How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin. We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Topics: Simplicity, Simple Living, Problems If we live, we live if we die, we die if we suffer, we suffer if we are terrified, we are terrified. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is it, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery-the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets-is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together. Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Watt’s autobiography is In My Own Way (1973.) The solution, he suggested, is to abandon the egocentric hedonism of Western culture and realize that everything is interrelated as necessary components of one “process.” His most well-known books include The Meaning of Happiness (1940,) The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for the Age of Anxiety (1950,) The Way of Zen (1957,) Psychotherapy East and West (1961,) Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen (1967,) and Beyond Theology (1973.) He argued that people in the West are in a state of confusion, seeking solace in satisfying their egos. Watts’s elegant writings caught the popular imagination and enjoyed substantial success.
Although he had no academic background in Eastern religions and no knowledge of oriental languages, he became more widely known as a lecturer on Oriental philosophy and an experimenter with mind-altering drugs. Resuscitating his former interest in Eastern thought, Watts taught comparative philosophy and psychology at the new American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Watts received a Master of Sacred Theology degree and served as an Episcopal priest 1944–50 at Northwestern University. He came to the United States in 1939 and studied Zen under the New York Zen master Sokei-an Sasaki. Famous during the 1960s’ counter-culture, his writings were particularly popular among the so-called “beat generation” of the late 1950s and early 1960s.īorn in Chislehurst, England, Watts read works by Eastern and Western philosophers in his teens. Alan Wilson Watts (1915–73) was a writer-philosopher, comparative religionist, and theologian who earned a reputation as the leading interpreter of Eastern philosophy, particularly Zen, in the West.