Friday, May 13, 2011

Zen effects, The Life of Alan Watts by Monica Furlong


The book is ZEN Effects,The Life of Alan Watts

This is an biography by Monica Furlong detailing all about a man, Alan Wilson Watts and his quest for knowing what he feels inside himself as this becomes Zen. He was the son of Laurence Wilson Watts and Emily Mary(nee' Buchan) and was born on January 6, 1915. He was brought up a Christian with austere discipline in an all boys school he attended to which is named King's School at Cantebury in England. He was always a smart scholar but not always making it the tops of his class. Often left himself with a bewilderment of his own sexuality with such discipline from his upbringing and his schooling. He had a fascination of Chinese and Japanese objects in art and style at a young age as well. This type of life showed himself a flow and a certain way man connects himself with nature.

He also shocked his parents and the school he went to when he converted into Buddhism. He became deeply involved with Buddhism as a teen and even gained a title of himself as "The Romance of Japanese Culture" putting himself with all the arts in paintings, calligraphy and martial arts as well as this set him on the path to Zen Buddhism.

But he was not always of Zen Buddhism as he took a turn to be an Episcopalian Priest in 1945 at the age of 30. He stil was outspoken with religion and converted back to Zen Buddhism in the 1950's in California.

He wrote many books on what he had found with Zen as he taught Zen and founded the San Francisco Zen Center.Some of his books were the Spirit of Zen, The Way of Zen and the Tao: The Watercourse Way. The Way of Zen was a book that basically took you step by step understanding what all that it meant in one's life with meditations in Zen and also gave Westerners a look at how this is applied with sense of it.

He was married three times and had seven children. In October 1973 he returned back home after a long exhausting lecture in Europe.He died at the age of 58 in his sleep due to heart failure on November 16th 1973.

Very prophetic words before he died as he said to his daughter Joan, who had unfulfilled wish trying to conceive, "After I am dead, I am coming back as your your child. Next time around I am going to be a long red haired woman". Joan had conceived a daughter who in fact was a red haired little girl.



Here is the last part of the book which is the last paragraph above as well scanned from the book.




Dom*Colucci 2011    http://dom-bodhidharmafatherofzen.blogspot.com/

5 comments:

Jingle said...

elegant biography review,

Glad to see it in your perspective.
Thanks for the time.

ZENDOM said...

you are so welcome my Dearest Jingle...I am glad you liked it as I am getting more and more time to stop over if not here but one of your other blogs...Lately I have been working on the publishing of my book The Tree Becomes A Soul and I finally self published it and is available on lulu and next to go to Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and others as well...as I also have sent my second book out for copyright and I am in the process of book number three to get to copyright as it is ready but we had a twist in it so been working with that as well....but I am gaining process getting to come over here as well...enjoy and Happy Saturday to you(+)
soulbro*;)xoxoxo---{--@

Shrinky said...

Hello, what an interesting site you have, thank you for the review, he sounds a fascinating character.

Elizabeth Mueller said...

Very interesting review, I'm fascinated. Thank you for sharing!

Have a great Sunday!

Can Alex save Winter from the darkness that hunts her?
YA Paranormal Romance Darkspell coming fall of 2011!

♥.•*¨Elizabeth¨*•.♥
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Mindvalley said...

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Alan Watts Lectures