What Alan Watts means by "trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth"

Alan Watts was one of the most entertaining, intelligent, illuminating, and all around fascinating western philosophers of the 20th century, who passed on wisdom as a prolific researcher, writer, teacher, and speaker. Throughout his career, Alan Watts did a tremendous service to the collective spiritual health of humanity as a whole by discovering pearls containing eternal truths found in Eastern philosophy and educating Westerners, who were largely in the dark of such wisdom, about what he learned.

There are, of course, hundreds or thousands of enjoyable quotes that come from the pearls of truth that Alan Watts discovered in his exploration of the eternal and spiritual truths in life. One of the most popular and one of my personal favorites is a comment that comes across as eccentric axioms:

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”  - Alan Watts

I was quite puzzled when I first heard this quote. What in the world did Alan Watts mean by this paradoxical mind twister?

Westerners or others who see knowledge as power are trained to distill everything we encounter into clarified answers and to attempt to firmly nail down what we find into place. Hence, when we find that a baffling and paradoxical comment such as this slips between our fingers as we attempt to grasp it, we are left feeling confused, mentally warped, and devilishly frustrated. This is because the knowledge that we refer to in the phrase “knowledge is power,” is not the knowledge that is equivalent to the truth that the profound quote above points to; no amount of grasping will transform a truth into the “knowing” knowledge that we seek.

Slowly, haltingly, as I read more works by Alan Watts and others in the Buddhism sphere, I started to feel my way towards the place of truth that the comment pointed to.

Eventually, I caught a glimpse of this truth, and in this glimpse I realized that due to its almost kitsch obviousness, this comment does indeed reveal the way to a profound universal truth; so long as you don’t attempt to grasp it by assessing it literally.

In his dialogues and books, Alan Watts would issue many other comments of a similar baffling axiomatic makeup to try to communicate his point, such as:

“...methods for grasping Reality, for getting God into our consciousness, are as absurd and confusing as putting red paint on red roses or as trying to kiss your own lips.” - Alan Watts

In order to point you to the truth that lies beyond this quote, it is helpful to know that Alan Watts was a devout Zen buddhism practitioner, and referenced principles and approaches of Zen in much of his work, even writing a full book on Zen, called The Way of Zen. 

In Zen Buddhism, these kinds of impossible, axiomatic sayings, questions, or dialogues - called Kōans - are a key part of the teachings which lead students to enlightenment. For instance, a classic, question-based koan is to explain the following:

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Now, then - what does Alan Watts mean in his own version of a koan?

The body and mind of the person we call Alan Watts is deceased and cannot answer this question today; but to me, Alan Watts’s comment is meant to state a simple action which is impossible, and which no amount of struggling will change the impossibility of.

The point of Alan Watts’s statements are to make you realize that you’re trying to understand something that is impossible to understand and moreover besides the point. The point is to not become caught up in the semantics of words, which point to knowledge, not truth. The famous doctrine of Zen Buddhism does a masterful job of illustrating this fact by explaining that:

“The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”

The point is to let go of trying to grasp the “meaning” of everything, stop trying to “attain” knowledge, and simply let things be as they are.

Like a Chinese finger trap, the more we consciously struggle to figure out the statement, the more stuck we become. The only way to escape is to let go, and stop trying to grasp meaning where there is none to be grasped.

Letting go of trying to make meaning from the statement is not the end of the road, though. The end route of such a statement or a Zen Buddhism koan is to enable you to stop struggling in the finger trap, and to realize that there is nothing at all in life that can be “gotten,” “understood,” or “grasped,” because there is no “self” to do the “getting,” “understanding” or “grasping.” It is an illusion to believe that we are separate entities called “selves” who can compartmentalize life into knowledge boxes that we as “selves” can then claim to have.

The goal of Alan Watts’s paradoxical axioms and Zen Buddhisms’s koans is to enable you to realize the Buddhist principle of Anattā: “no self,” or “the oneness of life.”

What are the implications of this truth-containing truth that Alan Watts, Zen Buddhists and many others have been trying to teach us?

Realizing the truth of Anattā is what enables you to pull your fingers free of the trap of trying to struggle to exist as a separate entity from life. This freedom is also known as enlightenment - Nirvana - which grants you freedom from Duḥkha - the suffering of life caused by the vain and futile struggle against the inherently unknowable, impermanent nature of life.

This last part about being one with life creating enlightenment and Nirvana being the end of duḥkha may be a stretch for you. It’s all good. Listen to a few more of Alan Watts’s lectures and see if that helps you, as it helped me.

For now though, let’s try to at least come closer to the light in the first part of there being no separate self. In assistance of this endeavor I offer my own Alan Watts-inspired, axiomatic quote:

“Believing that yourself actually exists - that is, a “self” is separate from “your” existence - is like believing that the person looking back in your mirror is a separate person from you.” 

Can you reach through the mirror and shake the hand of the person you see there or have a dynamic conversation with them? Outside of the imaginary world that Harry Potter inhabits, no; this is not possible. Does that person in the mirror exist, then? Yes, but not as a separate entity; they exist only inasmuch as you exist.

So, too does the self exist, but not as a separate entity. The “self” exists, only inasmuch as it is you; it is not separate from you.

This self is the part of your mind that sees itself as separate from you and that you think you can blame for making a mistake. However, there is no separate self in your mind that the other part of your mind can disappoint the expectations of. Every part of you is you; the ego or self doesn’t exist in its own right, and so “you” are really just blaming “you” and thinking this will somehow make “you” feel better. If you believe that you can be mad at yourself rather than for angry feelings to simply be present in you, then you are continuing to injure yourself. You are continuing to believe in the fiction that society has convinced you since childhood of: that you have a “you” and a “self,” and that this self is the you that exists independent of the world and can thus be made the scapegoat, or the martyr of any of your life’s circumstances that you judge as negative, or heaped with the praise of those judged as positive.

The concept of “self” comes from the ego, which is an imaginary plaything that society hands us in childhood that over time becomes a serious addiction, donning the cloak of the separate being called a “self.” The ego then creates the concepts of “good” and “bad” out of what happens in life to this “self,” so that the ego can survive by continuing to draw the imaginary boundaries that separate “itself” from “you.” These boundaries revolve around the “goodness” or “badness” of the self’s perceived experience.

When you see the “self” as a reflection that “I/me” sees, rather than a separate identity, then you will realize that there is no separate you within you that needs to be praised, labeled, judged, criticized, or hated in its attempt to continue existing. 

If you can realize that all thoughts are you and there is no ego or self, then you have pulled away the ego’s shroud and discovered that there is no entity beneath it; only a mirror reflecting you back at you.

Insert Fight Club reference here.

So don’t take your “self”-ish thoughts seriously. There’s no “self” within you that will be affected when things in your life happen that you don’t like. The unified you can stop trying to bite your own teeth or kiss your own lips. The unified you can be free from the impossible task of trying to maintain this burden of “self,” and you can just live your life without fearing the loss or diminishment of aspects of this “self.”

“Bad” things will still summon sad, angry, or fearful feelings and thoughts, but there will be no “self” who must be punished for allowing those things to happen. If you lose your job, there’s no self to blame until you get your full salary back, because the self’s bank balance and status must be upkept. You might find a new job that pays less, but you like way more.

“Good” things will still summon happy, ecstatic, or peaceful feelings and thoughts, but there will be no “self” who must be praised for making those things to happen, or blamed when they go away. If your relationship implodes, there’s no one inside you to blame and urge you onto a rebound streak to try to make your “self” feel loved again. You might find that you really enjoy being single, and that after a year you might find someone with whom you connect even better than the previous person with.

Stay tuned for more musings on how to reduce stress or anxiety and how to live mindfully in modern society, and in doing so discover and resonate more happiness, love, peace, energy, and meaning.