We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

ALAN WATTS

from 5 Years Gone by Gardener

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

about

Read a lot of Alan Watts while out in Kurahashi, Hiroshima. This is what I learned.

lyrics

As I think about my past days.
Then I think about my last days.
Was it all about the cash chase?
Adrenaline fast race.
Forget about my blood tribe.
Dumb guy.
Recently when I be surfing on the net.
I rarely see reality, integrity, respect.
And the truth it hurts my heart.
Like when I wrote “It Hurts My Heart”.
Does this mean I’m blanketed in the dark with Elliot’s last name.
Untouchable Dwayne.
Can only mean remove myself from all bodies of this plain.
I’m not talking spirited.
I’m talking clearer things.
Like looking in the mirror your reflection say here it is.
And you gasp as you are shaken and awaken and steered a through.
And you pass to see perspectives from a different view.
Mind progression is the one type.
Above life.
And without it like bringing a knife to gun fight.


But when we consider Being—with a capital ‘B’—this includes not only such ‘is’es as celestial bodies, but also such ‘isn’t’s as the space that encompasses them.
But now, a perfectly logical person would therefore say that the notion of the Self¬—the Ātman, as the fundamental reality in which everything else exists—is meaningless.


As I sit near the setonaikai in Hiroshima. It gets deeper my connection with the planet and its features.
But I still remember the importance of swiping a visa that can bring you to the places where you need a proper visa.
Just to enter.
If you young and black hearing my voice.
Living abroad by your lonesome will relive you of choice. Not choice like freedom.
But, choice like was that racism just now should I beat or teach em.
Not to say life abroad is without flaws.
All my problems just change and become all ours.
I hate to think that wherever I go.
Based off my skin tone.
I’m the enemy.
Based off yours you my enemy.
And you dead to me.
That’ too much weight to hold.
But know I will never fold.
I try to move.
One step at a time.
Towards my goal.
That’s the only way that I know.

But just all us human beings rattling around, we’re not even rooted to the ground like trees. And therefore, it’s very easy for us to form the impression that I am only what is inside my bag of skin, and that my Self is a different Self from your Self. And we’re all, therefore fundamentally disconnected.


There are days in Kurahashi where I keep it very lonesome.
Cause I wanna hear my own thoughts float across the ocean.
If you get it, get it right away.
My brainstorm a tidal wave.
Catch me riding down that thing.
Look at me posing.
Coasting across the seams.
Of imaginary beams.
That were created from my Being.
Not to interrupt ya’ll dreams.
Cause it seems.
We ignore one another’s themes.
Eating chips, the other cleans.
Where’s the sense behind these things?
But I just try to follow golden rules.
Not say I follow golden rules.
Then treat my people like absent fathers do.
Weary of cats saying they own a crew.
Cause that community talk is so that they can take advantage of your overview.
A little selfish.
But I’ve been for myself,
My family, friends and my pals.
Reciprocal treatment that swells.
My heart.
I’m me before anything else.
And just know that’s how the cards have been dealt.



And so your apparent disconnection—the fact that you are not tied to other people with umbilical cords, or some kind of wiring that gives you one mind—nevertheless, we do have one mind. In the sense that, for example, all of us turn out to be approximately the same shape. Two eyes, two nostrils, a mouth, two hands, two legs, and so on.

A haiku poem—Japanese haiku—says, “A hundred gourds from the mind of one vine.” Now, the Hindus do say that the Self—the great Self—is consciousness. But of course, that does not mean consciousness in the sense of our ordinary everyday consciousness. Ordinary everyday consciousness is indeed a form of this kind of consciousness—shall we say, a manifestation of it? —but then there’s also consciousness which doesn’t notice, but nevertheless is highly responsive. The way your heart beats, the way you breathe, the way you grow your hair: you’re doing it, but you don’t know how it’s done.

So therefore, just in the same way that conscious attention is not aware of all the other operations of the body, so in just that way we are not aware of our connection¬—indeed, our identity–with the fundamental Self.

credits

from 5 Years Gone, released January 31, 2023
Music & Lyrics by D. Gardener
Music by C. Caldeira

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Gardener Toronto, Ontario

I write a lot and sometimes I write music too.

contact / help

Contact Gardener

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

Gardener recommends:

If you like Gardener, you may also like: