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Preface

Zen and the Beat Way is based upon selections from Alan Watts's early radio talks, many of which were first aired on the Pacifica Radio Network in the late fifties and early sixties, and sessions from two of his most compelling seminars in the mid-sixties. The original recordings have been adapted to the written page by David Cellers and Mark Watts.

Our first selection, "Introduction to the Way Beyond the West," was broadcast on KPFK in Los Angeles on November 6, 1959, and offered Southern Californians their first opportunity to listen to the popular Alan Watts series broadcast by KPFA in Berkeley during the previous six years. The second and third talks, "The Beat Way of Life" and "Consciousness and Concentration," were originally broadcast on KPFA on August 11 and 15, 1959, and shortly thereafter on KPFK. The radio series has continued on these stations in various forms for more than forty years. By the early sixties, tape recordings of public lectures, rather than radio talks, were being broadcast. Our fourth selection, "Zen and the Art of the Controlled Accident," was one such lecture, recorded in La jolla, California, in early 1965, and "The Democratization of Buddhism" was recorded while on tour in japan in 1963. The final selection, "Return to the Forest," was recorded in 1960 and includes a commentary on joseph Campbell's work on the earliest counterculture traditions.