The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
Publication: 1958 Pantheon, third printing
One of Alan Watts’s most influential and enduring works which helped introduce Zen Buddhism to a broad Western readership. This copy is from the library of John Walton and contains laid-in manuscript notes by Walton. Walton was the late author and professor emeritus at UC Davis, best known for influential regional histories including Western Times and Water Wars and Storied Land.
here are three letters dated July 25, 1959, August 2, 1959, and August 9, 1959. The letter dated July 25 is presumed to record a lecture or broadcast by Alan Watts aired in Berkeley on KPFA radio. Of particular interest are Walton’s notes on Zen, where he records the idea of the teacher as a kind of trickster who disrupts the rational mind, and the impossibility of the self fully standing outside and mastering itself.
July 25, 1959: Notes on Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, religion, philosophy, and science. Watts distinguishes Eastern thought from Western religion and describes the Eastern traditions as concerned with liberation rather than creed or convention.
August 2, 1959: Notes on P. D. Ouspensky and G. I. Gurdjieff, particularly Gurdjieff’s teaching methods and Ouspensky’s interpretation of the “Fourth Way.”
August 9, 1959: Notes on Hinduism, Brahman, maya, the social self, liberation, and the distinction between the true self and the roles imposed by society.
Condition: Publisher’s black cloth with gilt title to spine, occasional pencil marginalia by Walton, signed by John Walton on the ffep, binding firm, Very Good condition.