Alan Watts Biography, Birthday, Philosophy, Books, Music, Quotes, Death, Wiki

Alan Wilson Watts was an English author and speaker who popularized Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism in the West. He moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York, where he was born in Chislehurst, England. In 1945, he graduated from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in theology and was ordained as an Episcopal priest. In 1950, he left the ministry to join the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies in California.

Watts gained a following while volunteering as a programmer at Berkeley’s KPFA radio station. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, including The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling Buddhist books, which he introduced to the hippie counterculture. He argued in Psychotherapy East and West (1961) that Buddhism could be considered a type of psychotherapy. “From a literary standpoint,” he said, “Nature, Man, and Woman (1958) is the best book I have ever written.” In works like “The New Alchemy” (1958) and “The Joyous Cosmology,” he looked into human consciousness and psychedelics (1962).

Alan Watts Images

Alan Watts Birthday

 Alan Watts was born on January 6, 1915, in Chislehurst, Kent, England

Alan Watts Family

Alan was born to Laurence Wilson Watts, a representative for the London office of the Michelin tyre company, and Emily Mary Watts, a housewife whose father had been a missionary.

They chose to live in pastoral surroundings despite their limited financial resources, and Watts, an only child, grew up playing at Brookside and learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies. A fascination with “ultimate things” developed as a result of his mother’s religious family, the Buchans. Watts’ own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East collided with it.

Alan Watts Education & Career

He moved to San Francisco in 1951 and began teaching Buddhist studies before launching his popular radio show, “Way Beyond the West,” in 1956. Alan’s radio talks were broadcast nationally by the early 1960s, and the counterculture movement adopted him as a spiritual spokesperson. He continued to write and travel until his death in 1973.

Alan was fascinated by Asian art, literature, and philosophy from a young age (his mother’s students were the children of missionaries to Asia). Alan’s parents encouraged him to write because they recognized his bright and inquisitive nature. Alan’s father, a businessman, would bring him to the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he worked as an editor for the Lodge’s journal, The Middle Way, as a teenager. In 1932, he published his first booklet, An Outline of Zen Buddhism, a summary based on D. T. Suzuki’s Zen writings. Alan immigrated to the United States in 1938 to study Zen in New York, where he quickly began lecturing in bookstores and cafes.

Alan Watts Quotes

Alan Watts Death

How did alan watts die? He died in his sleep on November 16, 1973, at the age of 58. He was said to be receiving treatment for a heart condition. His body was cremated not long after. His ashes were divided, with half-buried near his library in Druid Heights and the other at Green Gulch Monastery.

Alan Watts Images

A Brief Run-Through:

Alan Watts’ genius, intellectual crispness, and thought-provoking lines have inspired the minds of millions. He discovered his great passion for Eastern thought in his early life and made it his life’s work to study and write about Eastern philosophy.

Watts returned to his cabin in Druid Heights, California, in October 1973, after a European lecture tour. Watts’ friends had been worried about him for a long time because of his alcoholism.

Watts’ lectures gained posthumous popularity after his death, thanks to regular broadcasts on public radio, particularly in California and New York, and, more recently, on the internet, specifically YouTube.

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