← Heros

Alan Watts

1915–1973

Eastern philosophy for Western readers, with a lot of humour.

Ideas

The skin-encapsulated ego

The feeling of being a separate self inside your body is a social habit, not the whole truth about you.

The wisdom of insecurity

Chasing security against an uncertain future means missing the only time you have. The answer is to move with change.

The backwards law

Trying hard to hold on to a thing, like safety or happiness, often pushes it away.

Translating the East

He made Zen and Taoism readable for Western audiences, in books and a huge archive of talks.

In their words

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

Start with

• The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)
• The Way of Zen (1957)
• Nature, Man and Woman (1958)
• The Book (1966)

Alan Watts on Wikipedia

Photo: The University of Vermont Alumni Magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; cut out and graded black and white.