...
If any of you are sick to death of the mealy-mouthed charlatans professing Zen in the United States... probably the whole of Western "Civilization"... I just noticed that Alan Watts, for all his flaws, expressed something crucial quite more helpfully than even the best translators on earth.
If you have any truck with Zen at all, you'll be familiar with the Sandõkai, an ancient Chinese poem that is droned dissonantly in Japanese in most zendos across the English-speaking world. Sometimes they're not prats and so do it in English. Still, the translating of this stuff is fraught with trouble, and so settling on "The Merging of Difference and Sameness" [and, no, harmony is not the word] is an improvement that is still pretty much going to leave Westerners in their benighted identity... not help much.
But, here, Watts starts talking about identity and difference, difference and identity. Good show, old sport. That should help someone. How many times have I listened to this and not noticed? Shame on me.
Merge your identity with the differences all around you. You are not, after all, separate entities.
