The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

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Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Alan Watts had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the un-writable’. Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit. A fascinating entry into the deepest ways of knowing.” In several of his later publications, especially Beyond Theology and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts put forward a worldview, drawing on Hinduism, Chinese philosophy, pantheism or panentheism, and modern science, in which he maintains that the whole universe consists of a cosmic Self-playing hide-and-seek ( Lila); hiding from itself ( Maya) by becoming all the living and non-living things in the universe and forgetting what it really is – the upshot being that we are all IT in disguise ( Tat Tvam Asi). In this worldview, Watts asserts that our conception of ourselves as an " ego in a bag of skin", or "skin-encapsulated ego" is a myth; the entities we call the separate "things" are merely aspects or features of the whole. Watts also studied written Chinese and practised Chinese brush calligraphy with Hasegawa as well as with Hodo Tobase, who gave classes for a period in the Academy's kitchen, which were also attended by Gordon Onslow Ford. While Watts was noted for an interest in Zen Buddhism, his reading and discussions delved into Vedanta, " the new physics", cybernetics, semantics, process philosophy, natural history, and the anthropology of sexuality. Upon winning a scholarship to the oldest boarding school in the country, [14] Watts attended The King's School, Canterbury, in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as "presumptuous and capricious". [15] Tragedy & Hope (22 December 2013). "Why Fight? - Alan Watts" . Retrieved 17 August 2017– via YouTube.

He urges us to understand the balance so that we can appreciate the good times. Otherwise, life would be very dull and we wouldn’t even be aware that we are even alive. Davis, Erik (2006). The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-4835-3. In his last novel, Island (1962), Huxley mentions the religious practice of maithuna or spiritual-sexual union without emission by both partners, as being similar to that which Roman Catholics call " coitus reservatus". A few years before, Watts had discussed the theme in his own book, Nature, Man and Woman, in which he discusses the possibility of the practice being known to early Christians and of it being kept secretly by the Church. A Conversation With Myself: Part 1 on YouTube, Part 2 on YouTube, Part 3 on YouTube, Part 4 on YouTube The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”Drawing on Taoism, Watts gives the reader a completely different view of life, one that I am sure most people have never even considered. I really had my eyes opened while reading this; it is one of those rare books that truly has an impact on the way you think, feel and love. It offers a more holistic view of nature, man and woman, and how they all interact. Awaking Consciousness (24 August 2016). "Alan Watts - You are the universe" . Retrieved 17 August 2017– via YouTube. Our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing — with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.”

Watts, Alan, In My Own Way. New York. Random House Pantheon. 1973 ISBN 0-394-46911-9 (his autobiography). If you’re looking a book that offers a general summary of Watts’ views, then his 1966 The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are is commonly thought to provide a good all-round starting point. By the mid-fifties a “Zen Boom” was underway as Beat intellectuals in San Francisco and New York began celebrating and assimilating the esoteric qualities of Eastern religion into an emerging worldview that was later dubbed “the counterculture” of the 1960’s. Following the 1966 publication of The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, which sold very well, requests for appearances poured in. Alan lectured at colleges throughout the U.S. and conducted seminars at fledging “growth centers” across the country, such as the world-renowned Esalen Institute of Big Sur, California. Broadcasts of his talks continued at KPFA and KPFK, and spread east to WBAI in New York and WBUR in Boston. The weekly shows attracted a wide audience and Alan became an important figure in the counterculture movement.Tragedy & Hope (25 August 2012). "The Real You - Alan Watts" . Retrieved 17 August 2017– via YouTube. Myth and Ritual in Christianity, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-8070-1375-7, including essay "God and Satan" A personal account of Watts's last years and approach to death is given by Al Chung-liang Huang in Tao: The Watercourse Way. [49] Views [ edit ] On spiritual and social identity [ edit ]

The Supreme Identity: An Essay on Oriental Metaphysic and the Christian Religion, Noonday Press/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, OCLC 3429188 ISBN 0-394-71835-6 Alan Watts, "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life, Season 1 (1959)" and Season 2 (1960), KQED public television series, San FranciscoCloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal, Pantheon Books. Also published in Canada in 1974 by Jonathan Cape, ISBN 0224009729, 0-394-71999-9 When he left King's, Watts worked in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a "rascal guru" named Dimitrije Mitrinović. (Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Freud, Jung and Adler.) Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry, and Eastern wisdom. He later said about psychedelic drug use, "If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen." [33] Applied Aesthetics [ edit ]

It covers a lot of things he has written about earlier, like the amazing and life-changing practice of Taoism, the knowledge of one’s true self, Zen, and so on. This man has always been real in what he says in his books, and sometimes the truth can be harsh, but Watts urges everyone to always face the truth and deal with it as it does make us stronger beings. While he starts the book by stating that he will pass this bit of wisdom, what he gives you is "neither for living better nor for reasoning more fitly [Cicero]". If an author makes the claim that their writing can improve my life in some way, they must give me something that I can apply in every day life. This is not the case here.

Furlong, Monica (1986). Genuine Fake: A Biography of Alan Watts. Heinemann (or titled Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts as published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, ISBN 0-395-45392-5). Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born American philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. ... Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, "from a literary point of view - the best book I have ever written."[2] He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962). ... According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity." Watts has been criticized by Buddhists such as Philip Kapleau and D. T. Suzuki for allegedly misinterpreting several key Zen Buddhist concepts. In particular, he drew criticism from Zen masters who maintain that zazen must entail a strict and specific means of sitting, as opposed to being a cultivated state of mind that is available at any moment in any situation (which traditionally might be possible by a very few after intense and dedicated effort in a formal sitting practice). Typical of these is Roshi Kapleau's claim that Watts dismissed zazen on the basis of only half a koan. [55] The first part - seeing the big picture - is easy. It's the second part that's excruciatingly difficult - because we're still weightless, as he says. Groundless. And lost in space. The 2017 video game Everything contains quotes from Watts' lectures. [76] (The creator previously worked on Her, which also referenced Watts [77] [69])