Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts (January 6, 1915 - November 16, 1973) was a philosopher, writer, speaker, and religious expert. He wrote over twenty-five books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, consciousness and the pursuit of happiness, relating his experience to scientific knowledge and to the teachings of Eastern and Western religions and philosophies such as Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism, etc. Beyond this, he was sensitive to certain directions in Western societies, and was in a position to be a proponent for certain shifts in attitudes regarding society, the natural world, lifestyles, and aesthetics. Alan Watts was a well-known autodidact and was best known as an interpreter to the West of Asian philosophies.
Early Years
Watts was born to middle class parents in the village of Chiselhurst, Kent, England in 1915. His father was a tire salesman, his mother a housewife who’s own father had been a missionary. With modest financial means, they chose to live in bucolic surroundings and Alan, an only child, grew up learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies, playing at creekside, and performing funeral ceremonies for birds. Probably due to the influence of his mother’s religious family, the Buchans, an interest in "ultimate things" seeped in. But it mixed with Alan’s own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East. Watts also later wrote of a mystical sort of vision he had experienced while ill with a fever as a child.
Watts was sent to boarding schools (which also had a strong religious, as well as academic, dimension) from early years. During holidays in his teen years, Francis Croshaw, a wealthy epicurean with strong interests in both Buddhism and the exotic, little-known aspects of European culture, took Watts on a trip through France. It was not long later that Watts felt forced to decide between the Anglican Christianity he had been exposed to and the Buddhism he had read about in various libraries, including Croshaw’s. He chose Buddhism, and sought membership in the London Buddhist Lodge which had been established by Theosophists, and was now run by the barrister Christmas Humphreys. Watts became the organization’s secretary at 16. The young Watts experimented with several styles of meditation during these years.
Though Watts was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically, and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as presumptuous and capricious.
Hence, when he graduated from secondary school, Watts was thrust into the world of employment, working in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a "rascal guru" named Dmitrije Mitrinovic. He also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology and psychiatry, and Eastern wisdom.
Through Humphreys he was able to come into contact with eminent spiritual authors (e.g., Nicholas Roerich, Dr. Radhakrishnan) and theosophists (e.g., Alice Bailey). London afforded him considerable other opportunities, as well. He attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London in 1936, heard D.T. Suzuki read a paper, and afterwards was able to meet this esteemed scholar. Besides these discussions and personal encounters, by studying the available scholarly literature, he absorbed the fundamental concepts and terminology of the main philosophies of India and East Asia. In 1936, at 21 years old, Watts got his first book published, The Spirit of Zen, which he acknowledged later to be mainly digested from the translated writings of Suzuki.
In 1939, at the age of 24, he and his bride left England to live in America. He had married Eleanor Fuller, whose mother Ruth Fuller was involved with a traditional Zen Buddhist circle in New York. Ruth Fuller soon married the Zen master (or "roshi"), Sokei-an Sasaki, and this Japanese gentleman served as a sort of model and mentor to Alan, though Watts was too independent to remain within a formal Zen training relationship with Sasaki. During these years, according to his later writings, Watts had another mystical experience while on a walk with his wife.
Due to his need to find a professional role and his desire to sidestep America’s military draft in the early 1940s, Watts entered an Anglican (Episcopalian) school (Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, in Evanston), where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and Church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a masters degree in theology in response to the thesis which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit. The pattern was set, in that Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing, whether found within Judaism, Christianity, or certain "life-denying" versions of Hinduism and Buddhism.
All seemed to go reasonably well in his next role, as Episcopalian priest, until his young wife had their marriage annulled due to disagreements with Watts over his views on sexual ethics. Watts left the ministry by 1950 and not long after joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies, based in San Francisco. Here he taught alongside Sabro Hasegawa, Frederick Spiegelberg, Haridas Chuadhuri, lama Tokwan Tada, and various visiting experts and professors. Hasegawa, in particular, served as a treacher to Watts in the areas Japanese customs, arts, and perceptions of nature.
Always an avid and self-directed learner, Watts studied written Chinese and practiced Chinese brush calligraphy. While Watts was noted for an interest in Zen Buddhism, with its origins in China, his reading and discussions delved into Vedanta, "the new physics," cybernetics, semantics, process philosophy, natural history, and the anthropology of sexuality.
Middle Years
After heading up the Academy for a few years, Watts left the faculty and went freelance in the mid 1950s. He published one of the books for which he was best known, The Way of Zen (a book of philosophical interpretation and history) in 1957. The book sold well, eventually becoming a modern classic, and put him on a widening lecture circuit.
Watts toured parts of Europe with his father around this time, meeting the psychiatric theorist Carl Jung. In relation to modern psychology, Watts'instincts were closer to Jung's or Abraham Maslow's than to those of Freud.
When he returned to the U.S., he began to dabble in psychedelic drug experiences, initially with mescaline given to him by Dr. Oscar Janiger. He soon tried LSD several times with various research teams led by Drs. Keith Ditman, Sterling Bunnell, and Michael Agron. Watts’ books of the very late fifties and after reveal the influence of these chemical adventures on his outlook.
For a time, Watts came to prefer writing in the language of modern science and psychology. For instance, he found a great deal of common ground between the flavor of mystical experiences and speculations and theories of the material universe put forward by twentieth century physicists.
Watts' explorations and teaching brought him into contact with many noted intellectuals, artists, and American teachers in the "human potentials" fields. His friendship with poet Gary Snyder nurtured his sympathies with the budding environmental movement, to which Watts gave oblique support.
Alan Watts was a man who felt that there was no reason that life shouldn't be lived with gusto. He loved good food, good literature, fine wines and tobaccos, beautiful scenery and women. Despite whatever intellectual opportunities he felt had been afforded by the schools he had attended in Britain, he felt the general cultural influence (particularly the religious ideas) had been restrictive and repressive. Watts can be viewed as a popular post-modern philosophical writer.
Some people who knew him felt Watts was one of the best conversationalists they had ever come into contact with, while others enjoyed his playfulness. Though never affiliated for too long with any individual academic institution, he did have a fellowship for a couple years with Harvard University and he gave many lectures to college and university students. Through this and his books Watts had far-reaching influence on the American intelligentsia of the 1950s-1970s.
In some "offical" sense, Watts was an outsider to academia. Some college and university professors found his writing and lectures interesting, though others said things like: "He's not really a scholar of Eastern philosophy; he's not that disciplined. Alan Watts doesn't teach Eastern philosophy, he teaches 'Alan Watts'."
In terms of intended practical effect, it can be argued that Watts (like his fellow, senior expat British friend, Aldous Huxley) attempted to lessen mean-spiritedness and simple embarrassment at being human, feeling this teaching might improve the world. He also spoke for the possibilities of a greater incorporation of aesthetics (better architecture, more art, more fine cuisine) in American life.
Last Years
In his writings of the 1950s, Watts expressed what the "zen"-type inner experience might lead to on the personal level - more spontaneity, a more relaxed attitude, and generally being more fully human. He also conveyed his admiration for the practicality in the historical achievements of Ch'an or Zen in the Far East, for it had fostered farmers, architects, builders, folk physicians, artists, and administrators among the monks who had lived in the monasteries of its lineages.
In his mature work, it becomes clear that Watts was not especially committed to the Zen Buddhism with which he tended to be identified in the popular mind, but saw himself as Taoist in spirit, and was very interested in "civilizing" and making more humane the post-Christian industrial culture of the modern West. Child rearing, the arts, cuisine, education, law and freedom, architecture, sexuality, and the uses and abuses of technology were all of great interest to him.
Unintelligent people of any stripe bored him. In his writings, Watts alluded to his own political shift from "Republican" conservatism to a more open-minded legal and political outlook. However, it would be wrong to guess his political opinions leaned to the political Left. He was more of a libertarian who distrusted both the Left and Right and disliked much in the standard view of "progress." He hoped for change, but he liked amiable, semi-isolated country social enclaves, and also believed in tolerance for urban tenderloins, social oddballs, and weirdo artists. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, Watts hated the suburbanization of the countryside and the way of life that went with it.
Watts had always felt that ethics had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one’s deep spiritual identity. He expressed that he had a secondary interest in ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics as they applied to relations between humanity and the natural environment and between governments and citizens. He wrote out of an appreciation of a racially and culturally diverse social landscape. At the same time, he favored representative government rather than direct democracy (which he felt could readily degenerate into a "mobocracy").
Watts often expressed that he wished to act as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between East and West, and between culture and nature.
Watts led some tours for Westerners to the Buddhist temples of Japan. He also studied the traditional Chinese energy exercise Tai Chi Chuan, a set of dancelike movements, under an Asian master. Watts lived his later years at times on a houseboat in San Francisco Bay and at times in a secluded cabin at Mt. Tamalpais. He died at home, while asleep next to his third wife, in 1973 at the age of 58.
Books
- 1936 The Spirit of Zen
- 1937 The Legacy of Asia and Western Man
- 1940 The Meaning of Happiness
- 1944 The Theologica Mystica of St. Dionysius
- 1948 Behold the Spirit
- 1950 Easter - Its Story and Meaning
- 1950 The Supreme Identity
- 1951 The Wisdom of Insecurity
- 1953 Myth and Ritual in Christianity
- 1957 The Way of Zen
- 1958 Nature, Man, and Woman
- 1960 "This Is It" and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience
- 1961 Psychotherapy East and West
- 1962 The Joyous Cosmology - Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
- 1963 The Two Hands of God - The Myths of Polarity
- 1964 Beyond Theology - The Art of Godmanship
- 1966 The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
- 1967 Nonsense
- 1970 Does It Matter? - Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality
- 1971 Erotic Spirituality - The Vision of Konarak
- 1972 The Art of Contemplation
- 1972 In My Own Way - An Autobiography 1915-1965
- 1973 Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown - A Mountain Journal
- 1975 Tao: The Watercourse Way
- 1987 The Early Writings of Alan Watts
- 1990 The Modern Mystic: A New Collection of Early Writings
References
- http://www.alanwatts.net/
- The Alan Watts foundation
- Zen Effects - The life of Alan Watts, Monica Furlong. ISBN 1-893361-32-2