Alan Watts

Renowned lecturer and author Alan Watts presents his meditations on the dilemma of seeking your true self. In this collection of writings, Alan Watts displays the intelligence, playfulness of thought, and simplicity of language that has made him so perennially popular as an interpreter of Eastern thought for Westerners. Drawing on a variety of religious traditions, he presents the dilemma of seeking your true self—to “become what you are.” Once called “the godfather of Zen in America,” Watts also covers topics such as the challenge of seeing one’s life “just as it is,” the Taoist approach to harmonious living, the limits of language in the face of ineffable spiritual truth, and psychological symbolism in Christian thought. This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

Become What You Are

Manu

Has it some symbolic meaning? What is it about? The answer is that it has no symbolic meaning, and that it is about nothing. But it is something, and that something is that very obvious but much ignored thing: life.

I say “in our time" because psychoanalysis is essentially a modern remedy for a modern ill; it exists for that period in human history for which the unconscious is a problem, and a problem it has been since man began to imagine that all his difficulties of soul and circumstance could be solved by the unaided power of human reason. 

Then is the first step on the path a visit to a psychoanalyst? Unfortunately the matter is not quite so easy. If you can find a competent analyst, perhaps, but the profession of analyst attracts many who need their own medicine more than any of their patients.

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