Alan Watts (1915–1973) was a British and American writer, speaker and self-described “philosophical entertainer,” known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu philosophy for Western audiences. After his death, his lectures continued to be broadcast and to find new audiences through the internet.
He was born in Chislehurst, Kent, to a middle-class family. From childhood, he showed an interest in spirituality, influenced by his mother's family's missionary background and by Eastern landscapes and embroidery. At 16, he joined the Buddhist Lodge of London and became the organisation's secretary.
As both he and his biographer acknowledge, he was largely self-taught: he independently studied philosophy, psychology, history and Eastern traditions, and in 1936, at the age of 21, met Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki at the World Congress of Faiths in London.
In 1938, he moved to the US and became an American citizen in 1943. After abandoning formal Zen training in New York, he was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1945, seeking to combine the Christian mystical tradition with Asian philosophy. However, his marriage broke down in 1949, and he left the priesthood in 1950.
In the early 1950s, he moved to California, where he taught at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco and began a long-running weekly radio programme on Berkeley's KPFA station, which he hosted from 1953 to 1962 without pay and with a steady audience. In 1957, he published “The Way of Zen,” one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism, which became a modern classic and expanded his lecture circuit.
In “Psychotherapy East and West” (1961), he argued that psychotherapy could become the Western path to liberation if it abandoned dualism. He considered “Nature, Man and Woman” (1958) his best work.
From the late 1950s, he experimented with psychedelics—initially mescaline, then LSD and cannabis—and recorded his experiences in the essay “The New Alchemy” and the book “The Joyous Cosmology.” His characteristic advice on psychedelics was: “If you get the message, hang up the phone; psychedelics are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes and telephones.”
Watts's worldview, developed in works such as “Beyond Theology” and “The Book,” combined Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism and modern science. He argued that the universe is a cosmic “self” playing hide-and-seek with itself (Lila), hidden from its true nature (Maya), and that all living and non-living things are expressions of this unified Whole. The sense of an “ego inside a bag of skin” was, he said, a myth. He was also deeply interested in recurring patterns in nature, from the smallest to the largest scale, and in applied aesthetics in everyday life.
From the early 1960s, he expressed concern about ecological problems, writing about “ever-growing mountains of wreckage” and things that look like rubbish before they are even thrown away.
His personal life was full of contradictions. He married three times and had seven children; his non-monogamous nature led to the annulment of his first marriage on the grounds that he had “entered a monogamous marriage under false pretences.” He was a heavy smoker and drank heavily after the mid-1950s. He lived in a community at Druid Heights near Mill Valley, in what has been described as “shared bohemian poverty.”
He died on 16 November 1973, aged 58, and was cremated on a wooden pyre at Muir Beach by Buddhist monks within hours. His son Mark investigated his death and found that he had planned it meticulously; his wife Mary Jane reported that he had told her: “The secret of life is knowing when to stop.”
Watts was criticised by Buddhists such as Philip Kapleau and D. T. Suzuki for misinterpreting basic Zen concepts, particularly his view that zazen does not require a strict, specific posture but is a cultivated state of mind available at any time.
However, Shunryu Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, defended Watts, telling a student who belittled him: “You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! Look at what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva.”
Despite his contradictions, Watts's influence lives on. His recorded lectures continue to be broadcast on public radio stations and, with the rise of the internet, have found a broad new audience; excerpts are used in films, television series, advertisements and music, while the 21st century also saw the creation of an immersive 360-degree dome experience titled “Trust the Universe.”
He wanted to serve as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, East and West, culture and nature. In an age of anxiety, alienation and ecological concern, his words about the fleeting nature of the ego and the need to reconnect with the Whole continue to touch people around the world.
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