Dave’s Lounge #93: East Meets West

Posted on by September 13, 2007

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In my continued attempts to break from routine, I've decided to promote a couple of items this week that are free.

I was recently introduced to the work of the late Alan Watts, a 20th century writer and speaker who helped to popularize Eastern philosophy with Western audiences. His son Mark is now curating his work, and he recently launched the Alan Watts Podcast, which shares some of Alan Watts' best speeches with the rest of the world.

I thought it would be fun to combine Watts' voice with the music of someone who also combines Eastern and Western ideas — MoShang, whose released his new remix compilation, Asian Variations, under a Creative Commons license, so you can download it freely and share it with the rest of the world. You can get your copy of this compilation at AsianVariations.com.

I encourage all of you to take the time to check out Watts' work. I think you'll find his view of the world quite illuminating.

Enjoy the show!

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Comments

Dave’s Lounge #93: East Meets West — 11 Comments

  1. Pingback: Dave’s Lounge « Asian Variations

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  4. playlist for the show man?
    it rocked…now im a subscriber of Alan Watts too… 😀
    specially the song at 20’10”
    can u tell me the name of it and where to get it?
    thanks from Mexico

  6. Once again, I enjoyed your selections and I want to congradulate you on promoting Watts’ work to the younger ones. Themis, ELT/ESP teacher, music researcher, Greece

  7. So it looks like the start point this week is about 6:52 instead of the usual 1:05. I’m sure there are entire podcasts devoted to spoken word philosophy; is this going to be one of them?

  8. Excellent show.. I transcribed a quote that I thought should have some mention:

    “If I may start by insulting your intelligence with what is called the most elementary lesson, the thing that we should have learned before we learned 123 and A-B-C but was somehow overlooked. This lesson is quite simply this:
    Any experience that we have through our senses, whether of sound, or of light, or of touch, is a vibration and a vibration has two aspects, one called on and the other called off. Vibration seems to be propagated in waves. And every wave system has crests and it has troughs and so life is a system of now you see it now you don’t. And these two aspects always go together, for example sound is not pure sound, it is a rapid alternation of sound and silence, and that’s simply the way things are. Only, you must remember, that the crest and the trough of a wave are inseparable. Nobody ever saw crests without troughs or troughs without crests, just as you don’t encounter in life people with fronts but no backs; just as you don’t encounter a coin that has a heads but no tails. And although the heads and the tails, the fronts and the backs, the positives and the negatives, are different, they are at the same time one, and one has to get used, fundamentally, to the notion that different things can be inseparable. That what is explicitly 2 can at the same time be implicitly 1.”

    His analogy to a physical system is poor unfortunately. Crests and troughs of waves are separable.. mathematically and physically. Sound is not a rapid alternation of on and off.. its a variation of high and low pressure which is to say your ear is constantly vibrating.

    I completely agree with his end point, but it requires a little more thought to make his point solid to everyone as opposed to just those that don’t study mathematics or physics (most everyone.)

    “That what is explicitly 2 can at the same time by implicitly 1” — wow! profound in an austere physical and mathematical veritas.. something that I believe transcends my subjects of studies and embodies our life as well.

    Cheers Dave, thanks for the great show.

  9. Citric: Like I said, this episode was something a little bit different. I enjoyed the Alan Watts Podcast and wanted to promote it, and I thought this might be a good way to do it.

    If you enjoyed the music within this episode, you should go to AsianVariations.com and download it. MoShang makes quality tunes.

  11. Hi Dave,

    I enjoy your podcast each week very much. But the Alan Watts Podcast was the best.

    Thank you for your contribution in wellness for body and soul!!

    Klaus from Germany