Objective

Alan Watts was a #British#philosopher, #author, #speaker, and self-proclaimed Spiritual Entertainer. Watts was an expert in comparative religion who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. [1]

Watts gained a following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen(1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, "from a literary point of view—the best book I have ever written."[2]He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. According to critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity." [3]

Subjective

I first discovered Watts through What Fills The Gap (music video) in 2015. By 2018, I'd read most of his books and adopted his title as Spiritual Entertainer. In 2019, I met Elisa 'Wowza' Lodge—who knew Watts well—and has made ever more flattering comparisons between us. Two of my favorite shirts—Skin Encapsulated Ego and Fictional Character—are nods to Watts's teachings.

Books

• Out of Your Mind

• The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

• The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Quotes

• "I didn’t create the mountain with words. I just did it."

See: 40 Alan Watts Quotes to Quench Your Existential Thirst by High Existence

Contexts

• #alan-watts (this is the Root Memo)