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

      Introduction, xi

      CHAPTER ONE

       Introduction to the Way Beyond the West, 1

      CHAPTER TWO

       The Beat Way of Life, 15

      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

       Return to the Forest, 89

      Preface

      

Zen and the Beat Way is based upon selections from Alan Watts's early radio talks, many of which were first aired on the Pacifica Radio Network in the late fifties and early sixties, and sessions from two of his most compelling seminars in the mid-sixties. The original recordings have been adapted to the written page by David Cellers and Mark Watts.

      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

      

During a 1960 "impolite interview" for Paul Krassner's free-thought magazine The Realist, Robert Anton Wilson asked Alan Watts what he thought about the Beat generation. Alan replied that the concept was "a journalistic invention, and having been invented and put on the market, many people bought it." Alan then began to reminisce about the real Beats:

      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