Alan Watts

well..depends who you ask..

my buddhist meditation group don't like him all that much because, at one point in his career at least, he advocated the use of lsd to widen one's boundaries and perceptions.
i'm not sure how right he is on that. equally, i'm not sure he's wrong. and i think i'll leave that issue there for the moment.

'the way of zen' was the first book on buddhism that i read. i found it enlightening (not literally, unfortunately) but wasn't able to follow the 'just be. NOW' advice quite as much as i'd hoped.

what? just like that? just be? now? i'm TRYING!!

i've got a few of his books - read them, and can't really remember what i got from them, other than it seemed useful at the time.

i think i remember a story about him spending all these years practising buddhism, taking lsd and being a bit surprised that the 'enlightenment' experience he received was more akin to the teachings of hinduism - but that says something about the drug, too, perhaps.

what have you been downloading? and from where? i'd be interested in taking a look myself.

It was this very note of originality that drew criticism upon Watts from a variety of eastern scholars and traditionalists, the very sort of people who worship the dead hand of tradition and try to keep the living firmly beneath its weight. Alan Watts preferred to prod the dusty bones and make them dance again. If someone were to ask me for book recommendations for learning about Buddhism, Zen, or eastern religions in general, I would surely include a title of two by Alan Watts.

Yeah, I was wondering if his involvement with the "beat zen" scene might've made him seem like a lightweight, or not worth serious consideration. But as Aimless said, it's this insistence on bringing ancient beliefs into conversation with the modern world that makes him so compelling.

Watts preferred not to be taken entirely seriously, but rather sincerely or even playfully. His most basic philosophical axiom was that the universe is not serious.

He's good to read for enjoyment. My favourite book of his is his autobiography 'In My Own Way' (typical Watts word play) which is a wealth of fascinating information.

Other books I enjoyed:

'The Joyous Cosmology' - see below
'Way of Zen' - fairly scholarly account of buddhism/zen
'Psychotherapy East and West' - very interesting, but sometimes hard-going
'Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts unknown' - lighter essays
'Still the Mind' - a short posthumous transcription from lectures (terrible title as Watts didn't believe in trying to still the mind)

He didn't exactly advocate lsd by the way - that would be a terrible misrepresentation of his views. His book 'Joyous Cosmology' is an account of his own experiences - and possibly his best book in terms of beautiful writing. He didn't recommend for others - but he didn't believe in criminalisation either. His view ws that it should be used in a licensed way for therapists - a view that is just now coming back into the realm of possibility.

"February will be an equally exciting month for us as we see the release of three classic Alan Watts recordings including the much talked about This is It! . Totally wiggy tribal freakout that pretty much has to be heard to be believed...and to think that it was cut in 1962."

OM: The Sound of Hinduism

(available on ebay)

worth hearing once at least...

Well, Alan Watts became a bit of an embarrassment to academia - having a guru-like aura in the late 60s, going on the hip seminar circuit, and having a major drink problem. He enjoyed himself immensely though by all accounts...

I'm not qualified to judge, but my personal experience is that he's a taboo name to mention publicly in academia, though privately his work has a high deal of regard or at least remembered fondly.

really? then i'm sorry about that. i had read that he suggested lsd, combined with meditation, as a path to enlightenment. most of the buddhists i've met tut and cast their eyes skyward at any SUGGESTION of such behaviour. i don't know which of those perspectives is right - perhaps that's a separate discussion and maybe not one people would feel comfortable being frank about in such a public forum (not sure that i would).
the idea of using it in a theraputic setting has a certain validity. i think that was the original intention of timothy leary, too, until he got in with those merry prankster fellows.

thanks for the tip, prude, i'll take a look at kazaa.

and i've learned a lot from this thread - 'joyous cosmology' sounds like an interesting read. thanks for starting it.

From the above site linked by Tokyo Rosemary, Alan Watts animations - including this animation by Trey Parker and Matt Stone:

http://www.freshminds.com/animation/alan_watts_prickles.html

I picked up OM: The Sounds of Hinduism for 50 cents at a library sale!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/05/psychedelic-therapy-war-on-drugs

this motherfucker can talk for four hours straight and say nothing

otm. I'm waiting for my copy of "Behold the Spirit" to arrive in the mail. It was the first book by him I read and it changed my life, but I read another later book by him and it was sort of useless.

a friend gave me dozens of CD-Rs, years ago, of his lectures, and I liked his voice, and the themes, but I listened and listened in vain for anything of substance, or useful/actionable. he's smart and has a knack for pointing out vain and absurd human tendencies but offers no alternative it seems.

he's a hit on YT tho

this motherfucker can talk for four hours straight and say nothing

I think that's wrong, and you may be confusing him with Derek Jeter.

love the stuff with him in her

I've never listened to any of his lectures or watched any of the videos. But I read The Wisdom of Insecurity when I was having my first for real mental freakout at age 18 and it changed me forever. I only read one other book of his after that plus his autobio; I remember him writing that he didn't expect anyone to need to read a ton of his books-- "once you get the message, you can hang up the phone."

^^ Yep and that's pretty much the entire point of zen.

We tend to unnecessarily complicate things.

One useful tip I gleaned from one of his talks was the notion that if you have, say, an imposing pile of dishes that need to be washed, if you approach it like, "I'm only washing one dish at a time," you're only ever washing a single dish. That to me nicely illustrated a premise of zen, and I swear I only wash one dish now and 30 minutes later the whole pile is done.

I think I said this on the Her thread but Watts is really glib. however I still like him. he's like a wise uncle dispensing general life pointers. it's good.

I enjoyed Wisdom of Insecurity when I read it last year. I mean I don't think you can expect enlightenment from a book, and perhaps he's better at demolishing preconceptions than systematizing, but it was a worthwhile read.

I've a... friend who worships at.... his altar, however.... I can... never really work out... if... what he's saying is supposed... to be.... profound or just a load.... of... nonsense punctuated by....long ineffectual and... strangely placed.... pauses

"think about the earth as a sort of... tree... And on this tree there are apples. And.... climbing this tree are thousands and thousands of ants. Now these.... ants.... All want to eat the apples, however.... some of them are... green and.... some of them are red. But if you wrap the tree into a conical shape you will find.... that... the ants are not really there at all and the apples... are... all the same colour"

He is very zen! I think the reason I enjoyed "Behold the Spirit" so much is that it approached a somewhat rigidly defined structure (Catholic Christianity) existing outside of Zen/Eastern thought.

I read and enjoyed a compilation of his lectures called "Talking Zen," but I agree that he frequently lacks a point. Which isn't to say that he's meandering at all, it's just that he seems to be more into a kind of open-ended *suggestion* of an idea or point of view rather than "making a point" in a traditional sense. So reading him you have lots of little "a-ha!" moments, rather than one big one. This can be maddening if you're expecting something else.

no you've washed all the dishes.

Really enjoying "In My Own Way"