as a specific
exercise try counting your breath at a slow, even pace
and direct your attention to nothing but the numbers.
Passive:
(8) We suffer an enormous amount of mental tension and
exhaustion from minor irritations. Many people suffer
from insomnia because of repeated night-noises, sirens,
cars, wind, doors slamming, &c. They fail to sleep
(a) because they are trying to sleep and (b) because
they are mentally interfering with the noises and trying
to make them stop. Here the exercise is to allow the
noises to go on as much as they like and also to allow
your organism to stay awake if it wants to. The imagination
is stimulated here by the obvious relief and freedom from
tension that will follow from saying, "I'm not going to
bother; I'm just going to be utterly lazy and let them
all clamor as much as they like!" The words, "Live and
let live" apply here. Thus if your circumstances present
you with a host of minor irritations, the secret (if such
it may be called) is to allow the external universe to
behave just as it pleases, to let it go and experience the
relief of being rid of a very unnecessary responsibility.