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Introduction

During a 1960 "impolite interview" for Paul Krassner's free-thought magazine The Realist, Robert Anton Wilson asked Alan Watts what he thought about the Beat generation. Alan replied that the concept was "a journalistic invention, and having been invented and put on the market, many people bought it." Alan then began to reminisce about the real Beats:

Now, I remember the real, original Dharma Bums of the 1945-46 era-young veterans hitchhiking across the country and stopping every place there was a "sage" who knew something about Eastern philosophy. Some even went to Switzerland to speak to jung, and many came to see me at Northwestern University.

They weren't interested in jazz or drugs or hot rods, I assure you. Many of them are still around, but very few of them in the Village or North Beach. They're on farms or in little communities they created themselves. They are out of the rat races of keeping up with the joneses.

They are the substance of which the Beat generation is the shadow. [p.1]

By the late fifties the Beat movement was already a few incarnations removed from its origins, and clearly Alan Watts felt that Eastern thought had been inextricably tied to its genesis. And although it seems inevitable that many people will see the source of any social movement as its purest form, the phenomenon known as "the Beat way of life" was as much a reaction to the realities of mainstream American culture of that era as anything else. Politically, the 1950s were a dark period in American history. Cold-war paranoia found expression in McCarthyism and pitted the political process against free expression and the creative life. In the trials of Lenny Bruce and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, First Amendment rights came under attack. Today, freedom-of-speech questions are still judged according to their "redeeming social value," as they were in the trials of the fifties. The very act of being an artist or writer was in and of itself suspect, and the Beats reacted to the conservative climate with a well-balanced_synthesis of anarchism and idealism. But underneath this colorful social chaos, it is important to remember that originally the Beat movement was a way of life with connections to Zen, and from Zen to Hinduism, and from Hinduism back to the dawn of human culture.

Recently I came across the following passage in Robert Lawlor's captivating book on Australian Aboriginal culture, Voices of the First Day:

The materialistic industrial societies are increasingly caught in a round-the-clock whirl in which people are trapped, day after day, in a breathless grind of facing deadlines, racing the clock between several jobs, and trying to raise children and rush through the household chores at the same time. Agriculture and industrialism, in reality, have created a glut of material goods and a great poverty of time. Most people have a way of life devoid of everything except maintaining and servicing their material existence 12 to 14 hours every day. In contrast, the Aborigines [spent] 12 to 14 hours a day in cultural pursuit. [p. 65].

As Lawlor points out, "their traditional way of life provided more time for the artistic and spiritual development of the entire society. Dance, ritual, music-in short, culture-was the primary activity." The Aborigines passed the message of their ancestors down through a rich tradition of ritual storytelling, and their myths reflect the qualities of one of the oldest and most interesting surviving human cultures.

The Aboriginal view of creation is rooted in the idea of an original dreamtime, perhaps corresponding to a historical age, in which the conscious and unconscious aspects of mankind were unified "on the first day." Aboriginal ceremonies emphasize remembering that primal unity through ritual acts. According to their mythology, these ceremonies are visited by the Rainbow Serpent, described by Lawlor as "the original appearance of creative energy in the dream time." In the parallel Hindu myth of creation, the god Vishnu dreams the world into being while riding a great serpent in the cosmic ocean. In these Aboriginal and Hindu stories, one can see two similar tellings of the same essential myth.

Robert Lawlor shares his interest in the mythology of the Proto-Australoid peoples common to Australia and ancient India with joseph Campbell, who was a great friend of Alan Watts and the posthumous editor of the works of Henrich Zimmer. Working from Zimmer's notes, Campbell wrote The Philosophies of India, which offered a tantalizing glimpse into the traditions from which Buddhism grew several thousand years ago. Sadhus of Dravidian ancestry still roam beyond the villages in India today, living much as the Aborigines did-without huts or clothes, in direct relationship and harmony with the physical and invisible worlds. As one becomes familiar with the religious psychologies in play, it is apparent that the unity of the human and the divine is embodied in the emergence of the individual from the dreaming of the godhead. This view is the essence of Hinduism and, ultimately, Buddhism. By contrast, the myths of creation adopted by the West place man on the earth beneath the celestial throne of an almighty Lord of the Heavens, to whom we owe not only our existence but also our complete obedience. Any aspiration or emulation of the deity is coupled with a fundamental separation from the deity.

Alan Watts's life can be described in part as a journey away from the limited conception of the divine he came to know in his early training for the priesthood. It was a journey that took him from London to California, through encounters with D. T. Suzuki, joseph Campbell, and Gary Snyder, and from the Episcopal Church to the beatniks.

As a young man attending King's School in Canterbury, prior to entering the church as an Episcopal priest, Alan Watts was troubled by the image of God as a "cosmic tyrant." It just didn't make sense to him. Why would an infinitely wise ruler treat his subjects so harshly for their sins? God, in His infinite wisdom, had created such sinners, after all. Watts began to frequent the bookstores of London in search of a more plausible and comprehensive view of the divine. He read extensively, and within a few years he had followed his curiosity about such matters to the Buddhist Society in London, a philosophical organization guided by Christmas Humphrys. There he came into contact with the way of liberation known as Zen Buddhism. He was later to meet D. T. Suzuki there, and instead of going to Oxford, Watts became deeply involved in the activities of the Buddhist Society, including the publication of its journal, The Middle Way. After contributing several articles, he became its editor and wrote a regular column. These articles were soon followed by a pamphlet entitled An Outline of Zen Buddhism and then by a short book, The Spirit of Zen.

Alan Watts subsequently married Eleanor Everett, and they moved to America in 1938. In 1940, his book The Meaning of Happiness was published by Harper in New York. Much of the following decade was spent trying to fit in as a priest in the Episcopal Church. However, his early exposure to Zen Buddhism raised many difficult questions. In 1949, he wrote The Supreme Identity in a valiant attempt to reconcile Christianity with Buddhism and Vedanta, but in 1950 he left the church-and his wife-and soon married Dorothy DeWitt. Together they moved to a farmhouse in Millbrook, New York where later the same year he wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity.

On New Year's Eve in 1950, Alan and Dorothy invited joseph Campbell and his wife, the accomplished dancer jean Erdman, to dinner along with the avant-garde composer john Cage and Luisa Coomaraswami. The evening's conversations ranged from discussions of possible early transpacific voyages from Asia to America, to the latest innovations in music and dance, and then on to Joseph's experiences on the West Coast. The evening made quite an impression on Alan, who had already decided to move to San Francisco. On February 6, 1951, he and Dorothy departed for California to begin a new life.

Alan had accepted a teaching position offered by Fredric Spiegelberg at the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. There he met poet Gary Snyder and Japanese artist Saburo Hasegawa. Both of them, in their own way, broadened his aesthetic appreciation of Zen and introduced him to various northern California artists and writers who were living what was known as the Beat way of life. When the academy moved to the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco, Spiegelberg asked Watts to give up his teaching position to serve as dean. The school was poorly organized, and the job proved to be quite stressful. On more than one occasion, Saburo invited Alan to stop by and enjoy a relaxing cup of tea in his office. The tea was Japanese green tea, offered in the style of the tea ceremony while participants were seated on the carpet. The tea ceremony eventually became quite popular in certain areas of San Francisco, due in part to the ongoing classes offered by Saburo's wife, Kiyoko.

Traditional brushstroke calligraphy also gained a following in the Bay Area, due to the influence of both Saburo and Hodo Tobase. The well-known surrealistic painter Gordon Onslo-Ford became an avid student of Hasegawa's and later Tobase's, and both he and Alan fell in love with the paper, inks, and brushes used in calligraphy. Years later Gordon spoke of his first meeting with Saburo Hasegawa in an interview with Michael Wenger of the San Francisco Zen Center:

I should perhaps say how my interest in calligraphy started. There was a well-known japanese painter called Sabra Hasegawa, who had been in New York, and had been a great friend of Franz Klein. Hasegawa was the editor of a calligraphy magazine in japan, and he was interested in the liaison between the East and the West. He was scheduled to talk at the Asian Academy. Alan Watts, who was then the dean, telephoned me and told me that he was going to stay for a week, and would I look after him, and I agreed. So I went to Hasegawa's lecture, which was absolutely brilliant.

The next day I met Hasegawa and I took him for a walk in Muir Woods. We walked for two hours. Hasegawa was a man of tea. He was dressed in the most immaculate brown kimono. We walked for two hours, and he didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything. When we came back, I said to him, "Would you rather go and have some lunch at my house or would you rather go to my studio?" Hasegawa said "I would rather go to your studio." My studio was on board a ferry boat at that time. When we got on board, he looked around-he looked at the floor and he indicated that he would like to do some calligraphy. He started clearing the junk away and prepared a beautiful little place. Out of his sleeve he brought a wonderful stick of two-hundred-year-old ink and a beautiful roll of paper. And then he made a few characters. He made the character for infinity, and he made a one-two-three, which is a magnificent composition, as you know, because each line has to have a different weight and there is a different spacing between each line. That one-two-three was given to Alan Watts. Alan Watts said that D. T Suzuki was coming, and that he would point it out to him, an Hasegawa said that he would be so happy if D. T. Suzuki would walk by it without noticing it.

The story about Hasegawa's calligraphy was one of Alan Watts's favorites and became familiar to listeners of a series of public radio talks Watts gave in Berkeley beginning in 1951. At the station he met program director Richard Moore, who years later at KQED in San Francisco would produce the Alan Watts television series Eastern Wisdom and Modem Life.

During this period Watts's occasional evening lectures at the academy were well attended, and he soon became known for his comfortable speaking style and for the vitality of his philosophical inquires. His weekly radio show gained widespread popularity as he allowed his natural sense of humor to play into the context of his talks, and by the late fifties he was speaking quite playfully in such talks as "The Sense of Nonsense," "Unpreachable Religion," and "The Smell of Burnt Almonds."

In his autobiography he wrote about the academy and his own role in the formative period of the counterculture movement:

The American Academy of Asian Studies was one of the principal roots of what later came to be known, in the early sixties, as the San Francisco Renaissance, of which one must say, like Saint Augustine when asked about the nature of time, "I know what it is, but when you ask me, I don't." ... I know only that between, say, 1958 and 1970, a huge tide of spiritual energy in the form of poetry, music, philosophy, painting, religion, communications techniques in radio, television, and cinema, dancing, theater, and general life-style swept out of this city and its environs to affect America and the whole world, and that I have been intensely involved in it. It would be false modesty to say that I had little to do with it, and I am at once gratified and horrified to see how a younger generation has both followed and caricatured my philosophy.

This philosophy included a blend of classical Eastern thought, insights and observations from his own mystical experiences, and a pragmatic view of man as an integral part of nature a full generation before ecological issues became popular. He felt, as he later told a group of college professors, that, in essence, mystical experience and ecological awareness were simply two ways of talking about the same experience, and he would refer to his topic by one or the other-depending upon his audience and inclination. At other times he presented an interpretation of religious experience revealing a Jungian influence, and at times he credited Buddha with being the world's first great psychotherapist for recognizing the psychological trap inherent in any view of a divine self. However, some of his most dramatic and controversial talks involved direct comparisons between psychotic and religious experiences. "If Christ were to show up today," he would ask, "would he be welcome in the church, or locked up in an insane asylum?" The local Beats enjoyed his irreverent expositions immensely, and Watts participated in evening coffeehouse discussions running into the early-morning hours, and in wild poetry readings where he recited interpretations of British nonsense poems.

In 1953 Watts-now the father of two young children-moved from the San Francisco peninsula to the hills of Marin County just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Here Gary Snyder's practical and scholarly interest in Zen was a continuing source of inspiration for Alan. When Robert Anton Wilson asked Alan about Gary Snyder during his interview for The Realist, Alan replied, "He's a true Dharma Bum, a man of complete integrity. He's just the way Kerouac describes him in The Dharma Bums-little, wiry, bearded, Oriental-looking, always dressed in clothes that are old and patchy but scrupulously clean. I don't practice Zen the way he does, but there are many ways of doing it. I think very highly of Gary." Alan was living with Dorothy and their growing clan of children in Homestead Valley, and Gary was living in a cottage on a nearby hill that was called alternatively Marin-an, or "the horse forest hermitage." Beat poets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were in town in those days, and they came to visit Gary, and naturally Alan became involved in their goings-on. One such affair was a famous party (recorded in The Dharma Bums) thrown by Locke McCorkle, who had a house down at the bottom of the hill below Gary's cottage. At the party, Kerouac, McCorkle, and Ginsberg all ended up running around naked, while Alan sat with old friends from Chicago dressed in their business suits.

However, the most significant aspect of the scene for Alan was not the parties but Gary's little cottage on the hill. As he later recalled:

Gary had figured out-really and truly-how to live the simple life. Everyone complained about beatniks being dirty, and having filthy pads, but here Gary had this sweet, clean, neat little place. And he explained to me how to get by on practically no money-where to go for second-day vegetables, how to get certain kinds of grains, how to use the Goodwill, and so on. He had a very nice place, and I felt that although I was trying to be involved in respectable public affairs because I had children to support, that the very existence of Gary's place gave the universe a little bit of stability.

Shortly after the famous party, Gary went off to japan to begin "a real Zen study." For a time Alan continued his involvement in the San Francisco Beat scene and in 1959 wrote Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen, which eventually earned him the somewhat undeserved reputation as "father of the hip-pies." However, his 1956 classic, The Way of Zen, had become a bestseller, and while others appreciated the Beat trend for its purity as a literary movement, Alan became less interested in the Beat movement than in the assimilation of Oriental culture into Western society. He whimsically predicted that within a few years Asia would become covered with superhighways and neon-lit hamburger and hot dog stands, and that at the same time frustrated Tibetan lamas would be studying Buddhism at the University of Chicago.

Alan's second marriage did not survive the wayward influences of the Beat movement, but he spent the rest of his life speaking and writing-humorously and with insight-about Taoist, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. In his works he always expressed a particular affinity for what I think of as the earliest "beatniks": the Eastern wandering sages and masters who went "beyond the pale" and returned to the forest to regain the original state of being and to experience life as it was "on the first day" and as it is, underneath all our planning and thinking, even now.