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Comment by b5n | Hacker News Reader

I don't dislike Alan Watts, but by his own admission he is an entertainer. If you're actually interested in zen the best place to start is with the texts:

大道無門 The Great Way is gateless,

千差有路 Approached in a thousand ways.

透得此關 Once past this checkpoint

乾坤獨歩 You stride through the universe.

https://sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

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Strongly disagree. The playful nature that Alan Watts conveys ideas with completely blew my mind. He combined so many influences. Entertaining or not by his own admission, it’s a hundred, a thousand times more accessible. At its core it is also so much more transmissible back to the day to day life as an organism on this planet. I still have yet to encounter anything like it. The stuff you list right here reeks of long study in a library to me. There are gurus who sit for hours every day meditating, eat their single bowl of rice, clean the temple, sleep on hard stone. And there are gurus who drink, smoke, and laugh, wandering the countryside. A thousand ways indeed. I know which path I prefer. I think of Alan as the latter, whatever he may have said. Play is at the core of the deep lessons, for me. So him straying towards that side rings much more true.

I would start with this short series of animated Alan Watts lectures by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VvrfnE7Q-0w, listen to some of his lectures (the ones where he’s drinking are often the best), read The Book, and then just have fun with all the other books/content he put out there. Alongside it, dive into the deep texts, Zen, the Vedanta, etc.

> I don't dislike Alan Watts, but by his own admission he is an entertainer.

I find Watts' advice to just peel the potatoes more useful than this concept of striding through the universe through The Great Way.

But that might just be because I don't find gratuitous capitalisation spiritually enlightening, or entertaining.

Alan Watts never proclaimed to be a Buddhist. This anecdote provides some insight into what traditional zen teachers thought of him:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/qrvk2i/comment/hk...

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