Alan Watts

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan.  After leaving the Church he never became a member of  another organized religion, although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoisim. Some American Buddhists criticized him for not sitting regularly in zazen, even though he recorded several guided meditations teaching a variety of meditation techniques. Alan Watts responded simply by saying: “A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away.”

In 1957 he published his bestselling The Way of Zen, and in 1958 returned to Europe where he met with CG Jung. He was an early subject in pioneering psychedelic trials, and after recording two seasons of the public television series “Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life” traveled to Japan several times in the early sixties. By the late sixties he had become a counter culture celebrity, and traveled widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe.

By the early 1970s Alan Watts had become a foremost interpreter of Eastern thought for the West.  Overall he developed an extensive audio library of nearly 400 talks and wrote more than 25  books during his lifetime, including his final volume, Tao: the Watercourse Way.