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Introduction: A New Look at Alan Watts Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice I am committed to the view that the whole point and joy of human life is to integrate the spiritual with the material, the mystical with the sensuous, and the altruistic with a kind of proper self-love——since it is written that you must love your neighbor as yourself. —Alan Watts (1973b, p. ix) This book is a call to remembrance and an opportunity for reconsidering the life and work of Alan Watts. Writing a mere fifteen years after Watts’ untimely demise, Michael Brannigan (1988) suggested that Alan’s “place in our history remains to be ascertained. We are still too close to the events of his life and to his writings to perceive their full impact, but his influence has thus far been undeniable” (p. 2). Several decades have now passed beyond Alan’s countercultural zeitgeist, arriving at a pivotal vantage point in a new century from which to assess and re-vision the enduring merit of his writings and lectures.1 November 2008 signified the thirty-fifth anniversary of Watts’ death, and this benchmark date served as inspiration for making a new study of his scholarship. The chapters compiled in this volume reconsider Watts’ insights on the human condition in light of today’s discourse in psychology, philosophy, and religion. A hint of Watts’ contemporary relevance may be found at the beginning of his essay on “Wealth versus Money.” He wrote: “In the year of our lord Jesus Christ 2000, the United States of America will no longer exist” (Watts, 1971b, p. 3). The previous sentence strikes a rather prescient tone given socalled “post-9/11” sensibilities. Watts was reflecting on modern-day obsessions with abstract monetary riches acquired at the expense of personal, social, and environmental well-being. He wrote also of waning natural resources, nuclear arms proliferation, biological and chemical warfare, and “maniacal misapplications of technology.” Nowadays, there are new variations on old themes: preemptive wars, terrorism, torture, “ethnic cleansing,” food and fuel shortages , catastrophic oil spills, and global climate change. Each is pushing human civilization toward the brink of disaster. Yet, Watts always offered his audiences 1 2 ALAN WATTS—HERE AND NOW propitious and uplifting insights on what it means to be human. He continually broached the possibility that greed, anger, and ignorance could be transformed, as Buddhists often suggest, into wisdom, compassion, and enlightenment. If it is true in the new millennium as it was during Watts’ own day, that humanity is facing what Martin Luther King called the “fierce urgency of now” as some contemporary voices would imply, then all the more compelling reason to consider Alan Watts anew. CURRICULUM VITAE Alan Watts’ resume is impressive. It reflects the depth, breadth, and variety of accomplishment afforded by his fifty-eight years of living. He was born on January 6, 1915, in Chislehurst, England, and graduated from the prestigious King’s School on the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral in 1932. Eschewing a traditional undergraduate education in favor of tutorials on Buddhism with Zen scholar Christmas Humphreys, Watts eventually enrolled at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary where he was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1944 and awarded an S.T.M. in 1948. He served upon ordination as examining chaplain for the bishop of Chicago and as chaplain at Northwestern University until leaving the Episcopal Church in 1950. Watts subsequently held a professorship in comparative philosophy and psychology at the College of the Pacific’s American Academy of Asian Studies (1951–1957), where he also served a stint as dean of the academy (1953–1956). In 1958, the University of Vermont bestowed an honorary doctorate of divinity for his learned offerings to the field of comparative religion. Watts then spent the remainder of his life as an independent scholar and freelance philosopher. Watts served as editor of Buddhism in England (1936–1938; now The Middle Way), and co-edited (with L. Cranmer-Byng) the Wisdom of the East series (1937–1941). In later years he edited the Patterns of Myth series (1963a), Herrigel ’s (1974) The Method of Zen, and served as editorial advisor to The Psychedelic Review and the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Watts’ writings can be divided roughly into three clusters. His early works, between 1932 and 1940, include three books (Watts, 1936, 1937, 1940) and many articles in various periodicals for general readership (Watts, 1987, 1997a). These initial offerings were prodigious and insightful but somewhat derivative of...

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