Alan Watts

Alan Watts was an English-born writer and speaker who interpreted Zen Buddhism, Daoism and Hindu thought for Western readers. As a teenager in London he joined the Buddhist Lodge, and he published The Spirit of Zen in 1936. He moved to the United States, served for a time as an Episcopal priest, and then taught at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. His radio talks, lectures and books, including The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951) and The Way of Zen (1957), made him a leading figure of the 1960s counterculture.

Key ideas

• The search for psychological security is itself the main source of anxiety; peace comes from accepting change.
• Life is lived only in the present moment, which thought about past and future tends to hide.
• The sense of being a separate ego, a 'skin-encapsulated ego', is a social fiction rather than a fact.
• The individual and the universe are not two things but one process, as Zen and Daoism teach.

Major works

• The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)
• The Spirit of Zen (1936)
• The Way of Zen (1957)
• Psychotherapy East and West (1961)
• The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)

In the Book corner

• The Wisdom of Insecurity 1951 · Beginner
  A short book, subtitled A Message for an Age of Anxiety, arguing that the anxiety of modern life comes from the attempt…

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