Alan Watts

alan watts reads ananda k. coomaraswamy's essay sahaja, on romantic love as a tantric path to spiritual liberation, illustrated through the story of the poet chandidas and the wash

a talk in which alan watts contrasts the analytic "scanning" mind that reduces nature's wiggliness into discrete measured things with the nervous system's wider capacity to grasp a

a two part wfmu lecture on carl jung, arguing that good and evil rest on an underlying unity and that eastern disciplines like yoga and buddhism function as skillful means for seei

an audiobook reading in which watts contrasts compulsive thinking with direct experience, then walks listeners through watching thought and breath as the start of meditation.

a short reading from alan watts's book still the mind, warning that compulsive thinking confuses signs like money and photographs with tangible reality.

a short recording of alan watts telling a zen story about a student who cannot act naturally, followed by a whimsical poem titled strange prayers that celebrates spontaneous, child

watts compares life to music and dance to illustrate the tai chi chuan principle that movement has no goal beyond itself.

a nine part alan watts lecture series moving from the limits of language and the myth of the separate self through theories of nature, technological control, images of god, and the

alan watts continues his four part kpfk seminar reality, art, and illusion, tracing philosophical idealism, the illusion of separateness, and the hindu concept of maya as play.

a talk arguing that civilization may have been a mistake, tracing nuclear anxiety through genesis, the i ching, and the difference between a tortoise and a hummingbird civilization

an audio renaissance abridgment of alan watts's the book, read by ralph blum with excerpts of watts's own recorded voice woven in, on the taboo against knowing who you really are.

the opening talk in alan watts's four weekend seminar on the future, arguing that time is a social convention rather than a physical reality and contrasting cyclic hindu and buddhi

a lecture applying game theory to ethics, arguing that a viable life requires trusting the gamble of existence rather than treating morality as fixed law.

a talk by alan watts arguing that life is fundamentally playful and spontaneous rather than a serious journey toward some future payoff.

a nearly three hour seminar in which alan watts traces the archetype of the court jester through social institutions, gurdjieff's way of the sly man, and the transformation of anxi

a talk given to the tahoe institute in which watts argues the anxious "quaking mess" we find on self examination cannot be transformed away, only watched.

a lecture on meditation using the chinese character for quiet observation to contrast linear, abstract thought with direct sensory experience of the world.

a brief reading of the closing propositions of ludwig wittgenstein's tractatus logico philosophicus, ending with the line whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

a lecture in which alan watts describes love as a spectrum before turning to the mystical unity revealed by psychedelic experience and the social and legal panic around lsd in the

a lecture on how thought and perception construct the world we take to be objectively given, followed by a survey of meditation methods for seeing past that construction.

alan watts discusses wu wei, the taoist principle of not forcing action, and the related concept of li, or organic pattern, drawing on chinese poetry and the japanese aesthetic of

an audiobook reading of watts's book the way of zen, narrated by ralph blum and interwoven with recordings of watts himself, tracing zen's taoist and buddhist roots through to its

a tantric yoga seminar linking male female symbolism to memory, resonance, and the balance of attachment and detachment.