![]() ![]() Apparently he had heard this question before. At the end, during the question-and-answer period, someone asked about Watts. On that last note, some years later I attended a talk by an American Zen priest. These qualities each misrepresented Zen in its fullness, especially the do whatever part, and at the same time led many people to it.” As I summarized in my history, “An erstwhile Episcopal priest, engaging raconteur, and scandalous libertine, Alan Watts was also a prolific author whose books created an inviting sense of Zen-as-pure-experience, which is also a controversial mark of Suzuki’s work, and very much Watts’ own do-what-you-want spirituality. Well, and with Watts’ personal twist on the matter. All it made accessible through Watts’ engaging style, enormously readable, and genuinely compelling. Suzuki, the first person to write authentically about Zen in European languages. He drew mainly on the scholarly work of D. It would be the first book about the subject that an entire English speaking generation would easily be able to access. And more importantly in 1957 with his bestselling Way of Zen. ![]() I was also awkwardly aware that Watts seemed intoxicated.”Īlan Watts was in fact the first person to write popular books about Zen in the West, beginning in 1937 with the Spirit of Zen. It was hard not to notice his interest in the young woman who, as a monk, I was embarrassed to observe seemed not to be wearing any underwear. Nearly an hour later, Watts arrived dressed in a kimono, accompanied by a fawning young woman and an equally fawning young man. Wearing my very best robes (okay, I only had two sets,) l one for warm weather, the other for cold), I waited for him to show up and waited and waited. I was enormously excited to actually meet this famous man, the great interpreter of the Zen way. “I was on the guest staff of the Zen monastery in Oakland led by Roshi Jiyu Kennett. To quote from myself, because, well, because I can, in my history of Zen Buddhism come west, Zen Master Who? I describe the first of these. I actually met Alan Watts a couple of times. (A large part for this based on a consideration of Watts’ contribution to the mystical literature first written in 2015, and then built upon in several iterations.) And we get the benefit of that here in this reflection. Preparing for this, I looked Watts up and saw I’ve given him attention seventy-one times. This is so obvious that there is no need to stress it except as a starting point for constructive discussion.” The truth, however, is that with some very few and scattered exceptions Church religion is spiritually dead, and the best minds of the Church admit and deplore it openly. It would be easy to blame the modern world for ignoring Christianity… if Church religion showed any strong signs of spiritual life. “It is all too clear that our age suffers from a vast hunger and impoverishment of the spirit which the organized Christian religion, as we know it, rarely satisfies. For instance in his book Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion, published in 1947, the year before I was born: What is most important is how he touches the perennial spiritual thirst of our human condition. Watts is by turns eloquent, witty, opinionated, self-referential, and compelling. ![]() ![]() No doubt if you look narcissist up in the dictionary, his picture is there. But, really, catchy animation isn’t going to be enough. It doesn’t hurt, I’m sure, that a number of his recorded talks have been animated by younger admirers, most notably the team who do South Park, Eddie Rosas from the Simpsons, and others posted on YouTube. But these books, well, they’re in print, or, they’re being reprinted. I mean such a perfect example of a moment. What is surprising to me, frankly, is that he continues to be read. ![]()
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