Rating: 
Summary: A Gloriously Written Book Containing A Great Truth...
Review: ....I recall one of those classes--I dunno, maybe it was an early General Science or Biology class I had long ago--where the teacher said that humans seldom use over one half of their brainpower and some brain cells go used...I know now that there are many ways that the brain controls various functions of the human body besides thinking, emoting and so forth. But, for me all that brings to mind Alan Watts and his brilliant carrer in trying to bring Zen and Eastern Influences to the Western World. The U.S. in particular. We have yet to scratch the surfaces of what the mind can accomplish....somehow, I think Watts knew long ago.In the preface to this great book he introduces to the reader "the law of reversed effort". Insecurity arises when we expend our energies to be secure, and salvation comes form realisation that we really can't save ourselves from the inevitable. Life and change is flux. But the more you try to hold this flux in a freezeframe, it makes us go nuts as to whatever it takes to keep in in a freezeframe. There's a funny commercial with Dennis Miller ranting about the cost of bottled water. Alan Watts probably would have taken this rant even further--to take something fluid, flowing and liquid like water, the essence of all life and to capture it and package it and bottle it and label it "bottled water"--he'd say the best, freshest water is found naturally occurring and it exactly this kind of insanity that makes our response to the world jacked up... Watts has many books on Zen, Tao, and Eastern religion and in all of them, he tells the reader of this wondrous moment--now is the time! I've translated this for myself to be..."Life is too short to be trippin'". If I am happy, I am happy "now"... We rampage evvyday in order to, in a certain time in the future, feel good, safe, and hitting all the notes we're supposed to be hitting just to find that we don't feel good, safe,(and the notes are so sour, they are not on the charts) whenever that point in the future comes. And like Watts says "the sins of the saints are worse than the sins of the sinners, that in some mysterious way the one searching for salvation is nearer to hell and to the heart of evil than the unashamed harlot or thief"....the seeing of ourselves as the whole, not apart holds the key to this nowness, this wisdom of insecurity. Once we accept that as part of the whole we can live in this moment and it will be all that we have to go one, then we will be truly alive and we can truly do great things....
Rating:
Summary: A tour de force
Review: A gem of a book. Full of rich insights, page after page. Read it in one sitting. Digest the material and then read it again! New ways of looking at the world will continue to come forth and enrich your life.
Rating:
Summary: Thrainn, E.E. Student.
Review: A very readable book that gives you, in some ways, an alternitive perspective on things. It is full of common sense and can teach a person something new, about herself and/or the world around her, every time they read it. A genuine article!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Alan Watts is clearly one of the best when it comes to writing about spirituality and consciousness! He explains things so well that his books enable us to see ourselves without the lenses of the ego that we usually wear in our everyday lives. After pursuing other works for many years to further understand consciousness, I finally came across another book that was even better at explaining these things. It's called "The Ever-Transcending Spirit" by Toru Sato and I highly recommend it if you like these types of books.
Rating:
Summary: Logic of unlogic
Review: Alan Watts is one of the few westerners to talk about the value of opposites and how absurd our world view can be - he has shaped the way we think philosophicaly and also spiritualy. He certainly opened my eyes the first time I read 'In my Own Way' and the 'Way of Zen' - but perhaps my favorite of his is the intriguing and down right fun 'Wisdom of Insecurity' in which he exposes a backward logic in life.
Rating:
Summary: A great writer
Review: Alan Watts is one of the most understandable writers on the topic of Zen Buddhism. He has a talent for removing the mysticism and clearly state what it's all about. I haven't found anything he's written that I haven't enjoyed thoroughly. He is definitely one of my favorite authors.
Rating:
Summary: Another gem
Review: Alan Watts puts Zen (or an approximation thereof) into words better than the Zen masters themselves. His prose itself is superb, having a selfless quality that doesn't get in the way of what he's trying to say. Those who have not read the book should disregard the following sentence. (Liz Quattlebaum, the anagram makes the word: complicated. My mother solved it.)
Rating:
Summary: Lucid and charming, this book will make you alive again!
Review: Alan Watts, best known as the foremost interpreter of Zen Buhddism to the West. A Masters in Theology and a Doctorate in Divinity, Dr. Watts pulls together insecurities of our own lives that have been unaware to us, and puts them in our laps to review. Our insecurities of what religion teaches us to believe and what science claims as actual fact. Alan Watts writes this is in almost poetic form and nature, bringing to life the beauty, not only in his words, but in the life before you as well
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Although originally written in 1951, the "Age of Anxiety" described by Watts is remarkably current. For me, the book provided a new view of the universe and humanity's part in it. I found it wonderful to read such deep thinking so clearly expressed.
Rating:
Summary: depression
Review: an excellent book,cured my depression! made me look at life as a now thing and to stop freaking about the future and what can happen tommorrow. life is indescribable so we should stop trying to describe it. instead go with it...let it be as it chooses to be
| 
