Zen and the Beat Way by Alan Watts

Zen and the Beat Way by Alan Watts

"Everything disappears into nothing at all, but out of that same nothing at all come all the new things, forever and ever." —Alan Watts When Jack Kerouac wrote his novel Dharma Bums, his views on Zen Buddhism echoed the sentiments of the Beat Generation, who found in Zen a way of life unencumbered by the limits of "square" society. And it was the philosopher Alan Watts who first wrote and spoke about Zen and Eastern culture in terms accessible to mainstream Western audiences. Watts was an engaging speaker and an icon of America's Beat and Counterculture movements who named among his friends Aldous Huxley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Cage, and Joseph Campbell. Through his popular radio series Way Beyond the West, Alan Watts presented the practical side of Zen, which he described as "a cure for education and culture." By the early sixties, his radio programs were renowned for their synthesis of Eastern wisdom and everyday life. Watts' teachings during an era of turmoil and political strife are as timely today as they were over 50 years ago. The fascinating essays in this collection include: "The Beat Way of Life" How the Beats lived an uncomplicated Zen life and despite being denigrated as worthless slackers, like Eastern thinkers, they actively pursued "an arduous course of spiritual and psychological discipline" "Return to the Forest" How the popular works of the writer Joseph Campbell influenced the earliest Beat traditions by advocating the internal search for individual truth over learned schools of thought "The Democratization of Buddhism" How Buddhism is actually a "religion of no-religion," that conveys the spiritual through the everyday and the ordinary and recognizes no division between the two This book is an engaging introduction to Watts' fascinating and enduring Zen teachings.

"It's easy to see why…his influence remains strong, not only in the Buddhist sanghas mushrooming across America but throughout popular culture…" —The New York Times

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9784805317068
ISBN 10	480531706X
Title	Zen and the Beat Way
Author	Alan Watts
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Tuttle Publishing
Year published	2024-10-08
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable