The Wisdom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Provoking Animations

Per­haps no sin­gle per­son did more to pop­u­lar­ize Zen Bud­dhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a sense, Watts pre­pared U.S. cul­ture for more tra­di­tion­al­ly Zen teach­ers like Soto priest Suzu­ki Roshi, whose lin­eage con­tin­ues today, but Watts did not con­sid­er him­self a Zen Bud­dhist. Or at least that’s what he tells us in the talk above, ani­mat­ed by Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, the cre­ators of South Park. “I am not a Zen Bud­dhist,” he says, “I am not advo­cat­ing Zen Bud­dhism, I am not try­ing to con­vert any­one to it. I have noth­ing to sell.” Instead, he calls him­self “an enter­tain­er.” Is he pulling our leg?

After all, Watts was the author of such books as The Spir­it of Zen (1936—his first), The Way of Zen (1957), and ”This Is It” and Oth­er Essays on Zen and Spir­i­tu­al Expe­ri­ence (1960). Then again, he also wrote books on Chris­tian­i­ty, on “Erot­ic Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and on all man­ner of mys­ti­cism from near­ly every major world reli­gion.

And he was ordained an Epis­co­pal priest in 1945 and served as such until 1950. Watts was a tricky character—a strict anti-dog­ma­tist who found all rigid doc­trine irri­tat­ing at best, deeply oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing at worst.

While Watts may not have been any sort of doc­tri­naire Zen priest, he learned—and taught—a great deal from Japan­ese Bud­dhist con­cepts, which he dis­tills in the video at the top. He gleaned very sim­i­lar insights—about the uni­ty and inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all things—from Dao­ism. Just above, see a very short ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Eddie Rosas, from The Simp­sons, in which Watts uses a sim­ple para­ble to illus­trate “Dao­ism in per­fec­tion.”

The con­cepts Watts elu­ci­dates from var­i­ous tra­di­tions are instant­ly applic­a­ble to eco­log­i­cal con­cerns and to our rela­tion­ship to the nat­ur­al world. “The whole process of nature,” he says above in a para­ble ani­mat­ed by Steve Agnos, “is an inte­grat­ed process of immense com­plex­i­ty.” In this case, how­ev­er, rather than offer­ing a les­son in uni­ty, he sug­gests that nature, and real­i­ty, is ulti­mate­ly unknow­able, that “it is real­ly impos­si­ble to tell whether any­thing that hap­pens in it is good or bad.” The most rea­son­able atti­tude then, it seems, is to refrain from mak­ing judg­ments either way.

It’s that ten­den­cy of the human mind to make hasty, erro­neous judg­ments based on mis­ap­pre­hen­sions that comes in for cri­tique in the Watts talk above, ani­mat­ed by Tim McCourt and Wes­ley Louis of West­min­ster Arts & Film Lon­don. Here, he reach­es even deep­er, inves­ti­gat­ing ideas of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and the exis­tence of the ego as an enti­ty sep­a­rate from the rest of real­i­ty. Return­ing to his grand theme of inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Watts assures us it’s “impos­si­ble to cut our­selves off from the social envi­ron­ment, and also fur­ther­more from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. We are that; there’s no clear way of draw­ing the bound­ary between this organ­ism and every­thing that sur­rounds it.” But in order to dis­cov­er this essen­tial truth, says Watts, we must become “deep lis­ten­ers” and let go of embar­rass­ment, shy­ness, and anx­i­ety.

If you enjoy these excerpts from Alan Watts’ lec­tures, you can find many hours of his talks online. The offi­cial Alan Watts site, man­aged by his son Mark, has exten­sive col­lec­tions of his talks and cours­es, though these are offered at con­sid­er­able cost. What Watts would have thought of this, I do not know, but I’m cer­tain he’d be glad that so much of his work—hours of lec­tures, in fact—is avail­able free of charge on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness