Zen & the Beat Way. Alan Watts
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Zen and the Beat Way
First published in 1997 by Tuttle Publishing
an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
Copyright © 1997 Mark Watts
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Tuttle Publishing.
The excerpt on page xviii-xix is from The Windbell, reprinted courtesy of Gordon Onslo-Ford and the San Francisco Zen Center.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Watts, Alan, 1915- 1973.
Zen and the Beat Way/ Alan Watts.
p. cm.
Based on selections from Alan Watts's radio talks and tape recordings; adapted and written by David Cellers and Mark Watts.
Cf. CIP pref.
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0466-2 (ebook)
1. Zen Buddhism. l. Cellers, David. ll. Watts, Mark.
III. Title
BQ9266.W389 1997
294.3'927 --dc21
97-6843
CIP
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First Edition, 1997
Second printing, 2001
Design by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Printed in Singapore
Contents
Preface, vii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction to the Way Beyond the West, 1
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
Consciousness and Concentration, 27
CHAPTER FOUR
Zen and the Art of the Controlled Accident, 39
CHAPTER FIVE
The Democratization of Buddhism, 63
CHAPTER SIX
Preface
Our first selection, "Introduction to the Way Beyond the West," was broadcast on KPFK in Los Angeles on November 6, 1959, and offered Southern Californians their first opportunity to listen to the popular Alan Watts series broadcast by KPFA in Berkeley during the previous six years. The second and third talks, "The Beat Way of Life" and "Consciousness and Concentration," were originally broadcast on KPFA on August 11 and 15, 1959, and shortly thereafter on KPFK. The radio series has continued on these stations in various forms for more than forty years. By the early sixties, tape recordings of public lectures, rather than radio talks, were being broadcast. Our fourth selection, "Zen and the Art of the Controlled Accident," was one such lecture, recorded in La jolla, California, in early 1965, and "The Democratization of Buddhism" was recorded while on tour in japan in 1963. The final selection, "Return to the Forest," was recorded in 1960 and includes a commentary on joseph Campbell's work on the earliest counterculture traditions.
Robert Wilson: What is Zen?
Alan Watts: [Soft chuckling.]
Robert Wilson: Would you care to enlarge on that?
Alan Watts: [Loud laughing.]
Introduction
Now, I remember the real, original Dharma Bums of the 1945-46 era-young veterans hitchhiking across the country and stopping every place there was a "sage" who knew something about Eastern philosophy. Some even went to Switzerland to speak to jung, and many came to see me at Northwestern University.
They weren't interested in jazz or drugs or hot rods, I assure you. Many of them are still around, but very few of them in the Village or North Beach. They're on farms or in little communities they created themselves. They are out of the rat races of keeping up with the joneses.
They are the substance of which the Beat generation is the shadow. [p.1]
By the late fifties the Beat movement was already a few incarnations removed from its origins, and clearly Alan Watts felt that Eastern thought had been inextricably tied to its genesis. And although it seems inevitable that many people will see the source of any social movement as its purest form, the phenomenon known as "the Beat way of life" was as much a reaction to the realities of mainstream American culture of that era as anything else. Politically, the 1950s were a dark