Chapter Five - Zen and the Art of Not Trying

CHAPTER FIVE

Zen and the Art of Not Trying

IF THERE WAS one word Alan Watts could never fully translate, but spent a lifetime trying, it was Zen.

Not because it was mysterious.
But because it wasn’t.

Zen wasn’t about secrets or revelations or following the right steps until you unlock some mystical badge. Zen, as Alan would say, was about the obvious. The painfully, hilariously, screamingly obvious that everyone kept missing.

And that’s why he loved it.

Westerners came to Zen like it was a riddle to crack.

“Tell me the answer,” they said.
“What’s the goal? What’s the technique? What’s the method?”

And Watts would smile and say, “The harder you try to stop the wheel, the faster it spins.”

In Zen, effort is the trap.
Wanting to wake up is the very thing keeping you asleep.
The more you try to be present, the more you emphasize the illusion that you're not already here.

Alan didn’t translate this into Western language by dumbing it down; he did it by paradoxing it up.
He spoke of “the backward step”, the effortless effort, the art of wu wei. Doing without forcing.

He explained koans, those mind-bending riddles.

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

Not as puzzles to solve, but circuits to short. They weren’t meant to enlighten you. They were meant to frustrate your mind into silence. Like spiritual banana peels. And once you slipped? You laughed. And there it was. A glimpse of the truth.

Satori, the flash of awakening, became the West’s new spiritual obsession. Like enlightenment was a personal best you could train for.

Watts called bullshit.

You don’t get enlightened like getting a degree.
You can’t earn it, achieve it, or deserve it.

“Trying to get rid of your ego,” he said, “is just another ego trip.”

In Zen, enlightenment wasn’t a place you arrive.
It was what’s already happening when you stop trying to arrive anywhere.

Alan didn’t live in monasteries.
He sat in cafés. In cabins. On the radio. In front of skeptical, pipe-smoking professors and wide-eyed dropouts alike.

He explained Zen not as religion, but as comic relief.
It’s the moment you realize it’s all a game and you’ve been taking it way too seriously.

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing,” he said, “in the same way that a wave is a function of the ocean.”

That’s Zen.
Not a belief or a technique, just the honest noticing that you are not separate from the thing you’re chasing.

You are the punchline.
And it’s funny.