Alan Watts: The Path to Enlightenment (audio)

The Path to Enlightenment

(Your Journey, July 31, 2020) Alan Watts explains the Buddhist path to enlightenment. Who is Alan W. Watts (Jan. 6, 1915–Nov. 16, 1973)?

Watts was a philosopher, writer, radio and TV host, speaker, and self-described "spiritual entertainer" known for interpreting and popularizing Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism for a Western audience.

Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. He received a Master's degree in theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and became an Episcopal priest in 1945.

He left the ministry in 1950 and moved to wild California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Pacifica Radio Berkeley (kpfa.org)

Watts gained a following while working as a volunteer programmer at the radical free speech station Pacifica Radio (KPFA.org) in Berkeley.

He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, introducing the Beat generation and the emerging hippie counterculture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism.

In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), he argued that Buddhism could be thought of as the earliest form of psychotherapy.

He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, "from a literary point of view — the best book I have ever written."

He also explored human consciousness and psychedelics in works such as "The New Alchemy" (1958) and The Joyous Cosmology (1962).