Show Notes
Fall asleep to the life and ideas of Alan Watts, the philosopher who taught the West how to let go.
Across sixteen unhurried chapters, we follow the strange and luminous life of Alan Watts, the self-taught Englishman who became the most listened-to interpreter of Eastern wisdom the West has ever known. From a boyhood spent gazing at Chinese landscape paintings, through a brief and surprising career as a priest, to the houseboats and mountain cabins of California, we trace how a restless amateur turned Zen, Taoism, and the old Indian teachings into clear and living English. Along the way we sit with his best-loved books, on insecurity, on Zen, and on the taboo against knowing who you really are, and with the great question at the center of them all. And we look, without flinching, at the gap between the serene teacher and the troubled man, and at why his gentle voice, decades after his death, still finds people in the dark.
Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.
Chapters: 0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Painted Mountains 0:11:56 Chapter 2: The borrowed light 0:17:57 Chapter 3: The habit and the collar 0:26:22 Chapter 4: The menu and the meal 0:32:27 Chapter 5: To hold your breath 0:43:01 Chapter 6: A finger pointing at the moon 0:55:28 Chapter 7: Beat, square, and neither 1:02:32 Chapter 8: The war with nature 1:11:34 Chapter 9: Two ways of healing 1:23:06 Chapter 10: The chemistry of consciousness 1:30:13 Chapter 11: The game of hide and seek 1:40:53 Chapter 12: The taboo against knowing 1:52:45 Chapter 13: You cannot live in tomorrow 1:59:27 Chapter 14: The watercourse way 2:08:41 Chapter 15: The genuine fake 2:19:58 Chapter 16: The voice that remained
If this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded
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