Alan Watts on the way of Jesus Christ (video)

C. Bruce; Alan Watts (alanwatts.org); Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Alan Watts: Why you can't follow the way of Jesus Christ

(Funy Home, Dec. 1, 2019) Alan Wilson Watts (Jan. 6, 1915–Nov. 16, 1973) was a British Buddhist, "spiritual entertainer," teacher, philosopher, and writer who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for Western audiences.

Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology.

He became an Episcopal priest in 1945 but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA.org, the flagship Pacifica Free Speech Radio station in Berkeley.

He wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning beat and hippie youth cultures to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism.

In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposes that Buddhism can be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a dogmatic religion. 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 in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958) and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962), often including a Hindu-Mahayana point of view in his works.

Towards the end of his life, Watts divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito, California, and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais, next to San Francisco.

According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."

Buddhism

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) beginning in his early years.

Of this religious training, he remarked: "Throughout my schooling my religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin."

Watts spent several holidays in France in his teen years, accompanied by Francis Croshaw, a wealthy Epicurean with strong interests in both Buddhism and exotic little-known aspects of European culture.

It was not long afterward that Watts felt forced to decide between the Anglican Christianity he had been born into and the exotic Buddhism he had read about in various libraries, including Croshaw's.

He chose Buddhism and sought membership in the London Buddhist Lodge, which had been established by Theosophists, which was then run by the Buddhist barrister and writer Christmas Humphreys.

Watts became the organization's secretary at the age of 16 (1931). The young Watts explored several styles of meditation during these years.

Education

Watts attended The King's School, Canterbury, next door to Canterbury Cathedral. Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford University by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as "presumptuous and capricious."

When he left secondary school, Watts worked in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a "rascal guru" named Dimitrije Mitrinović.

(Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Freud, Jung, and Adler).

Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry, and Eastern wisdom. By his own reckoning, and also by that of his biographer Monica Furlong, Watts was primarily an autodidact.

His involvement with the Buddhist Lodge in London afforded Watts a considerable number of opportunities for personal growth. Through Humphreys, he contacted eminent spiritual authors, for example, the artist, scholar, and mystic Nicholas Roerich, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, and prominent theosophists like Alice Bailey.

In 1936, aged 21, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, heard Zen writer D. T. Suzuki read a paper, and afterwards was able to meet this esteemed scholar of Buddhism. 

Beyond these discussions and personal encounters, Watts absorbed, by studying the available scholarly literature, the fundamental concepts and terminology of the main philosophies of India and East Asia.