This Is It
The Teaching
The art of living is not the same as the art of achieving. Achievement is a form of warfare against the present moment. Living is the art of being fully in what already is.
You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To have running water you must let go of it and let it run.
There is no way to get there from here, because you are already there. It is not a future achievement. It is this — right here, right now. This is It. And if you object that it doesn't feel like it, that is because you are looking for something other than what is.
Commentary
'This Is It' is Watts's sharpest distillation of what every tradition is pointing at: the present moment is not a stepping stone to enlightenment, it IS the thing itself. The Gospel of Thomas: the Kingdom is already spread out upon the earth and men do not see it. Luke: 'The Kingdom of God is within you', not arriving, not coming, already present and always was.
The Zen tradition encodes this as 'ordinary mind is the Tao.' Not the extraordinary mind, not the achieved mind, the ordinary awareness you have right now is already the ground. Dogen: 'To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things', not eventually, but in the very act of forgetting, in this moment. The Japji Sahib's answer is the same: the Truth is not earned through technique or pilgrimage but received by grace, which means it is available right now, not after you have done enough.
Watts's most useful subversion: the very effort to become spiritual is the primary obstacle. The Taoist sage does not achieve Wu Wei, they simply cease forcing. Ram Dass distilled this same recognition into three words: Be Here Now.