阿伦·沃茨

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British and American writer, speaker, and "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.

Watts gained a following while working as a volunteer programmer at the KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, introducing the Beat Generation and the emerging counterculture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first best-selling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), he argued that psychotherapy could become the West's way of liberation if it discarded dualism. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be his best work. He also explored human consciousness and psychedelics in works such as The New Alchemy (1958) and The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

After his death, his lectures remained popular with regular broadcasts on public radio, especially in California and New York, and found new audiences with the rise of the internet.

Early years

Watts was born to middle-class parents in Chislehurst, Kent on 6 January 1915, living at Rowan Tree Cottage, 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane. Watts's father, Laurence Wilson Watts, was a representative for the London office of the Michelin tyre company. His mother, Emily Mary Watts (née Buchan), was a housewife whose father had been a missionary.……

Buddhism

By his own assessment, Watts was imaginative, headstrong, and talkative.……

Education

Watts won a scholarship to The King's School, Canterbury, the oldest boarding school in the country.……

Middle years

Watts left the faculty in the mid-1950s. In 1953, he began what became a long-running weekly radio program at Pacifica Radio station KPFA in Berkeley. Like other volunteer programmers at the listener-sponsored station, Watts was not paid for his broadcasts. These weekly broadcasts continued until 1962, by which time he had attracted a "legion of regular listeners".

Later years

In his writings of the 1950s, he conveyed his admiration for the practicality in the historical achievements of Chan (Zen) in the Far East, for it had fostered farmers, architects, builders, folk physicians, artists, and administrators among the monks who had lived in the monasteries of its lineages.……

Death

In October 1973, Watts returned from a European lecture tour to his cabin in Druid Heights, California. Friends and relatives of Watts had been concerned about him for some time over his alcoholism. On 16 November 1973, at age 58, he died in the Mandala House in Druid Heights. His body was discovered at 6:00 a.m. and quickly cremated on a wood pyre on Muir Beach at 8:30 a.m.……

Views

On spiritual and social identity

Regarding his ethical outlook, Watts felt that absolute morality had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one's deep spiritual identity. He advocated social rather than personal ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics applied to relations between humanity and the natural environment and between governments and citizens.……

Worldview

In several of his later publications, especially Beyond Theology and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts put forward a worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism or panentheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic Self-playing hide-and-seek (Lila);……

Personal life

Watts married three times and had seven children (five daughters and two sons). He met Eleanor Everett (1918–1976) in 1936, when her mother, Ruth Fuller Everett, brought her to London to study piano. They met at the Buddhist Lodge, were engaged the following year and married in April 1938. A daughter was born in 1938 and another in 1942.……

Works

Watts, Alan W. (1932) An Outline of Zen Buddhism, London: Golden Vista Press.

Watts, Alan W. (1936) The Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East, London: John Murray.

Watts, Alan W. (1937) The Legacy of Asia and Western Man: A Study of the Middle Way, London: John Murray.