Heart Of Mind Radio - 01.13.20

On today’s Heart Of Mind Radio for the New Millennium host Kathryn Davis explores Taoism through the words of Alan Watts, a British writer who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience: featuring the writing of fourth century Chinese Philosopher Zhuang Zhou

Featured Music: Frog Dancing by David Anthony Clark, Beauty by Vargo, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel

Featured Lecture by Alan Watts: The Teaching of Zhuangzi

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British writer who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary,   where he received a master’s degree in theology.  Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Aria while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley.  Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy, and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, “from a literary point of view—the best book I have ever written.” He also explored human consciousness in the essay “The New Alchemy” (1958) and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Zhuang Zhou, commonly known as Zhuangzi, was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BC during the Warring States period, a period corresponding to the summit of Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought. He is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, which is one of the foundational texts of Taoism.