Book Review: 'The Way of Zen' by Alan Watts

It’s a curious thing to be told by an author, who has written a book on a subject, that the truth of said subject is only ‘concealed by explaining it’. That a major branch of the world’s fourth largest religion has ‘nothing to say, nothing to teach’. Philosophies and schools of thought in the west have been much more characterised by grand abstraction and complex conceptual frameworks, authors whose ability to think is much greater than their ability to commit their thoughts to paper. Alan Watts' The Way of Zen provides a detailed historical view of the origins of Zen Buddhism and an almost artistic summary of the Zen approach to reality. Though old and many such books have come in its place since, it remains one of the best introductions to Zen in English. ​

Watts contextualises a number of different eastern belief systems in the opening chapters, from Daoism through several forms of Buddhism finally settling on Zen as a possible development of the co-mingling of these belief systems. His history is thorough yet concise, Watts’ prose exceedingly attractive and readable, and absolutely necessary to understanding the Zen “philosophy” in a cultural sense. The notion of wu wei, for instance; a Daoist principle of, most simply, ‘inaction’, or perhaps better non-doing. However, I maintain that the genius both of Zen and of Watts’ account of it is that its principles are so fundamental as to be easily understandable outside of any cultural context. 

Most fundamentally, for myself at least, the key principle of Zen Buddhism, and of Buddhism in general, is to let go of distinctions between self and object. Between you, the I, the centre of experience, and the “exterior” world. This distinction, Watts explains, is artificial; we imagine ourselves as “bags of skin” closed off to the outside world, when every part of the universe is one part of the same cosmic process. We are as inextricable from the universe as every star and galaxy. For more on this, I would also recommend Watts’ The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. 

Zen, in the simplest sense, encourages spontaneous action, naturalness, freedom from agonising over every decision. “For a man rings like a cracked bell when he thinks and acts with a split mind -- one part standing aside to interfere with the other, to control, to condemn, or to admire. But the mind, or the true nature, of man cannot actually be split.” To try to act naturally is an affectation. Equally, to try not to act naturally is an affectation. The realisation, then, is that you cannot do anything besides live the truest life. You can only delude yourself about not already being there. Zen, then, has nothing to teach: you are already there. Simply stop deluding yourself. Peace and understanding await; just cross your legs, close your eyes and breathe deeply. Don’t think about it. 

​review written by Sam Fenn