Alan Watts - Myth and religion: the edited transcripts
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ALAN WATTS at a seminar aboard the SS Vallejo, 1966
Page iii
Myth And Religion
The Edited Transcripts
Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc. Boston Rutland, Vermont Tokyo
Page iv
Published in the United States in 1996 by Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc. of Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo, Japan, with editorial offices at 153 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02109.
Copyright 1996 Mark Watts
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card number 9660087 ISBN 080483055X
Photo courtesy of Alan Watts Electronic Educational Programs
First Edition
00 99 98 97 96 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
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Western civilization is in a state of chaos. It has lost effective knowledge of man's true nature and destiny. Neither philosophy nor religion as they are known today do much to give man the consciousness that the deepest center or "ground" of his being is to be found in that eternal reality which is in the West called God. Alan Watts, 1951
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Contents
Introduction
ix
I. Ultimate Authority
1
II. Not What Should Be, But What Is!
19
III. JesusHis Religion, or the Religion About Him?
39
IV. Democracy in the Kingdom Of Heaven
55
V. The Images of Man
73
VI. Religion and Sexuality
91
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Introduction
During his last television appearance in 1973 Alan Watts was asked what it was he found lacking in modern Christianity that led him toward Far Eastern philosophies, and he replied that it was an experiential basis. Simply put, the knowledge of transcendental or mystical experience has been lost in the mythology of modern Western religions, and with it has disappeared the original source of spiritual authority.
In the West ultimate authority is based on "the word of God" as it has been handed down to us as part of a mythology in which humans are the creations of a
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mighty father image symbolic of the powers of heaven. In contrast, most original tribal religions worship the Earth powers as the source of creation. Typically Western myths are intellectually abstract. However, in the Far East, doctrine is regarded as secondary to the student's direct experience of enlightenment. Zen masters are legendary in their insistence on the "original mind," and the famous "koan method" of instruction is dedicated exclusively to achieving liberation. As Huston Smith wrote in his introduction to The Zen Eye, a collection of talks by Sokei-an Sasaki,
It is the distinguishing genius of Zen Buddhism (and its Chinese antecedent, Ch'an) to refuse to dislodge earth from heaven. That emphasis is (in its degree) unique within the historical religions, but it is the way tribal, pre-writing peoples see things regularly. Considered in this light, Ch'an and Zen are rivulets that perpetuate, in history, an early talent.
In this volume of his edited transcripts, Alan Watts brings the question of spiritual authority sharply into focus. Continuing in the tradition of mystics and sages who point to a direct connection between man and God, he identifies the individual as the true source of religion.
In this light he discusses the historical Jesus and examines the nature of the "religion about Jesus" as it has evolved since biblical times. Watts goes on to examine the subtle meaning of the "God is dead" theology, which emerged out of a dissatisfaction with a religion ''about Jesus" that failed to offer a mystical experience. Here he identifies a striking similarity between the most hopeful expressions of the "God is dead" concept and the essential teaching of Buddhism. Recalling the teacher who told his students, "If you meet Buddha on the road,
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kill him," he challenges Christian practitioners to abandon intellectual idolatryin which dogma is favored over a direct, personal experience of the transcendentaland suggests, as one exercise for bringing about the abandonment of this idolatry, that Christians consider burning the Bible every Easter as an affirmation of true faith.
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