Justice & Law Quote by Alan Watts

Watts is slipping a blade under the West’s favorite moral assumption: that ethics needs a cosmic author to count as real. By saying Buddhism contains “no idea” of a moral law “laid down” by a “cosmic lawgiver,” he’s not just describing doctrine; he’s puncturing the psychological comfort of outsourced responsibility. The phrasing matters. “Laid down” evokes a parent, a monarch, a legislature. “Somekind” (crammed together, slightly impatient) carries a faint sneer toward the patchwork metaphysics people build when they can’t tolerate a universe without a manager.

The subtext is classic Watts: stop looking for the universe to validate your rules, because that craving is itself part of the problem. In many Buddhist traditions, karma isn’t a judge’s verdict; it’s cause and effect, the texture of consequences. Suffering isn’t punishment for breaking divine statutes but the predictable friction created by craving, ignorance, and clinging. Morality, then, becomes less about obedience and more about clarity: actions either deepen delusion or reduce it.

Context sharpens the intent. Watts was a mid-century translator of Asian thought for an English-speaking audience steeped in Christian moral architecture and, increasingly, disillusioned with it. His audience wanted spirituality without sermons, meaning without a celestial cop. He gives them a radical trade: ethics without an overseer, discipline without commandment, compassion without metaphysical bribery. The line works because it’s a clean severing. It doesn’t attack God; it simply removes God from the moral supply chain, leaving the reader with an unnerving, liberating premise: you don’t get to blame the cosmos for your conscience.