Alan Watts

Alan Wilson Watts (Chislehurst, 6 gennaio 1915 – Mount Tamalpais, 16 novembre 1973) è stato un filosofo e oratore britannico, noto per i suoi studi e l'opera di divulgazione e insegnamento incentrati sul buddismo zen e altre filosofie orientali.

«In tutto l'universo, dentro e fuori, non c'è nulla di cui prendere possesso, e nessuno che prenda possesso di qualcosa.»

Biografia

Nasce nel 1915, nel Kent, da una famiglia del ceto medio. A sedici anni scrisse i suoi primi articoli per la rivista della Buddhist Lodge di Londra.^[2] Si trasferì negli Stati Uniti nel 1938. Poco tempo dopo, durante un tour in Europa, ebbe modo di conoscere lo psichiatra e psicoanalista Carl Gustav Jung con cui approfondì alcune nuove tesi sulla moderna psicologia. Al suo ritorno negli Stati Uniti fu introdotto all'esperienza psichedelica dal Dr. Oscar Janiger, divenendo un sostenitore dell'antiproibizionismo in materia di droghe. Entrò poi in seminario venendo ordinato pastore episcopaliano, ma poi la sua esperienza spirituale lo portò alla conversione al buddismo.

Noto per i suoi vasti studi di filosofia orientale (buddismo Zen, taoismo, induismo), pubblicò nel 1957 The Way of Zen, la sua opera più significativa, in cui espone la storia del buddismo e della scuola Zen, e le dottrine del Buddha e dei maestri Mahāyāna Chán e Zen, adattati alla mentalità dell'ascoltatore e del praticante occidentale. Watts, come già avevano incominciato maestri e studiosi quali Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki o Taisen Deshimaru, rese così alla portata del grande pubblico anche importanti nozioni di buddhologia, ad esempio chiarendo che la dottrina della vacuità, del nirvana e dell'impermanenza non sono pessimiste e nichiliste come hanno pensato molti occidentali precedentemente (come Schopenhauer)^[3], e la natura non duale (non materialistica, spiritualista, idealista o "ateistica", varie etichette di volta in volta proposte in occidente per le religioni orientali) del pensiero buddista, taoista e induista (specialmente la scuola meno teista, l'Advaita Vedānta, già conosciuta nei paesi anglosassoni grazie all'opera di Vivekananda).

«... il bene senza il male è come il sopra senza il sotto, e che proporsi l’ideale di ottenere il bene è come cercare di evitare la sinistra volgendosi costantemente a destra. Si è quindi costretti a girare in cerchio.»

Per l'occidentale il cambiamento provoca angoscia e nostalgia ma "la resistenza al cambiamento è la causa principale della nostra sofferenza", scrive Watts. Per l'orientale invece la percezione del cambiamento porta al non-attaccamento opposto al veleno della tṛṣṇā (cupidigia o attaccamento).

«La dottrina dell'anitya [impermanenza], ancora una volta, non è proprio la semplice affermazione che il mondo è impermanente, ma piuttosto che più ci si aggrappa al mondo, più esso cambia.»

*Ensō*, simbolo zen. Calligrafia di Kanjūrō Shibata XX (二十代柴田勘十郎, 1921-), maestro di kyūdō.

Watts ebbe modo di insegnare nelle università di Cambridge (Inghilterra), Cornell (USA) e Hawaii. Negli ultimi anni della sua vita divenne uno dei punti di riferimento per tutta l'area della controcultura, tra cui il movimento hippy. Fu anche molto vicino al movimento della Beat Generation. Fu molto ammirato ma anche criticato.

Watts morì nel sonno, a causa di scompenso cardiaco sorto all'età di 58 anni dopo un faticoso tour di seminari, nella sua solitaria capanna di meditazione di Druid Heights, sul Monte Tamalpais (contea di Marin, California). Nonostante alcune illazioni (che si fosse trattato di morte sospetta o dovuta ad alcolismo), sia la moglie che il figlio confermarono che la morte di Watts, che soffriva di problemi cardiologici, fu assolutamente naturale (come dichiarato dal coroner e dal medico legale) e inaspettata per tutti, ma al contempo, secondo loro, da lui prevista e pianificata, come avvenuto a molti praticanti, maestri e mistici orientali di ogni tempo, secondo diversi racconti.^[4]^[5] Il suo corpo venne cremato su una pira a Muir Beach, come da tradizione per i monaci e i maestri; una parte delle ceneri fu sepolta presso Druid Heights, mentre l'altra fu conservata presso il monastero buddista di Green Gulch.

Vita privata

Watts si sposò tre volte durante la propria vita, ebbe sette figli e cinque nipoti.

Opere

1936 The Spirit of Zen
1937 The Legacy of Asia and Western Man
1940 The Meaning of Happiness
1944 Theologica Mystica of St. Dionysius
1948 Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
1950 Easter - Its Story and Meaning
1950 The Supreme Identity (La suprema identità)
1951 The Wisdom of Insecurity (La saggezza del dubbio)
1953 Myth and Ritual in Christianity
1957 The Way of Zen ("La via dello Zen", 1ª edizione italiana 1960)
1958 Nature, Man, and Woman (Uomo, donna, natura)
1960 "This Is It" and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience
1961 Psychotherapy East and West
1962 The Joyous Cosmology (La gaia cosmologia)
1963 The Two Hands of God - The Myths of Polarity
1964 Beyond Theology - The Art of Godmanship
1966 The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (Il libro dei tabù che ci vietano la conoscenza di ciò che veramente siamo)
1967 Nonsense
1970 Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality
1971 Erotic Spirituality - The Vision of Konarak
1972 The Art of Contemplation
1972 In My Own Way - An Autobiography 1915-1965
1973 Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal
1974 The Essence of Alan Watts
1975 Tao: The Watercourse Way
1976 Essential Alan Watts
1978 Uncarved Block, Unbleached Silk: The Mystery of Life
1979 Om: Creative Meditations
1982 Play to Live
1983 Way of Liberation: Essays and Lectures on the Transformation of the Self
1985 Out of the Trap
1986 Diamond Web
1987 The Early Writings of Alan Watts
1990 The Modern Mystic: A New Collection of Early Writings
1994 Talking Zen
1995 Become What You Are
1995 Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion
1995 The Philosophies of Asia
1995 The Tao of Philosophy
1996 Myth and Religion
1997 Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking
1997 Zen and the Beat Way
1998 Culture of Counterculture
1999 Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion
2000 Still the mind: an introduction to meditation
2000 What is Zen?
2000 What is Tao?

Opere audiovisive

Incluse registrazioni di reading e seminari nelle maggiori università statunitensi:

1960 Eastern Wisdom in Modern Life, television series, (qui)
1960 Essential Lectures, audio recordings, (qui)
1960 Nature of Consciousness, essay, (qui)
1960 The Value of Psychotic Experience
1960 The World As Emptiness
1960 From Time to Eternity
1960 Lecture On Zen
1960 The Cross of Cards
1960 Taoism
1962 This Is IT
1968 "Psychedelics & Religious Experience", in California Law Review (qui)
1969 Why Not Now: The Art of Meditation
1994 Zen: The Best of Alan Watts (VHS)
2005 Do You Do It, or Does It Do You?: how to let the universe meditate you (CD)
2007 Zen Meditations with Alan Watts, DVD, (qui)

Note

^ Alan W. Watts, La via dello Zen, traduzione Lucio Marco Antonicelli, Feltrinelli, Universale economica. Oriente
^ I Segreti dello ZEN, Armenia, ISBN 9788834422298.
^ A. Watts, La via dello Zen
^ Mill Valley, Library. "Following Alan Watts with Mark Watts". YouTube. Retrieved 5 March 2022:

«My father died to all of us very unexpectedly, but not to himself, and there were questions raised around his passing as to ... what had happened and particularly since there were various characters involved that ... helped to remove his body. And so there were questions about both had it happened for natural causes [or] was it not of natural causes, I mean there were conspiracy theories, every manner of opinion on this going around, and so I set out to try and figure it out. And there was a group of Yamabushi Buddhists, Ajari [real name Neville Warwick, 1932–1993, a physician also known as "Dr Ajari"] was the fellow's name who ran it, and they actually showed up and took control of the site, and got my father's body and all of this, and there was some question as to how they had arrived there so quickly, and before anybody else, and they whisked his body off before the County opens its offices. ... And so there was definitely some questions about [Ajari's] role. What was Mary Jane's role? There were these kind of things, and so I actually got into figuring it out, sort of as a puzzle, and in the course of it I interviewed a fellow who was part of this [Yamabushi] sect many years before. He flew in from the American Samoas and we interviewed him, and it turned out he was a completely unreliable person to interview because he would make up this, make up that, so at first we thought we had some really valuable information, but as time went on he was spouting every different theory that we'd ever heard and so... But David Chadwick had come to hear this and David Chadwick is the archivist for the San Francisco Zen Center, and Suzuki and my father had been good friends, and Richard Baker, rōshi Baker, had presided over my father's funeral. So after this video interview, David said to me: "I always did think it was funny that your father came and planned his own funeral" and I said "He did what?" and he described to me the meeting of Richard Baker and my father six months before he died, where he planned his funeral, and then I realized that was exactly the same time that he changed... his Will too, so I realized that almost six months to the day before my father died, that he was planning his own passing. And so once I had that piece of the puzzle, I realized that, as I look more carefully, that my father had actually been ill for some time, and that he was aware of, very aware of, his mortality and impending problems, and who knows, he may have actually done something to hasten his death, or, we don't know, but he was very aware that... he was going to pass on, and he planned for it, and once I got the full picture my conclusion was that Ajari had helped him, and actually been part of the plan there. So I think it was, like many things in his life, it was well thought out, well orchestrated, and well executed.»

(Mark Watts)
^ La moglie Mary Jane Watts scrisse in una lettera che Alan le aveva detto "Il segreto della vita è sapere quando fermarsi" (Furlong, Monica (March 2001). Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts (1 ed.). SkyLight Paths. p. 150. ISBN 1893361322.)

Altri progetti

Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Alan Watts
Wikimedia Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Alan Watts

Collegamenti esterni

Alan Watts sul Web, su alanwatts.com.

Controllo di autorità	VIAF (EN) 2478279 · ISNI (EN) 0000 0000 8081 5920 · SBN RAVV080521 · Europeana agent/base/145495 · LCCN (EN) n80002299 · GND (DE) 118629506 · BNE (ES) XX967704 (data) · BNF (FR) cb11928938c (data) · J9U (EN, HE) 987007269782105171 · NSK (HR) 000090700 · NDL (EN, JA) 00460314 · CONOR.SI (SL) 6664035

Portale Biografie

Portale Buddismo

Portale Filosofia

[1] Alan W. Watts, La via dello Zen, traduzione Lucio Marco Antonicelli, Feltrinelli, Universale economica. Oriente

[2] I Segreti dello ZEN, Armenia, ISBN 9788834422298.

[3] A. Watts, La via dello Zen

[4] Mill Valley, Library. "Following Alan Watts with Mark Watts". YouTube. Retrieved 5 March 2022:

«My father died to all of us very unexpectedly, but not to himself, and there were questions raised around his passing as to ... what had happened and particularly since there were various characters involved that ... helped to remove his body. And so there were questions about both had it happened for natural causes [or] was it not of natural causes, I mean there were conspiracy theories, every manner of opinion on this going around, and so I set out to try and figure it out. And there was a group of Yamabushi Buddhists, Ajari [real name Neville Warwick, 1932–1993, a physician also known as "Dr Ajari"] was the fellow's name who ran it, and they actually showed up and took control of the site, and got my father's body and all of this, and there was some question as to how they had arrived there so quickly, and before anybody else, and they whisked his body off before the County opens its offices. ... And so there was definitely some questions about [Ajari's] role. What was Mary Jane's role? There were these kind of things, and so I actually got into figuring it out, sort of as a puzzle, and in the course of it I interviewed a fellow who was part of this [Yamabushi] sect many years before. He flew in from the American Samoas and we interviewed him, and it turned out he was a completely unreliable person to interview because he would make up this, make up that, so at first we thought we had some really valuable information, but as time went on he was spouting every different theory that we'd ever heard and so... But David Chadwick had come to hear this and David Chadwick is the archivist for the San Francisco Zen Center, and Suzuki and my father had been good friends, and Richard Baker, rōshi Baker, had presided over my father's funeral. So after this video interview, David said to me: "I always did think it was funny that your father came and planned his own funeral" and I said "He did what?" and he described to me the meeting of Richard Baker and my father six months before he died, where he planned his funeral, and then I realized that was exactly the same time that he changed... his Will too, so I realized that almost six months to the day before my father died, that he was planning his own passing. And so once I had that piece of the puzzle, I realized that, as I look more carefully, that my father had actually been ill for some time, and that he was aware of, very aware of, his mortality and impending problems, and who knows, he may have actually done something to hasten his death, or, we don't know, but he was very aware that... he was going to pass on, and he planned for it, and once I got the full picture my conclusion was that Ajari had helped him, and actually been part of the plan there. So I think it was, like many things in his life, it was well thought out, well orchestrated, and well executed.»

(Mark Watts)

[5] La moglie Mary Jane Watts scrisse in una lettera che Alan le aveva detto "Il segreto della vita è sapere quando fermarsi" (Furlong, Monica (March 2001). Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts (1 ed.). SkyLight Paths. p. 150. ISBN 1893361322.)

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