The Great Things That You Do - Akira the Don, Alan Watts

Now, you see, if you do that

You do at least give yourself a chance

And it may be that when you are, in this way, freed from busy bodies,

and being out to improve everything, that your own nature will begin to take

care of itself

'Cause you’re not getting in the way of yourself all the time.

You will begin

to find out

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

For example, no great genius can explain how he does it

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

Yes, he says, «I have learned the techniques to express myself because I had

something in me that had to come out

If I were a musician, I had to learn how music is produced

If I wanted to describe something, I had to learn a language so that others can

understand me

I need a technique

But then, beyond that, I’m afraid I can’t tell you how it was that I used that

technique to express this mysterious thing I wanted to show you.»

If we could tell people, if we would have schools, where we would infallibly

train musical geniuses, scientific miracle minds, and there would be so many of

them

We wouldn’t know what to do with 'em, geniuses would be a dime a dozen

Then we would say, «Well, these people are, after all, not very ingenious,

you know?»

PhDs, how many of them are there?

Because what is fascinating, always, about genius is

The fellow does something we can’t understand

He surprises

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

For example, no great genius can explain how he does it

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

But you see, just in the same way, we cannot understand our own brains

Neurology knows relatively little about the brain, which is only to say that

the brain is a lot smarter than neurology

Yet, there is this which can perform all these extraordinary intellectual or

cultural miracles

We don’t know how we do, but we did

We didn’t have some campaign to have an improved brain over the monkeys,

or whatever may be our ancestors

It happened

And all growth, you see, is fundamentally something that happens

But for it to happen, two things are important

The first is, as I said, you must have the technical ability to express what

happens

Second then, you must get out of your own way

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

For example, no great genius can explain how he does it

The great things that you do

Are really happenings

How am I to get out of my own way?

And if I showed you a system

Let’s all practice getting out of our own way

It would turn into another form of self-improvement

See, here’s the dynamics of this

We find this problem, you see, repeatedly throughout the entire history of

human spirituality

In the phraseology of zen Buddhism, you cannot get this by thinking

You cannot attain to it by not thinking

As getting out of your own way ceases to be a matter of choice

When you see that there’s nothing else for you to do

When you see, in other words, that doing something about your situation is not

going to help you

When you see equally that trying not to do anything about it is not going to

help you

Where are you?

Where do you stand?

You’re nonplussed

And you are simply reduced to watching