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Furthermore, I think it will now be clear that my own approach to Asian philosophy was part of an individual philosophical quest. I am not interested in Buddhism or Taoism as particular entities or subjects to be studied and defined in such a way that one must avoid “mixing up” one’s thinking about Buddhism with interests in quantum theory, psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, semantics, and aesthetics, or in Eckhart, Goethe, Whitehead, Jung, or Krishnamurti. I feel about academic “subjects” just as the Balinese feel about “Art” when they say, “We have no Art: we just do everything as well as possible.” It was the same, too, for such a scientist as Gregory Bateson, whom I met at this time, when he was resident ethnologist at the Palo Alto Veterans’ Hospital, attached to Stanford University.1 He explained that in conducting a course of study he would give three or four set lectures about specific topics or methods, and for the rest of the semester simply discuss whatever happened to be of interest to him at the time. In this way his students were able to join in the experience of a creative imagination in process: actually doing science instead of merely learning about it or preparing for it.

— In my own way by Alan Watts

Furthermore, I think it will now be clear that my own approach to Asian philosophy was part of an individual philosophical quest. I am not interested in Buddhism or Taoism as particular entities or subjects to be studied and defined in such a way that one must avoid “mixing up” one’s thinking about Buddhism with interests in quantum theory, psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology, semantics, and aesthetics, or in Eckhart, Goethe, Whitehead, Jung, or Krishnamurti. I feel about academic “subjects” just as the Balinese feel about “Art” when they say, “We have no Art: we just do everything as well as possible.” It was the same, too, for such a scientist as Gregory Bateson, whom I met at this time, when he was resident ethnologist at the Palo Alto Veterans’ Hospital, attached to Stanford University.1 He explained that in conducting a course of study he would give three or four set lectures about specific topics or methods, and for the rest of the semester simply discuss whatever happened to be of interest to him at the time. In this way his students were able to join in the experience of a creative imagination in process: actually doing science instead of merely learning about it or preparing for it.

— In my own way by Alan Watts

Suzuki’s feeling for the basic reality of Zen was definitely elusive, and the moment you thought you had finally grasped his point he would slip from your grasp like wet soap, thereby showing that Zen itself is neither a formulable idea or concept, but something like dancing or the movement of a ball on a mountain stream. But neither is it mere chaos, just as the flow-patterns in flame and water are animated designs of superb complexity, which the Chinese call li, the markings in jade or the grain in wood. He was, in fact, highly critical of traditional Zen as practiced in Japan, and once remarked that the best thing for Zen would be for all the monasteries to be burned down, splendid architectural monuments though they might be. So far as I know he practiced za-zen, or formal sitting meditation, only occasionally, as I do myself, when the mood is on me. I prefer the more active Zen of walking meditation, archery, t’ai-chi exercises, mantra-chanting, practicing Chinese calligraphy, tea ceremony, swimming, and cooking. Too much za-zen is apt to turn one into a stone Buddha.

— In my own way by Alan Watts

But the fantasy of what I would have liked to learn as a child may be revealing, since I feel unequipped by education for problems that lie outside the cloistered, literary domain in which I am competent and at home. Looking back, then, I would have arranged for myself to be taught survival techniques for both natural and urban wildernesses. I would want to have been instructed in self-hypnosis, in aikido (the esoteric and purely self-defensive style of judo), in elementary medicine, in sexual hygiene, in vegetable gardening, in astronomy, navigation, and sailing; in cookery and clothesmaking, in metalwork and carpentry, in drawing and painting, in printing and typography, in botany and biology, in optics and acoustics, in semantics and psychology, in mysticism and yoga, in electronics and mathematical fantasy, in drama and dancing, in singing and in playing an instrument by ear; in wandering, in advanced daydreaming, in prestidigitation, in techniques of escape from bondage, in disguise, in conversation with birds and beasts, in ventriloquism, in French and German conversation, in planetary history, in morphology, and in classical Chinese.

— In my own way by Alan Watts

I was thus moving from the ideal of Christian love to that of Buddhist wisdom, from agape to bodhi. I didn’t like Christian love as I saw it exemplified in the lives of those who preached it. They were always going to war with other people to save them. They believed that suffering was “good for you” and considered flogging their children an act of mercy. Formerly, they had even burned heretics at the stake in a desperate attempt to save them from their own fantasies of everlasting damnation. Indeed, there were people around me, such as Aunts Gertrude and Ethel, who really lived Christian love; but they never preached it. Trying, then, to put myself back into an adolescent’s point of view, it seemed to me that those who preached it didn’t have it. They were solemn bombasts who, as might have been expected, ended up with the atomic bomb. “O how great a thing it is when the Lord putteth into the hands of the righteous invincible might.”

— In my own way by Alan Watts