Watts also later wrote of a mystical dream he experienced while ill with a fever as a child.

It mixed with Watts's own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East. Probably because of the influence of his mother's religious family the Buchans, an interest in 'ultimate things' seeped in. With modest financial means, they chose to live in pastoral surroundings, and Watts, an only child, grew up playing at Brookside, learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies. His mother, Emily Mary Watts (née Buchan), was a housewife whose father had been a missionary. Watts's father, Laurence Wilson Watts, was a representative for the London office of the Michelin tyre company. Watts was born to middle-class parents in the village of Chislehurst, Kent (now south-east London), on 6 January 1915, living at Rowan Tree Cottage, 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane. The bulk of his recorded audio talks were recorded during the 1960s and early 1970s. He also explored human consciousness and psychedelics in works such as 'The New Alchemy' (1958) and The Joyous Cosmology (1962).Īfter Watts's death, his lectures found posthumous popularity through regular broadcasts on public radio, especially in California and New York, and more recently on the internet, on sites and apps such as YouTube and Spotify.

He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, 'from a literary point of view-the best book I have ever written'. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), he argued that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, introducing the emerging hippie counterculture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. Watts gained a following while working as a volunteer programmer at the KPFA radio station in Berkeley. He left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies. He received a master's degree in theology from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and became an Episcopal priest in 1945. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. JSTOR ( September 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Īlan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled 'philosophical entertainer', known for interpreting and popularising Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

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