Alan Watts
Don’t Do It
Monks used to keep skulls on their desks
And people nowadays think that was very morbid
Everything's falling apart
[Laughs]
So don’t try and stop it
When you're falling off the precipice
It doesn't do you any good do hang onto a rock that's falling with you
But everything is doing that
So, again this is another case of our completely wasting our energy
In trying to prevent the world from falling apart

[Chorus]
Don’t do it
Don’t do it
Don’t do it
And then you'll be able to do something
Interesting
With the free energy [echo]
With the free energy [echo]
With the free energy [echo]

Don’t do it [echo]

When the Hindu says, “Everything is unreal.”
The Westerner reacts and says, “No- no we can't treat life as a dream it's serious it's real it's for real.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“How real do you want it to be?”
This is in other words
Everything insofar as it’s falling apart everything is changing
It is like smoke
And we all feel that smoke has a lesser degree of reality than wood
It's an image of the evanescent
Of the ghostly
So, it’s this idea the whole world is this mirage
That doesn’t mean it's a bad thing
It's only bad if you cling to it
If you try to lean on it
But if you don't lean on it, it's a grand illusion

So, the word Maya and that means not only illusion
But it means art
It means magic
And it means creative power
So, this is the big act

[Chorus]
Don’t do it
Don’t do it
Don’t do it
And then you'll be able to do something
Interesting
With the free energy [echo]
With the free energy [echo]
With the free energy [echo]
Don’t do it [echo]
And uh
It's perhaps
Easier to feel the world in that way in a tropical country
Where
Death is very common
And where you just watch things dissolve before your eyes
And yet burst out and grow again
The whole world is changing
Maybe easier to think that way than in our environment
Although when you're out in California
The human landscape changes so fast
That no town is the same for two years
Any mailing list that you have
Changes
One-third addresses per annual
Nothing stays put
The hills are shadows and they flow from form to form and nothing stands