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Alan Watts | |
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| Born | Alan Wilson Watts (1915-01-06)6 January 1915 Chislehurst, Kent, England |
| Died | 16 November 1973(1973-11-16) (aged 58) Marin County, California, U.S. |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 7 |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Seabury-Western Theological Seminary |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Institutions | |
| Main interests | Comparative religion |
| Notable works | The Way of Zen (1957) |
| Website | alanwatts |
| Signature | |
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Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British and American writer, speaker, and self-styled "philosophical entertainer",[1] known for interpreting and popularisingBuddhist,Taoist, andHindu philosophy for a Western audience.[2]
Watts gained a following while working as a volunteer programmer at theKPFA radio station inBerkeley, California. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, introducing theBeat Generation and the emergingcounterculture toThe Way of Zen (1957), one of the first best-selling books on Buddhism. InPsychotherapy East and West (1961),[3] he argued thatpsychotherapy could become the West's way of liberation if it discardeddualism. He consideredNature, Man and Woman (1958) to be his best work.[4] He also explored human consciousness andpsychedelics in works such asThe New Alchemy[5] (1958) andThe Joyous Cosmology[6] (1962).
After his death, his lectures remained popular with regular broadcasts on public radio, especially in California and New York, and found new audiences with the rise of the internet.[7]
Watts was born to middle-class parents inChislehurst, Kent on 6 January 1915, living at Rowan Tree Cottage, 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane.[8] Watts's father, Laurence Wilson Watts, was a representative for the London office of theMichelin tyre company. His mother, Emily Mary Watts (née Buchan), was a housewife whose father had been a missionary. With little money, they chose to live in the countryside, and Watts, an only child, learned the names of wild flowers and butterflies.[9] Probably because of the influence of his mother's religious family,[10] Watts became interested in spirituality. Watts was interested in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East.[11] He attendedThe King's School Canterbury where he was a contemporary and friend ofPatrick Leigh Fermor.[12]
Watts later wrote of a mystical dream he experienced while ill with a fever as a child.[13] During this time he was influenced by Far Eastern landscape paintings and embroideries that had been given to his mother by missionaries returning from China. The few Chinese paintings Watts was able to see in England riveted him, and he wrote "I was aesthetically fascinated with a certain clarity, transparency, and spaciousness in Chinese and Japanese art. It seemed to float ..."[14]
By his own assessment, Watts was imaginative, headstrong, and talkative. He was sent to boarding schools (which included both academic and religious training of the "Muscular Christian" sort) from early years. Of this religious training, he remarked "Throughout my schooling, my religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin."[15]
Watts spent several holidays in France in his teen years, accompanied by Francis Croshaw, a wealthyEpicurean with strong interests in bothBuddhism and exotic, little-known aspects of European culture. Watts felt forced to decide between theAnglican 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 theLondon Buddhist Lodge, which was then run by the barrister andQCChristmas Humphreys (who later became a judge at the Old Bailey). Watts became the organization's secretary at 16 (1931). The young Watts explored several styles ofmeditation during these years.[citation needed]
Watts won a scholarship toThe King's School, Canterbury, the oldest boarding school in the country.[16] Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship toTrinity College, Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that he said was read as "presumptuous and capricious".[17]
When he left King's, Watts worked in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with theBuddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a "rascal guru",Dimitrije Mitrinović, who was influenced byPeter Demianovich Ouspensky,G. I. Gurdjieff, and the psychoanalytical schools ofFreud,Jung andAdler. Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry, and Eastern wisdom.
By his own reckoning, and also by that of his biographerMonica Furlong, Watts was primarily anautodidact. His involvement with the Buddhist Lodge in London gave Watts opportunities forpersonal growth. Through Humphreys, he contacted spiritual authors, e.g. the artist, scholar, and mysticNicholas Roerich,Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and prominent theosophists likeAlice Bailey.
In 1936, aged 21, he attended theWorld Congress of Faiths at theUniversity of London, where he met the scholar ofZen Buddhism,D. T. Suzuki, who was presenting a paper.[18] Beyond attending discussions, Watts studied the available scholarly literature, learning the fundamental concepts and terminology of Indian and East Asian philosophy.
Watts's fascination with theZen (Ch'an) tradition—beginning during the 1930s—developed because that tradition embodied the spiritual, interwoven with the practical, as exemplified in the subtitle of hisSpirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East. "Work", "life", and "art" were not demoted due to a spiritual focus. In his writing, he referred to it as "the great Ch'an (emerging as Zen in Japan) synthesis ofTaoism, Confucianism and Buddhism after AD 700 in China."[19] Watts published his first book,The Spirit of Zen, in 1936. Two decades later, inThe Way of Zen[20] he disparagedThe Spirit of Zen as a "popularisation of Suzuki's earlier works, and besides being very unscholarly it is in many respects out of date and misleading."
Watts married Eleanor Everett, whose motherRuth Fuller Everett was involved with a traditional Zen Buddhist circle in New York. Ruth Fuller later married the Zen master (or "roshi"),Sokei-an Sasaki, who served as a sort of model and mentor to Watts, though he chose not to enter into 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. In 1938 they left England to live in the United States. Watts became a United States citizen in 1943.[21]
Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He enteredSeabury-Western Theological Seminary, anEpiscopal (Anglican) school in Evanston, Illinois, 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 master's degree in theology for his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the titleBehold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion in 1947.
He later publishedMyth & Ritual in Christianity (1953), aneisegesis of Christian traditions that made use of his knowledge of Asian philosophy and religion to provide insight into medievalRoman Catholic mythology, mysticism, and ritual, which he lamented had provided meaning that had been lost in the development of modern Christian practices.[22]
In early 1951, Watts moved to California, where he joined the faculty of theAmerican Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Here he taught from 1951 to 1957 alongsideSaburo Hasegawa (1906–1957),Frederic Spiegelberg,Haridas Chaudhuri,lama Tada Tōkan (1890–1967), and various visiting experts and professors. Hasegawa taught Watts about Japanese customs, arts, primitivism, and perceptions of nature. During this time he met the poetJean Burden, with whom he had a four-year love affair.[23]
Watts credited Burden as an "important influence" in his life and gave her a dedicatory cryptograph in his bookNature, Man and Woman, mentioned in his autobiography (p. 297). Besides teaching, Watts was for several years the academy's administrator. One student of his wasEugene Rose, who later went on to become a notedEastern Orthodox Christianhieromonk and controversialtheologian within the Orthodox Church in America under the jurisdiction ofROCOR. Rose's own disciple, a fellow monastic priest published under the name Hieromonk Damascene, produced a book entitledChrist the Eternal Tao, in which the authordraws parallels between the concept of the Tao in Chinese religion and the concept of theLogos in classical Greek philosophy andEastern Christian theology.[citation needed]
Watts also studied written Chinese and practised Chinese brush calligraphy with Hasegawa as well as with Hodo Tobase, who taught at the academy. Watts became proficient inClassical Chinese. While he was noted for an interest inZen Buddhism, his reading and discussions delved intoVedanta, "the new physics",cybernetics,semantics,process philosophy,natural history, and theanthropology of sexuality.[citation needed]
Watts left the faculty in the mid-1950s. In 1953, he began what became a long-running weekly radio program at Pacifica Radio stationKPFA in Berkeley. Like other volunteer programmers at the listener-sponsored station, Watts was not paid for his broadcasts. These weekly broadcasts continued until 1962, by which time he had attracted a "legion of regular listeners".[24][25]
Watts continued to give numerous talks and seminars, recordings of which were broadcast on KPFA and other radio stations during his life. These recordings are broadcast to this day. For example, in 1970, Watts' lectures were broadcast on Sunday mornings on San Francisco radio station KSAN;[26] and even today a number of radio stations continue to have an Alan Watts program in their weekly program schedules.[27][28][29] Original tapes of his broadcasts and talks are currently held by the Pacifica Radio Archives, based atKPFK in Los Angeles, and at the Electronic University archive founded by his son, Mark Watts.
In 1957 Watts, then 42, published one of his best-known books,The Way of Zen, which focused on philosophical explication and history. Besides drawing on the lifestyle and philosophical background of Zen in India and China and Japan, Watts introduced ideas drawn fromgeneral semantics (directly from the writings ofAlfred Korzybski) and also fromNorbert Wiener's early work oncybernetics, which had recently been published. Watts offered analogies from cybernetic principles possibly applicable to the Zen life. The book sold well, eventually becoming a modern classic, and helped widen his lecture circuit.
In 1958, Watts toured parts of Europe with his father, meeting the Swiss psychiatristCarl Jung and the German psychotherapistKarlfried Graf Dürckheim.[32]
Upon returning to the United States, Watts recorded two seasons of a television series (1959–1960) forKQED public television in San Francisco, "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life".[33]
In the 1960s, Watts became interested in how identifiable patterns in nature tend to repeat themselves from the smallest of scales to the most immense. This became one of his passions in his research and thought.[34]
Though never affiliated for long with any one academic institution, he was Professor of Comparative Philosophy at theAmerican Academy of Asian Studies, had a fellowship atHarvard University (1962–1964), and was a Scholar atSan Jose State University (1968).[35] He lectured college and university students as well as the general public.[36] His lectures and books gave him influence on the American intelligentsia of the 1950s–1970s, but he was often seen as an outsider in academia.[37] When questioned sharply by students during his talk atUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, in 1970, Watts responded, as he had from the early sixties, that he was not an academic philosopher but rather "a philosophical entertainer."[citation needed]
Some of Watts's writings published in 1958 (e.g., his bookNature, Man and Woman and his essay "The New Alchemy") mentioned some of his early views on the use of psychedelic drugs for mystical insight. Watts had begun to experiment with psychedelics, initially withmescaline given to him byOscar Janiger. He triedLSD several times in 1958, with various research teams led by Keith S. Ditman, Sterling Bunnell Jr., and Michael Agron. He also triedcannabis and concluded that it was a useful and interesting psychoactive drug that gave the impression oftime slowing down. Watts's books of the '60s reveal the influence of these chemical adventures on his outlook.[38] He later said about psychedelic drug use, "If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen."[38]
Watts sometimes ate with his group of neighbours inDruid Heights (nearMill Valley, California), who had set up a community, living in what has been called "shared bohemian poverty".[39] Druid Heights was founded by the writerElsa Gidlow,[40] and Watts dedicated his bookThe Joyous Cosmology to the people of this neighbourhood.[41] He later dedicated his autobiography to Elsa Gidlow.
Regarding his intention for living, Watts attempted to lessen thealienation that accompanies the experience of being human that he felt plagued the modern Westerner, and to lessen the ill will that was an unintentional by-product of alienation from the natural world. He felt such teaching could improve the world, at least to a degree. He also articulated the possibilities for greater incorporation ofaesthetics (for example: better architecture, more art, more fine cuisine) in American life. In his autobiography, he wrote, "... cultural renewal comes about when highly differentiated cultures mix".[42]
In his writings of the 1950s, he conveyed his admiration for the practicality in the historical achievements ofChan (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, he presents himself as "Zennist" in spirit as he wrote in his last book,Tao: The Watercourse Way. 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.[citation needed]
Though known for his discourses on Zen, he was also influenced by ancient Hindu scriptures, especially Vedanta and Yoga, aspects of which influenced Chan and Zen. He spoke extensively about the nature of the divine reality that Man misses: how the contradiction of opposites is the method of life and the means of cosmic and human evolution, how our fundamental ignorance is rooted in the exclusive nature - the instinctive grasping at identity, mind and ego, how to come in touch with the Field of Consciousness and Light, and other cosmic principles.[43]
Watts sought to resolve his feelings of alienation from the institutions of marriage and the values of American society, as revealed in his comments on love relationships in "Divine Madness" and on perception of the organism-environment in "The Philosophy of Nature". In looking at social issues, he was concerned with the necessity for international peace, for tolerance, and understanding among disparate cultures.[citation needed]
Watts also came to feel acutely conscious of a growing ecological predicament.[44] Writing, for example, in the early 1960s: "Can any melting or burning imaginable get rid of these ever-rising mountains of ruin—especially when the things we make and build are beginning to look more and more like rubbish even before they are thrown away?"[45] These concerns were later expressed in a television pilot filmed at Druid Heights in 1971. TitledAlan Watts: Conversation with Myself, the film was produced byKQED forNational Educational Television and shown across the country on PBS channels in 1975.[46]
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In October 1973, Watts returned from a European lecture tour to his cabin inDruid Heights, California. Friends and relatives of Watts had been concerned about him for some time over his alcoholism.[48][49] On 16 November 1973, at age 58, he died in the Mandala House in Druid Heights.[47] His body was discovered at 6:00 a.m. and quickly cremated on a wood pyre onMuir Beach at 8:30 a.m.[50] by Buddhist monks before any authorities could attend to the scene.[51] His ashes were split, with half buried near his library at Druid Heights and half at theGreen Gulch Monastery.[52]
Alan Watts was reported to have been under treatment for a heart condition.[53] His son Mark Watts later investigated his father's death and found that he had planned it out meticulously.[54] Mary Jane Watts later wrote that Watts had told her, "The secret of life is knowing when to stop".[55] Watts's father, Laurence Wilson Watts, died in 1974, just one year after his son.[56] A personal account of Watts's last years and approach to death is given byAl Chung-liang Huang in Watts' posthumous workTao: The Watercourse Way.[57]
Regarding his ethical outlook, Watts felt thatabsolute morality had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one's deep spiritual identity. He advocated social rather than personal ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics 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.[citation needed]
He often said that he wished to act as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between East and West, and between culture and nature.[58]
In several of his later publications, especiallyBeyond Theology andThe Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts put forward aworldview, drawing onHinduism,Chinese philosophy,pantheism orpanentheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic Self-playing hide-and-seek (Lila); hiding from itself (Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe and forgetting what it really is—the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise (Tat Tvam Asi). In this worldview, Watts asserts that our conception of ourselves as an "ego in a bag of skin", or "skin-encapsulated ego" is a myth; the entities we call the separate "things" are merely aspects or features of the whole.
Watts's books frequently include discussions reflecting his keen interest in patterns that occur in nature and that are repeated in various ways and at a wide range of scales—including the patterns to be discerned in the history of civilizations.[59][60]
Watts' explorations and teaching brought him into contact with many noted intellectuals, artists, and American teachers in thehuman potential movement. His friendship with poetGary Snyder nurtured his sympathies with the buddingenvironmental movement, to which Watts gave philosophical support. He also encounteredRobert Anton Wilson, who credited Watts with being one of his "Light[s] along the Way" in the opening appreciation of his 1977 bookCosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati.Werner Erhard attended workshops given by Alan Watts and said of him, "He pointed me toward what I now call the distinction between Self and Mind. After my encounter with Alan, the context in which I was working shifted."[61]
Watts has been criticized by Buddhists such asPhilip Kapleau andD. T. Suzuki for allegedly misinterpreting several key Zen Buddhist concepts. In particular, he drew criticism from Zen masters who maintain thatzazen must entail a strict and specific means of sitting, as opposed to being a cultivated state of mind that is available at any moment in any situation (which traditionally might be possible by a very few after intense and dedicated effort in a formal sitting practice). Typical of these is Roshi Kapleau's claim that Watts dismissedzazen on the basis of only half akoan.[62]
In regard to the half-koan,Robert Baker Aitken reports that Suzuki told him, "I regret to say that Mr. Watts did not understand that story."[63] In his talks, Watts defined zazen practice by saying, "A cat sits until it is tired of sitting, then gets up, stretches, and walks away", and referred out of context[64] to Zen masterBankei who said: "Even when you're sitting in meditation, if there's something you've got to do, it's quite all right to get up and leave".[65]
However, Watts did have his supporters in the Zen community, includingShunryu Suzuki, the founder of theSan Francisco Zen Center. AsDavid Chadwick recounted in his biography of Suzuki,Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, when a student of Suzuki's disparaged Watts by saying "we used to think he was profound until we found the real thing", Suzuki fumed with a sudden intensity, saying, "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a greatbodhisattva."[66]
Watts's biographers saw him—after his stint as an Anglican priest—as representative of not so much a religion but as a lone-wolf thinker and social rascal. In David Stuart's biography, Watts is seen as an unusually gifted speaker and writer driven by his own interests, enthusiasms, and demons.[67] Elsa Gidlow, whom Watts called "sister", refused to be interviewed for the biography, but later painted a kinder picture of Watts's life in her own autobiography,Elsa, I Come with My Songs. According to criticErik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."[68]
Unabashed, Watts was not averse to acknowledging his rascal nature, referring to himself in his autobiographyIn My Own Way as "a sedentary and contemplative character, an intellectual, aBrahmin, a mystic and also somewhat of a disreputableepicurean who has three wives, seven children and five grandchildren".[53]
Watts married three times and had seven children (five daughters and two sons). He met Eleanor Everett (1918-1976) in 1936, when her mother, Ruth Fuller Everett, brought her to London to study piano. They met at the Buddhist Lodge, were engaged the following year and married in April 1938. A daughter was born in 1938 and another in 1942. Their marriage ended in 1949, but Watts continued to correspond with his former mother-in-law.[69] According to his daughter Anne, inThe Collected Letters of Alan Watts, Watts told his parents that Eleanor was getting a divorce in Reno, when in actuality, "she was granted an annulment, something that would have been difficult for his parents to understand."[70]
In 1950, Watts married Dorothy DeWitt (1921–2020). He moved to San Francisco in early 1951 to teach. They had five children. The couple separated in the early 1960s after Watts met Mary Jane Yates King (called "Jano" in his circle; b. 1928) while lecturing in New York.
After a divorce in 1962,[citation needed] he married King. The couple divided their time betweenSausalito, California,[71] where they lived on ahouseboat called theVallejo,[72] and a secluded cabin inDruid Heights, on the southwest flank ofMount Tamalpais north of San Francisco. King died in 2015.
He also maintained relations withJean Burden, his lover and the inspiration/editor ofNature, Man and Woman.[73] In regard to their affair, Burden has said that Watts "was a very difficult man to be in love with. He was a rogue. He drank too much. Women were catnip to him. I finally couldn't reconcile his moral hypocrisy."[74] And yet, she called him, "one of the most fascinating men I have ever met."[74]
Watts was a heavy smoker throughout his life and, after the mid-1950s, drank heavily.[49]
His daughter, Anne Watts, has noted that some people have "knocked him [Alan] off the pedestal"[75] upon discovering that her father was an alcoholic and a womanizer, but she maintains that "the work that he did stands on its own and that people all over the world write to us all the time to say how his work has transformed their lives in some way."[75]
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