Customer Reviews

Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal

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It's a little hard to write about something that can't be written about, but Watts gives it his best shot, and he seems to pull it off.

He writes, for example, "Yet the intention of the guru himself is simply to exhaust the energy of the illusion by bringing his disciples again and again to experiences of the absurdity of trying to transform mind with mind."

Watts, as his readers know, started as an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest, and then studied at a Zen monastery in Kyoto, Japan. His metamorphosis is evident in these writings (he died in 1973, right after this book was published).

Watts has little sympathy for the established Christian churches and instead finds sustenance in Zen, Taoism, and Hinduism.

Personally, I found sustenance in his writings here. He doesn't give a whole lot of what we might call "practical" advice, except to meditate, but that's the point of his teachings: "So long, then, as we are concerned with powers, we are still aiming at increased control of nature and aggravating our frustrations." The "Western" efforts to control nature, Watts feels, are self-defeating.

"You, as ego, cannot change what you are feeling, and you cannot, effectively, try not to change it."

You may get the dichotomous drift of what he is saying in these few quotations. When you read the book, you'll get much more. Like other books with a spiritual theme, but moreso, this book will fulfill and feed your spirit. Diximus.

Unlike "The Book", one of my favorite books of Watts, "Cloud-Hidden..." is a collection of short essays that can be digested in a brief sitting. Some of these essays are direct transcriptions of his lectures. Yet, I find myself returning to this book quite often for a quick "Watts fix".

This is perhaps the best of the half dozen or so Watts books I've read. Watts is a brilliant philosopher of the "Big Picture", and it is all wonderfully laid out here: Cosmic consciousness, Tantric Buddhism, the Hippies, Tao... he nails them all in splendid fashion. Highly recommendable.

I cannot express the importance this book has had for my life!
years ago, I was a young boy, 15, and had gone to the big city, London, chasing the dream to become a dancer. I was having to support myself. When there some Hippies turned me onto LSD, and the experiences I had were completely life changing.

Later I tried to find books which would help me integrate the psychedelic visions I had experienced, and I tried so many. None really helped. And then in my hometown, I found this book, Cloudhidden Whereabouts Unknown, by Alan Watts, and I knew when I began reading it in the shop it was the book I had been looking for.I was so mesmerized by the beauty and depth of his soul, and the way he uses words, I nearly read the whole book in the shop lol

I have since read it many times, and it has a mythical quality about it. I can see all the marks on its cover from my fingers and nails over the years from that fateful day in a 'Radical Grassroots book shop' in Manchester,, and the meaning of all that.

Why it is so important is that Alan very eloquently manages to communicate the complex (yet simple) insight that so-called 'oppo-sites' are rather, in reality, interrelated dynamic wholes of experience. Hence, for example, you cannot have light without dark. You cannot *know" light unless you know dark also, for how could you recognize it, and the same applies to male and female, life and death, good and bad, and so on. To REALIZE this.

All our patriarchal religions and the institutions that have grown out of that, and also out of the mechanistic paradigm, try and separate seeming opposites, and in doing so create confusion and brutality all round. Remember this culture wages 'war' against the sacred medicines--the entheogens--which when used with the respect they deserve reveal this deeper reality, and then it is up to us to carry on these insights into day to day life with intelligent and loving integration.

NOT understanding the dynamic interrelations of reality creates such awful things as religious Inquisitions, Nazism, and the war on 'terror', and war on 'drugs', etc etc.

I cannot recommend this wondrous healing book enough!

It's a genius book by a genius so it's hard not to be moved. While I do love his "On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" this one is a bit more personal, probably since it came from a compilation of a series of journals instead of a structured book. But the varied subject matter keeps it unreiterated which is my normal qualm with philosophy books.
Especially to be appreciated is the sources he draws from, science, politics, drug experimentation, music, dancing, Japanese art of incense, sex, astronomy, linguistics... His depth of academic prowess goes on and on. But what's lovely is so does his prowess in life. It takes a sharp mind to get Zen Buddhism, it's untranslatable and almost impossible to write on authentically. He jokes with this concept by teasing apart his words wherever the chance to show their confinements.

The reviewer who surmises him as hippy philosophy clearly hasn't read the book. He draws from examples of what was his pop culture to show where Zen Buddhism is and is NOT manifested. And his critics of the "hippy" generation are more numerous than his accolades. Watts was an icon and an intellectual, in Harvard at the time of LSD experimentation by Timothy Leary, a mentor to Ginsburg when he was first "Howl"ing. Revered by Ram Das and Bhagavan Das who both mention him in their books. He's one of the few who GOT it. Or WAS it (to speak more in his words).

This was the second time I've read it; was just as good as it was 7 years ago. But these are difficult concepts without a substantial background on Zen Buddhism it may seem nonsensical. I might first read his "On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" then Ram Das's "Be Here Now."

While I concur with all the other reviewers with positive comments, there is a strange anomaly in this book. The essay on page 35 titled The Future of Ecstasy is dated January 6, 1990. It begins: "It wasn't until 30 years ago, in the 1960s, that there..." Two pages on (p37, second paragraph) it begins: "Looking back from 1990, all this..." Further on page 50 he says: "By 1985, there were no longer nine-to-five jobs." And similarly in a few other places in this interesting essay.

Question: How is this possible when Alan Watts passed away in 1973? Hope someone can enlighten me - please leave a comment, thank-you.

Timeless wisdom wrapped in beautiful language that soothes the soul. Alan Watts was a brilliant storyteller who managed to stir things up a bit before leaving on an optimistic note.

This work is edgier than his others and will satisfy the more rebellious new agers.