Customer Reviews

Nature, Man and Woman

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Although clearly directed to a male audience, I as a woman found much of interest here -- in the application of a Taoist/Zen approach both to love and life in general. A deeply thought and well-articulated book, the scope of Watts' topic is wide but well-supported both logically and factually. A deeply satsifying read with profound implications.

Using some of the basic principles of Taoism, Alan Watts is able to explain to us the true meaning of life, love, and simple existence in an astonishingly simple way. This book is both creative and enlightening. It provides a fresh new perspective on Western culture and how we have sent ourselves to purgatory by developing a certain type of consciousness emphasized in Western culture. If you read another exceptional book called "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato, you will also learn that this is part of the process of both life and evolution. These are the kind of teachers we truly need more of in this age of chaos and confusion. Highly recommended!

This is possibly my favorite of all Watts' books, and according to his autobiography In My Own Way (another of his best), he considered this one his best-written (not that he was putting down the content, either).

For a more formal account of the Chinese philosophy of Nature you may want to look to Mr. Watts book, "The Way of Zen", or to Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in China".

This book is about the problem of man's relationship with Nature. A problem that gives rise to the problem of man's relation to woman and to himself. This book was published in 1958. I am certain that today Alan would have taken a more egalitarian approach to the subject of Mankind's alienation from Nature. Even our sages are to an extent the product of their immediate environment. Nurture is the yang to Nature's yin. In my opinion this book should be read by every High School student in America,.. by everyone.

The Taoist philosophy of Nature is more than a theoretical system, it is primarily a way of life in which the original sense of the seamless unity of Nature is restored without the loss of individual consciousness. To follow the watercourse way of Taoism is like a hand that has been reunited with its body. It is still a hand, but now it is part of something bigger than its narrow sense of self.

For the Taoist the mystery of life is not so much a problem to be solved intellectually as it is a reality to be experienced intuitively. Intuition is of a higher order because it includes the rational mind. Synthesis is the product of the whole person. The left and right hemispheres of our brains working as one. Nature is a synergetic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, a synergetic organic unity. Nature, though it has mechanistic characteristics, is not a machine. We are a microcosm of the macrocosm, Nature in miniature. Nature is not made up of space and matter. Nature is an energy field of varying density. Nature is whole, more a volume than a line. The Taoist comes out of Nature, not into it. We are not strangers in a strange land, we are home, Heaven is beneath our feet. We do not need to try and control Nature, we need to go with the flow of the grain of reality. To recognize the yin/yang polarities of life as being two sides of a unified whole. Day without night is meaningless. Each pole contains the seed of its opposite pole, it is darkest before the Dawn. The Thread of Life has two ends, birth and death, and yet the thread is whole. Our world is not an illusion, maya. Life matters. If there is a bias to Taoism, it is an optimistic one. It is the thinking that anything is separate from the whole that is illusion, that is pessimistic. The inside of the inside of all outsides is the same inside. The eternal Tao is omnipresent. There is a grain to reality that is the path of least resistance, the Way of ways.

For the Taoist "Nature" is a guide book, the lone book written solely by the hand of Providence. "Nature" is a manifold collection of parables. The Sun shines on good and bad alike. God, the eternal Tao by another name, is impartial. God's love shines on everyone for God's love is whole. It is we that divide with our rational minds. We have been taught by our culture here in the West that our spotlight focus, generally the left hemisphere of our brain, is not only superior to our floodlight awareness, the right hemisphere, but that we are our narrow focus, our left hemisphere. We are fragmented. The Fall from the Garden was due to eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, of thinking that polarities are separate, that we are separate from God. As Ken Wilber theorizes in his book "Up from Eden", the Fall was a necessary evolutionary step up in our mental development, a necessary evil. Or as Julian Jaynes theorizes in his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", the consciousness of consciousness is a relatively recent development in the history of Man. Except for the rare sage or saint rationality is a new tool Mankind has yet to learn how to use properly, myself included. By fixating on a part of ourselves as though it was all of ourselves we have become fragmented and thus alienated and in need of reintegration with our whole selves. Not a return to the naive holism of Tribal Societies, but to evolve from the Individual extremism of our current civilization, to the mature holism of Global Man. This is the way of the Taoist. As Barbara Marx Hubbard has stated in her forward to Ralph Alan Dale's excellent translation of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching"-the Old Testament of Taoism, "The spiral of our evolutionary progress is turning back in time to reconnect with the great sage Lao Tzu". God did not kick us out of the Garden, we kicked ourselves out. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he". Proverbs 23:7. Sometimes we rationalize too much.

Meditation is a master key that all wisdom traditions use to reconnect us with our feelings, with our whole selves. "Be still, and know that I am God". Psalm 46:10. Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Rumi, Ghandi, Maharshi, were all master meditators. They meditated before they acted, often for forty days and forty nights. Nature is the action of awareness. We can all be more aware, wake up, be born again, through silent meditation. No one can do it for us. No one can give us anything we don't already have. The Kingdom of God is within each of us. It is in silence, in awareness stripped of the chatter of our rational minds, that we hear the still small voice of God. Khamush!

PS: Alan Watts is one of my favorite presenters of Eastern Wisdom to the West. I have learned much from his writings. Much, that for me, has stood the test of life. Possibly my favorite of his books is "The Supreme Identity". Though attacked by some as overly syncretic, trying to join things naturally opposed, I find Alan Watt's writings for the most part wholly illuminating.

This is a beautiful and truly enlightening book. I read it in less than a week because I couldn't put it down. I bought about 9 other copies and passed them out to my professors and my friends in the Christian ministry. The only regret I'll ever have about my life is that I didn't get to meet this man in person to express my gratitude.

I decided to transition into a better person decades ago. That everything that I know and believe was founded on my social experiences to date. To improve on that, I would need to consider other concepts and ideas from those that gained their experience from such. I do not consider myself an expert in any one topic. Although, I am told, "expert," is just another word for "experienced." Grain of salt! Alan Watts took a different path in life and I am grateful to his memory of such a path.

That's all you need to know. If the forces of the universe brought your attention to this book then buy it, enough said.

Enjoy :)

I had read 2 books by Alan Watts. This is the 3rd.
This book is positively boring if you are not a Christian.
Watts entire effort has gone into the tiny area of Christianity vs Eastern spirituality. Thoroughly boring to a non christian.

Only in the very end does he adddress the real question of how man and woman have become un-natural. And that is also presented as quite boring.