Zen Effects

Monica Furlong

Description

The first and only full-length biography of one of
the most charismatic spiritual innovators of the twentieth century.

Through his widely popular books and lectures, Alan Watts (1915-1973) did more to introduce Eastern philosophy and religion to Western minds than any figure before or since. Watts touched the lives of many. He was a renegade Zen teacher, an Anglican priest, a lecturer, an academic, an entertainer, a leader of the San Francisco renaissance, and the author of more than thirty books, including The Way of Zen, Psychotherapy East and West and The Spirit of Zen.

Monica Furlong followed Watts's travels from his birthplace in England to the San Francisco Bay Area where he ultimately settled, conducting in-depth interviews with his family, colleagues, and intimate friends, to provide an analysis of the intellectual, cultural, and deeply personal influences behind this truly extraordinary life.

Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. The Paradise Garden, 1915–1920
2. The Education of a Brahmin, 1920–1932
3. Christmas Zen, 1932–1938
4. The Towers of Manhattan, 1938–1941
5. Colored Christian, 1941–1947
6. Correspondence, 1947–1950
7. A Priest Inhibited, 1950–1951
8. The Wisdom of Insecurity, 1951–1960
9. Counterculture, 1960–1968
10. The Home Behind Home, 1969–1973

Notes
Books by Alan Watts
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Eastern religion
• Eastern philosophy
• Eastern
• Religion
• San Francisco

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 22 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594735530
• Langue: English

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In advanced particle physics some remarkable phenomena occur when two particles bearing opposite charges are forced to collide. Some of these events can be explained by standard theory, but others-zen effects-cannot be explained in terms of any known processes.
Contents
Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Paradise Garden , 1915-1920
2. The Education of a Brahmin , 1920-1932
3. Christmas Zen , 1932-1938
4. The Towers of Manhattan , 1938-1941
5. Colored Christian , 1941-1947
6. Correspondence , 1947-1950
7. A Priest Inhibited , 1950-1951
8. The Wisdom of Insecurity , 1951-1960
9. Counterculture , 1960-1968
10. The Home Behind Home , 1969-1973
Notes
Books by Alan Watts
Index
About the Authors
Copyright
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Foreword to the SkyLight Lives Edition
Alan Watts rose to prominence in the 1960s and early seventies as one of the key figures in that cultural wave that included the hippie movement, flower power, psychedelics, rock music, and a general throwing off of the shackles of convention-all elements of a phenomenon that came to be known as the counterculture. Though many aspects of this movement may now seem quaintly naive to us, there was a vision to it-one of a life simpler and more humanly attractive than one characterized by consumer greed. Along with it there came a new respect for the religious traditions of Asia, and these Eastern philosophies began to make inroads into the Judeo-Christian certainties of the West. The new ways of thinking also contributed to the civil rights and anti-war movements. The traditionally Protestant societies of America and England were taken over by a brief bohemianism, which brought a sense of joy and fun, of play, that never entirely went away again. The movement also laid the foundations for ecological concern, something which, forty years later, has fostered a worldwide dialogue on the subject.
The enduring influence of the counterculture is nowhere more evident today than in the normalization of Eastern religion: the seeds planted by Watts and others in the 1960s have grown to the point where today Eastern religions are considered mainstream-in the past decade the practice of Buddhism alone among Westerners has more than doubled by most estimations- and their continuing presence in our culture has altered the way we think about the religious traditions of the West.
In the fifteen years since this book s original publication, the legacy of the counterculture has increased rather than diminished. Thus, this new edition of Zen Effects comes at a time when it is more important than ever to examine the lives of the people who, like Alan Watts, are counted as the movement s movers and shakers. These leaders were a mixed bag of academics and singers; poets and painters; Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian teachers; adepts of Zen. Watts, arguably the most influential among them, was an Englishman who had literally gone West, eventually finding his home in California, after sojourns in New York and Chicago. Classically educated at a British private school, a follower of Buddhism in his teens, for a time an Episcopalian clergyman, he gradually abandoned the more conventional aspects of Western life along with Western dress, which he regarded as constricting. In 1951 Watts moved to San Francisco, where he helped set up the American Academy of Asian Studies to meet the growing interest in all things Asian. The school quickly acquired some remarkable pupils, including the poet Gary Snyder, a whole group of important artists, and the people who later went on to found the Esalen Institute, the center and retreat dedicated to the exploration of human potential. Watts s intention was less an academic one than it was a wish to bring about a transformation of consciousness in his pupils. He certainly succeeded in bringing some extraordinary people together, many of whom became friends for life.
Like almost everyone caught up in the vision of transformation, Watts experimented with psychedelics. Unimpressed at first, he became fascinated at the timeless vision of the world they showed him. In the early days, Watts, like others, did not guess how destructive drugs could become. Watts, however, always saw them as a temporary aid to consciousness, a cleansing of perception which, like psychotherapy, you gave up when they had taught you what they could: When you ve got the message, hang up the phone, he would say.
By 1969 Watts had become an icon of the movement to the extent that his celebrity made life sometimes difficult. One woman described to me how, at this period, dining with Watts in a restaurant in San Francisco, she was embarrassed by a disciple who came in and knelt before him, disregarding a roomful of onlookers. Perhaps we understand more nowadays about that sort of fame-the sort where people have an awed need to touch, or at least to stare.
Watts s philosophy, carefully developed over the years with study, had a freshness and honesty about it. He had read deeply in Christian theology and felt that many of its symbols had lost their power as a result of being taken too literally, and needed to be rediscovered. He worked at meditation, read Jungian psychology, studied Oriental religious ideas of all kinds, visited Japan. Out of much thinking, reading, and talking, he developed a language that spoke to Westerners who wanted a religion, or at any rate a way of life, that was not totally trapped in rationality. He felt that religion tended to suffer from mystification and the use of a mandarin language that excluded most people, except as timid followers of leaders who then abused their power. His own teaching moved between ways of talking about huge imponderables-suffering, death-to the everyday-the kind of food, clothes, relationships, ways of living that might be appropriate for human beings.
Few, if any, human beings can cope well with becoming a guru or icon. Alan Watts handled it better than some, mainly because he had good friends, and he had a sense of humor that put his fame into perspective, but he was stressed by the exposure and at times his head was turned by it. Watts is not a man on whom it is possible to deliver an easy verdict-he escapes labels. He had an extraordinary wisdom, a lot of knowledge, and a rare ability to put both into language that ordinary people can understand. He still has much to teach anyone searching to find belief-his short and deceptively simple little books are remarkable guides. He was sometimes vain, a know-it-all who could be thoughtless of others, but he was invariably kind in what he said about other people. He was fond of lifting the elbow, Dom Aelred Graham wrote to me, but I never heard him say a harsh word about anybody. There are not many of us of whom the Recording Angel will be able to say as much, and it was perhaps Watts s capacity to live out the life he wanted, with all its ups and downs, its failures and successes, that left him so attractively free of envy. His children, I noticed when I interviewed them, were both clear-sighted and truthful about him, but also had loving memories, as had his friends.
He was both an inspired leader and, like all of us, flawed-in Gary Snyder s words, he sowed problems wherever he went. Watts knew himself quite well, and used to describe himself as a genuine fake, an expression that catches not only his ambiguities, but also the ambiguities of the human condition, not least when we are trying to be religious. This book tries to explore both the genuineness and the fakery.
Monica Furlong
Acknowledgments
My principle thanks go to Joan Watts Tabernik of Bolinas, California, Alan Watts s daughter and executor, who encouraged me to write the book and was full of useful information. I was also most grateful to Ann Andrews who talked with me at great length about her father and the family history, and showed me much personal kindness. Mrs. Mary Jane Watts was very generous with her time.
Other members of the Watts family who helped with time, memories, photographs, tapes, and diaries were Mark Watts, Joy Buchan, Leslie and Peggy Watts, Sybil Jordeson, and Jean McDermid. Mrs. Dorothy Watts wrote to me at length about Alan Watts.
Watts had many close and loving friends; those I talked with about him were Elsa Gidlow, Roger Somers, Gary Snyder, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Toni Lilly, June Singer, Robert Shapiro, Ruth Costello, Sandy Jacobs, Virginia Denison, and Watts s niece by marriage, Kathleen.
Others who gave information were Bishop John Robinson, Theodore Roszak, R. D. Laing, members of the San Francisco Zen Center, Episcopal clergy who remembered Watts from his Christian days, and Joanne Kyger. Dom Aelred Graham corresponded with me about the trip he and Watts made to Japan, Felix Greene about broadcasting with Watts, and Patrick Leigh Fermor about being at King s School, Canterbury.
King s School, Canterbury, provided archive material, suggested contacts, and described to me what the school must have been like in Watts s day.
John Snelling of the Buddhist Society of Great Britain gave me good advice, and the Society produced some interesting