Alan Watts

Classic. Proposes the reversal of ordinary thinking - how to live in an insecure world without the consolation of religious belief.

The Wisdom of Insecurity

A witty attack on the illusion that the self is a separate ego that confronts a universe of alien physical objects.

On the Taboo Against Knowing who You are

The Book

Traces the origin of Zen and discusses the Zen way of life against its historical and cultural background.

The Way of Zen

In this collection of essays, Watts displays the playfulness of thought and simplicity of language that has made him one of the most popular lecturers and authors on the spiritual traditions of the East. Watts draws on a variety of religious traditions and explores the limits of language in the face of spiritual truth.

Become what You are

Al Chung-liang Huang

Discusses Chinese language and calligraphy, the Yin-Yang polarity, and the classical principles, meaning, and contemporary relevance of Taoism

The Watercourse Way

Essential Listening From the Alan Watts Audio Archives

Out of Your Mind

The Essential Alan Watts

Attempts to penetrate the core of spirituality and consciousness by employing a psychological approach to the understanding of religious experience

This is It, and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience

In this new edition of his acclaimed autobiography — long out of print and rare until now — Alan Watts tracks his spiritual and philosophical evolution from a child of religious conservatives in rural England to a freewheeling spiritual teacher who challenged Westerners to defy convention and think for themselves. From early in this intellectual life, Watts shows himself to be a philosophical renegade and wide-ranging autodidact who came to Buddhism through the teachings of Christmas Humphreys and D. T. Suzuki. Told in a nonlinear style, In My Own Way wonderfully combines Watts’ own brand of unconventional philosophy and often hilarious accounts of gurus, celebrities, psychedelic drug experiences, and wry observations of Western culture. A charming foreword written by Watts’ father sets the tone of this warm, funny, and beautifully written story of a compelling figure who encouraged readers to “follow your own weird” — something he always did himself, as his remarkable account of his life shows.

An Autobiography, 1915-1965

In My Own Way

Mark Watts

Written by the son of the Episcopalian priest and a meditation expert, this guide to achieving inner wisdom draws heavily on the work and words of Alan Watts. Original.

An Introduction to Meditation

Still the Mind

This is a series of essays representing philosopher Alan Watts's most recent thinking on the astonishing problems of man's relations to his material environment. The basic theme is that civilized man confuses symbol with reality, his ways of describing and measuring the world with the world itself, and thus puts himself into the absurd situation of preferring money to wealth and eating the menu instead of the dinner. Thus, with his attention locked upon numbers and concepts, man is increasingly unconscious of nature and of his total dependence upon air, water, plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. He has been hallucinated into the notion that the so-called "external" world is a cluster of "objects" separate from himself, that he "encounters" it, that he comes into it instead of out of it. Consequently, our species is fouling its own nest and is in imminent danger of self-obliteration. Here, a philosopher whose works have been mainly concerned with mysticism and Oriental philosophy gets down to the "nitty-gritty" problems of economics, technology, clothing, cooking, and housing.

Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality

Does it Matter?

In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go out of your mind. Out of Your Mind brings readers, for the first time, six of this legendary thinker's most engaging teachings on how to break through the limits of the rational mind. Offering answers to generations of spiritual seekers, Alan Watts is the voice for all who search for an understanding of their identity and role in the world. For those both new and familiar with Watts, this book invites us to delve into his favourite pathways out of the trap of conventional awareness: discover art of the "controlled accident" - what happens when you stop taking your life so seriously and start enjoying it with complete sincerity. Embrace chaos to discover your deepest purpose. How do we come to believe "the myth of myself" - that we are skin-encapsulated egos separate from the world around us-and how to transcend that illusion? Find the miracle that occurs when we stop taking life so seriously.

Tricksters, Interdependence and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek

Alan Watts presents an eloquent and accessible introduction to the philosophies of Taoism and Zen Buddhism. Watts teaches us how to see and appreciate the world in new ways, and reminds us that we are all born from nature.

The Tao of Philosophy

The Joyous Cosmology

The author expresses his philosophy of life, art, and religion and comments on human needs and happiness

A Mountain Journal

Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

Explicates the mutually fundamental commonalities between the methods and practices of Western psychotherapies, especially those whose bases are social, interpersonal, and communicational, and the disciplines of Buddhism, Vedanta, Yoga, and Taoism

Psychotherapy, East and West

Alan Watts introduced millions of Western readers to Zen and other Eastern philosophies. But he is also recognized as a brilliant commentator on Judeo-Christian traditions, as well as a celebrity philosopher who exemplified the ideas — and lifestyle — of the 1960s counterculture. In this compilation of controversial lectures that Watts delivered at American universities throughout the sixties, he challenges readers to reevaluate Western culture's most hallowed constructs. Watts treads the familiar ground of interpreting Eastern traditions, but he also covers new territory, exploring the counterculture's basis in the ancient tribal and shamanic cultures of Asia, Siberia, and the Americas. In the process, he addresses some of the era's most important questions: What is the nature of reality? How does an individual's relationship to society affect this reality? Filled with Watts's playful, provocative style, the talks show the remarkable scope of a philosopher at his prime, exploring and defining the sixties counterculture as only Alan Watts could.

Collected Talks 1960–1969

Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life

Contrasting Christian and Taoist thought, the philosopher explores the roots of man's estrangement from nature and its relationship to modern social, psychological, and sexual anxieties

Nature, Man and Woman

A series of lectures given by Alan Watts from 1965-1969, exploring Buddhism from its roots in India to the beginning of Western interest in Zen and the Tibetan tradition.

Alan Watts

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