Friend and admirer of Alan Watts

[Bill Keeler]

Hello, dear friends of Alan Watts. I’m an old-timer from the Sausalito waterfront in the sixties. I lived at Gate 6 on big barge of a boat called the Omphale. Alan lived a couple of hundred yards toward town at Gate 5, on one-half of the S.S.Vallejo, a scuttled old iron-hulled ferryboat. The colorful and then-famous Greek collage artist Varda and all of his colorful scene and young girls and bohemians and sailing parties were on the other half.
I got into Alan’s books. And marijuana. Both blew my mind. An enjoyable account of Alan and those spiritual times is in my short book (on Amazon, $5.50): Buddha Dropped By: the 1960s. Through various friends and connections and many pageants and parties I got close to him. Sat listening to many of his talks and more formal seminars, there and elsewhere -- couple of times at Esalen in Big Sur, all the way up to Cold Mountain Institute in British Columbia. He knew how avidly I read and listened to him and appreciated him. My favorite name-dropping story is the time I answered a knock at my door and there was Alan with a guy, and Alan said “Bill, this is Owsley.“ (Not much of a name-dropping story except for other old timers. For you kids, Owsley was the first big acid king, practically a god.) Pretty good friends, I guess it could be said, at least I could and did occasionally call him and say hey, wataya doing?, and get invited over with my girl friend, and Alan would usually cook something and there would be wine and much talk, and yes, two times I can remember one of Alan’s ever-lucid sentences trailing off as his body tilted slowly from his chair toward the floor, and yes, both times we caught him and helped him to bed and said we’d see ourselves out.
One reason I’m writing is that too often on AlanWatts sites I’ve noticed undue interest in gossip and tut-tutting about his drinking, and I’m able to add to that, and will.
First, I’d like all who are interested to ask themselves this: what possible relevance does this matter have to the magnificence of the written and spoken words Alan left us? Does such information decrease the potential those words have to impact on us in a meaningful way? Let us not be lost in trivial pursuits.
Alan drank. He liked to drink. And he had a very active and productive work and social life with lots of friends around him to the very end. And his speech didn’t slur and he was always superb. As far as I ever observed he took virtually no physical exercise, and like about everyone of that era he ate too much meat and fat. Tobacco? My memory is that had gone out of his life, along with smoking marijuana, because of the throat effect. But overall, it wasn’t a body being properly taken care of.
Now I’ll tell you a nice story. The last years of his life were lived in a hand-crafted cottage on the eucalyptus-covered hillsides above Muir Woods. From that cottage he would address college audiences around the country and beyond, Alan being represented on stage in the form of a sign and a radio speaker, and Alan himself seated at a small table at home. He had found during his career that he “performed” better with an audience, even a small one, so he would always invite about a dozen or so friends to attend. We would arrive about a hour beforehand, and there would be refreshments and socializing, with Alan mingling and chatting, and certainly not paying any attention to the fact that the student body of some prestigious college was convening to hear his words. Then, with five minutes to go, he would ask us to arrange ourselves and be seated, and he would sit as his table. After, some preliminaries such as making certain the volume was properly adjusted for his audience, he would begin.
His little table was bare, except for the microphone. There were no notes. The usual duration of these talks was a half hour to forty-five minutes. And he would speak for the entire time in perfectly polished paragraphs, every comma in place, the message clear, well organized, and mesmerizing. His secretary once told me that most of his books were in first draft form, that changes from the first typing were almost entirely punctuation adjustments, a word change here and there.
Like thousands, I say “Alan Watts? That man changed my life!”

[Dalek Prime]

Two things that can lead to a psychotic break; drugs and meditation. Potent cocktail when the two are mixed.

[raw_thought]

One of the misconceptions about Alan Watts is that he proposed ideas that were irrational. One can be a total physicalist and agree with Alan.
There is no evidence that his works are the result of a psychotic break.
If one is a total physicalist one knows that the self is an illusion. Our atoms are constantly being replaced. One also knows that reality is a field. The old idea of atoms being like billiard balls has been replaced.
These ideas dove tail with Buddhism. Most people do not realize that Buddhism is not a religion. Buddha never said there was a God, or that there is no God. One can be a theist Buddhist or an atheist. Similarly, one can be atheist car mechanic or a theist car mechanic.
Buddhism is the belief that one should not fear death because there is no self to die.

[Dalek Prime]

Buddhism is the belief that one should not fear death because there is no self to die.

So, why do they bring new existences into being if they believe there is no self anyways to enjoy it, only to suffer? No birth equals no rebirth, and that means no suffering. That is where Buddhism and the Buddha fail. Like everyone else, they don't even consider the ethics of new life, and behave like a bunch of DNAbots. So much for enlightenment.

[artisticsolution]

Buddhism is the belief that one should not fear death because there is no self to die.

So, why do they bring new existences into being if they believe there is no self anyways to enjoy it, only to suffer? No birth equals no rebirth, and that means no suffering. That is where Buddhism and the Buddha fail. Like everyone else, they don't even consider the ethics of new life, and behave like a bunch of DNAbots. So much for enlightenment.

But people like to suffer...haven't you heard?

[Dalek Prime]

Buddhism is the belief that one should not fear death because there is no self to die.

So, why do they bring new existences into being if they believe there is no self anyways to enjoy it, only to suffer? No birth equals no rebirth, and that means no suffering. That is where Buddhism and the Buddha fail. Like everyone else, they don't even consider the ethics of new life, and behave like a bunch of DNAbots. So much for enlightenment.

But people like to suffer...haven't you heard?

They always leave me out of the memo pool, AS.