I’ve never been a member of any religion, though the closest I’ve come is in being an ardent fan of Alan Watts. If there is such a thing as ultimate truth, he strikes me as best at guiding us towards it, all the more so because he made it plain he wasn’t a guru. Far from being a preacher he was more of a prankster.
For Lafcadio Hearn the greatest genius in the world was the evolutionary philosopher, Herbert Spencer, and his writings on Japan were very much influenced by the Victorian thinker. For Spencer, all of life could be seen in terms of evolution from simplicity to complexity. And it is to him that we owe the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, which I believe had an unfortunate effect on Hearn’s thinking.
No one now reads Spencer and his thought has long been superseded. Perhaps the same will happen to Alan Watts. Yet the longer time passes the more apt his wisdom seems. On an earlier occasion I had posed the question whether Watts ever wrote about Shinto, as I could find no reference to it. This seemed very odd considering his love of Japan, his affection for Taoism, and his deep connections with Zen.
Today while surfing youtube videos of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, I happened to come across the talk by Alan Watts below. To my astonishment and joy, it began with reference to Hinduism and Shinto. As can be seen from the transcript beneath, the passage has great significance for the internationalisation of Shinto with which Green Shinto is concerned. As always, the insightful probing by Watts strikes one by its profundity, and he raises an issue which will be explored in further postings on this subject, for it reaches into the very heart of the Green Shinto mission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO4yfFzk0XQ
Transcript:
“It has been well said that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. You see, Hinduism is a way of life that goes far, far beyond what we in the West call religion. It involves cookery, everyday family life, housebuilding, just everything. It’s the whole Hindu way of life. And so you can’t export it, just as you can’t export Shinto from Japan. It belongs to the soil and the culture. But there are essential elements in it that can be transmitted outside the culture of India. And Buddhism is one of the ways of doing just that.”