The Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East (Wisdom of the East) Paperback – January 14, 1994

Bought as a gift because it changed my life sixty years ago.

If you have never read Watts, this is a good first book.

Enjoyed. The brain is an intriguing subject. Realizing how ones thought process can be ill informed, but recovered is inspiring.

The Spirit of Zen, written by Alan WATTS is a compelling read. It gives the reader a look at the character of what zen will deliver to the practitioner. A book of great wisdom.

Alan Wilson Watts (1915-1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as a populariser of Eastern philosophy. He and his then-wife left England for America in 1938 on the eve of WWII, and he became an Episcopal priest---but he left the priesthood in 1950 and moved to California, where he became a cult figure in the Beat movement of the 1950s and later. He wrote many popular books, such as The Way of Zen,Nature, Man and Woman,This Is It,Psychotherapy East & West,Beyond Theology,The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are,Does It Matter?,Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown,Tao: The Watercourse Way, and his autobiography, In My Own Way.

This book was published in 1936, when Watts was still the secretary of the London Buddhist Lodge (a position he was given at age 16!). Although Watts (and others) derided this book in later years for its interpretations (his 'The Way of Zen' was much more scholarly and accurate), it still provides interesting insights into the development of his thought. He wrote in the Foreword, "anyone who attempts to write about Zen has to encounter unusual difficulties; he can never explain, he can only indicate; he can go on setting problems and giving hints which at best can bring the reader tantalizingly nearer to the truth, but the moment he attempts any fixed definition the thing slips away, and the definition is seen to be no more than a philosophical conception." (Pg. 19-20)

He says, "Just as no person can possess life, so no idea which a person may possess can define it; the idea of possession is illusory... at the root of possession lies the desire that things shall not alter in any way, and this is a complete impossibility. If, therefore, life can never be grasped, how can it ever be understood?... Zen would answer: by not trying to grasp or define it... But Buddhism and Taoism go further than saying that nothing can ever be possessed; they declare that those who try to possess... are slaves to their own illusions about life." (Pg. 58)

He points out, "To Westerners these koans may appear as pure rubbish, reminiscent of 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' But it will be noticed that all of these koans involve one in some kind of dilemma; there is generally a choice between two alternatives, both of which are equally impossible. Thus each koan reflects the giant Koan of life, for to Zen the problem of life is to pass beyond the two alternatives of assertion and denial, both of which obscure the truth." (Pg. 70)

He observes, "The same characteristics are found in the paintings of the Japanese school of Sumiye. These pictures were executed on a particular type of rough and brittle paper with a soft brush. The medium was black Chinese ink... a stroke once made could never be effaced... With such materials it was absolutely necessary to paint 'as if a whirlwind possessed his hand'... This technique was exactly suited to the spirit of Zen, for it implied that the artist must commit his inspiration to paper while it was still alive; he could not make a rough sketch and then slowly fill in the details, until the inspiration was killed by a mass of changes and elaborations. He must make the picture complete in a few moments." (Pg. 106)

While not "must reading" for fans of Watts, this book is still of interest to those studying his writings, or Eastern religion in particular.

When I was in my teens I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I am a writer now, many years later, even though I still haven't grown up.

I found this book by Alan Watts, who wrote it c. 1935, while he was in his late teens. The teenaged Watts thereby became the inspiration for MY late teens, and I read his entire canon.

In 1935, Zen was barely known in the West, and even at seventeen, Watts became a major exponent and author on the subject because he wrote this book. He himself admits in the pages of In My Own Way: An Autobiography that his early celebrity made him pretentious and oft-times foolish at that age. Still, THE SPIRIT OF ZEN set Watts' feet on the path he would follow until his untimely death. Although he never became a formal Zen practitioner, his books have opened the door of Zen to many people who have gone on to do just that (including Yours Truly).

This little book discusses the history and philosophy of Zen. Written with the kind of exuberance only the very young feel, Watts is thorough in his presentation; though cocksure of himself to a fault, he admits of only one interpretation of the material presented---his own.

Still, this is a very easy and quick 150 page read for a person whose eye is caught by the word "Zen" and wants to know more about it.

The Spirit of Zen, written in the early thirties by Watts when he was still a teenager, is not to be mistaken for his strikingly accomplished The Way of Zen, written some years later. It is to be treasured however for those who admire Watts and his unique and highly influential body of work because it was his first published book on Zen Buddhism.

It is clearly a young man's book. When it was reissued some twenty-four years later, Watts was asked to revise it, but he declined, saying that it would require a rewriting of the book. He allowed that his expression herein of the philosophy of Mahayana was flawed, but I think the real shortcoming--if we can call it that--in The Spirit of Zen is simply the fact that the very young author did not understand Zen in the way he would in years to come. For an older man to rewrite a younger man's book, even though that younger man be himself, is to create another book, by another person. Watts knew this, and that is undoubtedly the real reason he declined. So he let it stand as it is with its flaws, but also with its strengths.

From my point of view those strengths are the felicitous prose, the clear expression, the fresh enthusiasm and the ground-breaking insights from a Western point of view. The weakness is in the young man's misunderstanding of the role of the koan and of the experience of enlightenment. Quite frankly, Watts dove in and wrote what he knew, but what he knew was not yet enlightenment. We can see this in his expression about what he calls "trance" in meditation where he is discussing the use of the koan and zazen in Zen practice. He remarks that "the aims of Yoga and Za-zen appear to be rather different." (p. 80) He was wise to quality with "appears" because most people today would say that the goals are identical, that is, freedom from the delusion and restraint of ordinary conditioned consciousness. On the same page he describes "trance" which he then associated with the yogic practice, as "static and other-worldly" adding that "the Chinese mind [meaning the early Zen mind] required something altogether more vital and practical." Although I am not an authority on Watts, having read only a handful of his books, I would bet that he seldom if ever used "trance" in this sense again. The word has become almost pejorative in this usage mainly because practitioners know from personal experience that meditation involves any number of states of mind, and to reduce the experience to "being in a trance" is misleading. Meditation (which really is zazen--"just sitting") is an experience unique to each individual, not translatable, while being as "vital and practical" as you can get, whether the approach be yogic, Christian mystic, whirling dervish, koan-inspired or whatever.

One can also see Watts's struggle toward an understanding of the use of the koan. He writes that the disciple "arrives at a state where the dilemma of life [is] enshrined in the Koan...," missing the "is." (p. 49) While the koan is central to the Rinzai school of Zen, the real essential is zazen. My personal feeling is that the koan is for young aspirants, especially those with a strong intellectual bent. What Watts apparently doesn't quite see here, as all the ancients insist, and as Watts himself writes, is that Zen IS meditation. Indeed, the word comes from the Chinese "ch'an" which comes from the Sanskrit "dhyana," both words meaning, right in front of our faces, "meditation" (which Watts knew, of course). The truth--a truth seldom expressed--is that teenagers do not meditate except willy-nilly (unless of course they are saints or geniuses). So Watts still did not know.

Regardless of these imperfections; indeed in light of them, we can see the precocious nature of Alan Watts's understanding. Certainly he got the essence right. He recalls on page 49 an old Zen saying, "Do not linger about where the Buddha is, and as to where he is not, pass swiftly on." Also "The only difference between a Buddha and an ordinary man is that one realizes it while the other does not." (pp. 48-49) This last expression (from Hui Neng) reminds me of the idea of bliss in yoga and Vedanta. We ARE bliss. What we have to do is realize it. That makes all the difference.

Watts also shows here a mature understanding of the psychology of religion, noting, for example, on page 61 that "morality should not be confused with religion..." In the chapter, "Life in a Zen Community," he also acknowledges the "evils of monasticism" without dwelling on them. In general he shows a clear groking of the central idea of Zen, which is, be concrete, be here now and in every moment, and do not mistake the pointing finger for the moon.

More than anything perhaps we can see in this book the beginnings of Watts's great scholarship, a scholarship that made him one of American's foremost authorities on Eastern religions. This is particularly evident in his emphasis on the debt that Zen owes to Taoism expressed in the chapter, "The Origins of Zen," which would become a full blown exposition in his celebrated The Way of Zen, which I recommend the reader read after this volume.

Incidentally, I should like to say that it was this book that allowed me to really appreciate the allegory of the herding of the ox (mentioned here, but completely expounded in other books, especially, Suzuki's Manual of Zen Buddhism). But I will save my "understanding" for another time. Suffice it to say, as Watts writes on page 60, recalling the Buddha's dictum, that the raft of Buddhism is only for getting across the river. Once on the other side, it can be left behind.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)"