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Happy Alan Watts Birthday January 6

1/6/2023

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January 6 is Alan Watts Day!

6 January 1915 - 16 November 1973

Alan Watts was a philosopher and popularizer of Eastern religions like Buddhism and Taoism, who wrote throughout the Fifties and Xixties. He wanted to bring Eastern ideas to the West, and perhaps did so more than anyone else prior to his time, and perhaps since. Most people associate him with Zen buddhism and other eastern religions, but in his later years he described himself as a Pantheist.
Watts described himself as "an unabashed pantheist" in his autobiography, In My Own Way. He wrote: “We are all unconscious pantheists, trying to grasp the moment, the Eternal Now, in its various forms, trying to identify God with something in the moment.” According to a recent collection of surveys at online pantheism discussion groups, Watts has been considered the favorite communicator and advocate of pantheism, followed closely by Carl Sagan and Eckhart Tolle. Although best known as a Zen Buddhist, his efforts to blend Christianity, mysticism, Taoism, and other Eastern philosophies is actually a form of modern Pantheism.

He said, “The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.... The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.”


His views led to a profound ecological awareness. He complained that “Civilized human beings are alarmingly ignorant of the fact that they are continuous with their natural surroundings.” He saw that in the same way that brains, hearts, lungs, and stomachs are our internal organs, the air, water, plants, insects, birds, fish, and mammals are our external organs."

He said, “The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain.”

Despite his association with Eastern religions, he centered his religious relationships directly in Nature, not with the writings of men. 


He often warned against what he considered spiritual charlatans. 

He said: “I wish that there was a way of putting a time-bomb into scriptures and records — not a time-bomb, but some kind of invisible ink, so that all scriptures would un-print themselves about fifty years after the master's death. And just dissolve.”

 Watts said “if you want to find out what is the spiritual, what is Buddha-nature, what is Brahman, what is Tao, the best way is to go directly to the physical world and find out: the physical world as you are it, and as everything around you is it; the immediate experience.”
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Read more about Alan Watts in this presentation:

http://www.pantheist.net/uploads/1/8/9/8/18984797/alan_watts_as_pantheist_-_a_presentation_by_harold_wood.pdf

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September 3 Wilderness Act Anniversary

9/3/2022

 
September 3    Wilderness Act Anniversary    
On September 3, 1964, after 8 years of effort by conservationists, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act. The 1964 Wilderness Act provides the highest level of protection for some of our most iconic, wild landscapes through wilderness designation. This historic bill established the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) and set aside an initial 9.1 million acres of wilderness and called for further studies and public involvement on potential additions. Over the subsequent years,  as a result of citizen campaigns throughout the United States, Congress has added over 111 million acres to this unique land preservation system. The current 803 (as of 2022) wilderness areas within the NWPS are managed by all four U.S.A. federal land managing agencies, the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service.  We celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act in 2014.  The system continues to grow: 37 new wilderness areas in California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Utah were designated on March 12, 2019 by the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Unfortunately, some academics trapped by “indoor philosophy,” and now many social justice advocates, who should know better, argue that wilderness is an antiquated idea that ignores the fact that people lived in those places, regarding wild nature “as a transcendent realm apart from the Native people who inhabited those realms.” Close examination reveals that this “Big Lie About Wilderness” is a literary/philosophical construct little related to the Real Wilderness Idea that conservationists have used to establish the National Wilderness Preservation System. Wilderness has never meant “unpeopled” - the Wilderness Act very carefully used the much more accurate term: “untrammeled.”  Here are some essays which further correct this “big lie”:
  • Criticizing Muir and misunderstanding the foundation of American nature conservation by Bruce A. Byers (October 22, 2021)
  • Wilderness and Traditional Indigenous Beliefs: Conflicting or Intersecting Perspectives on the Human-Nature Relationship?
    By Roger Kaye, Polly Napiryuk Andrews, and Bernadette Dimientieff in Rewilding Earth (December 8, 2021)
  • Reclaiming Wilderness: It Tells Us Who We Are, and We Lose It at Our Peril by Kenneth Brower (June 4, 2014)
  • The Real Wilderness Idea by Dave Foreman (May, 1999)
  • For more information:
    https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/wilderness-act


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February Saturday

2/20/2021

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Hope you're enjoying your Saturday, wherever you are.  

"I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful -- an endless prospect of magic and wonder."  (Ansel Adams)
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(photograph by S. Wells)
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World Wetlands Day

2/2/2021

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From Pantheist Vision, we read:

Join the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands, called the Ramsar Convention.  This year's theme is "wetlands and water" -- healthy wetlands have a rich natural diversity of life that maintains and improves water quality. 

Discover activities worldwide at https://www.worldwetlandsday.org.
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(photo by Gary Kramer/USFWS)
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February Night Sky

2/1/2021

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It's a new month as we welcome February and the cool things it brings to the night sky...the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters), planets, the Snow Moon, and more.  There's so much beauty to see when we remember to look up, even with the naked eye -- you don't have to have a telescope to appreciate the awesomeness of Nature's nights above us.  Just click on the picture below for more details. 
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Our Feathered Friends

1/5/2021

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Happy National Bird Day!  Hope you're enjoying watching and listening to the birds outside your window.
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Happy New Year!

1/1/2021

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Happy New Year from the Universal Pantheist Society and welcome to 2021!  We hope this is a good year for you and for our world, our planet.  

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Solstice Time and a 'Christmas Star'

12/21/2020

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Wishing everyone a Happy Solstice (summer for those in the southern hemisphere)!  As we celebrate light and hope this new season (something we can all use especially this year!), we also have Saturn and Jupiter shining together as a 'Christmas Star.'  Read all about the "great conjunction" here.  It's a great time to be a pantheist and a sky watcher!  Stay warm and safe as you celebrate this week.

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December Night Skies

12/1/2020

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It's that time again....a new month for you sky watchers and stargazers!  December is the time for the Geminids, an eclipse and, of course, Winter Solstice, and a whole lot more to see when you remember to look up at that beautiful winter sky!
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(image courtesy of space.com)
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Joseph Wood Krutch

11/25/2020

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Writer, naturalist, and self-described Pantheist, born on this day in 1830.  He coined the phrase "trust in wildness" to substitute for the simple "love of nature" when we mean trust in nature as both the creator and sustainer of health, happiness, and joy.  He described it as a modern form of Pantheism:  "It is a philosophy, a faith; it is even, if you like, a religion."  (from ​Pantheist Vision)
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