6-17-98 ALAN WATTS

When a highly evolved skeptic is born into a Christian society filled with hypocrisy, it does not take him long to realize, like Lucretius, that too much religion is apt to sway us into evils. Thus, at the age of fifteen, while a scholar supported by the foundation of Canterbury Cathedral, the heart of the Church of England, he declared himself to be a Buddhist.

However, his weak desire nature, governed by Jupiter, kept resurfacing, so much so, that he actually became a priest at one point only to later renounce the church and his ministry and return to the Buddhist teachings with even greater vigor.

Few men have done more to articulate the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism and, in particular, Zen Buddhism than Alan Watts, and if his approach was, at times, rough and uncompromising, he more than made up for these defects with his gifts of clear articulation, liberal interpretation and penetrating insight. You cannot but profit from reading any of his many books on spirituality. Probably his most famous book is The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are. It is his unique articulation of the doctrine of Vedanta. I am also fond of his autobiography, In My Own Way.