Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British[1] philosopher who interpreted and popularised Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
Watts gained a large 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 Sausalitoand a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."[3]
Alan Watts
Born
Alan Wilson Watts
6 January 1915
Chislehurst, London, England
Died
16 November 1973(aged 58)
Mount Tamalpais, California, US
Nationality
British
Alma mater
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary
Notable work
The Way of Zen(1957)
Spouse(s)
Eleanor Everett
(m. 1938; div. 1949)
Dorothy DeWitt
(m. 1950; div. 1963)
Mary Jane Yates King (m. 1964)
Era
Contemporary philosophy
School
Zen Buddhism
Hinduism
Pantheism
Panentheism
Christianity
religious naturalism
Taoism
Institutions
American Academy of Asian Studies
Main interests
Personal identity
higher consciousness
aesthetics
cultural criticism
public ethics
individualism
Influences
Gautama Buddha
Jesus Christ
Confucius
Laozi
Zhuang Zhou
Lie Yukou
Dōgen
Bankei Yōtaku
Hakuin Ekaku
Christmas Humphreys
Ruth Fuller Sasaki
D. T. Suzuki
Ramakrishna
Ramana Maharshi
Ram Dass
Timothy Leary
Carl Jung
Joseph Campbell
Jean Burden
G. K. Chesterton
Ananda Coomaraswamy
Haridas Chaudhuri
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Marshall McLuhan
Robert Theobald
Influenced
John Cage
Mark Tobey
Gordon Onslow Ford
Jean Varda
Ad Reinhardt
Agnes Martin
Allen Ginsberg
Gary Snyder
Ram Dass
Timothy Leary
Ralph Metzner
Chungliang Al Huang
Monica Furlong
Seraphim Rose
Robert Anton Wilson
Brian Bates
Emerson Barrett Kropp
Saad Hameed
