Hero #144: Alan Watts … (01/10/16)
Born in 1915, Alan Watts was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker. He was best known as a re-interpreter of Eastern philosophy for those living in or having intimate ties with the West.
Even in his early years at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, it became clear that Watts disliked all religious outlooks that he felt were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing— and this dislike knew no particular prejudice, as his disdain was thrown with equal vigor upon all conservative dogmas, regardless of whether they were founded in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist beliefs.
While at Seabury-Western, Watts attempted to work out a practical conjoining of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Despite his somewhat radical views, he did ultimately receive a master’s degree in theology from the school, and thereafter became an Episcopal priest, only to leave the ministry in 1950 and move to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
All in all, Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the pop-culture phenomenon known as “The Way of Zen”, which also happened to be the title of one of his early books (1957); which became, in point of fact, one of the very first bestselling books on Buddhism ever in the United States.
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float … The only way to make sense out of change in life is to plunge into it, to move with it, to join the dance … After all, you are a function of what the entire Universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the entire ocean is doing … So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without Loving everything defined as other than yourself.” ~ Alan Watts
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