Eastern philosophy in the West · 1915–1973
Alan Watts
You are it. There is nothing to attain.
Life is not a problem to solve or a journey to complete — it is a musical dance to be danced.
Every thinker worth reading has one true sentence. This is a place to find Alan Watts's.
On meaning
Life is not a problem to solve or a journey to complete — it is a musical dance to be danced.
Why this thinker still matters
The specific circumstances of Alan Watts's life are gone. The questions they wrestled with are not. Reading them now is less like consulting an authority and more like sitting across from someone who has already done a lot of the hard work of thinking.
Key insights
- ◆Read the primary sources when you can, not summaries of summaries.
- ◆Distinguish what the thinker actually wrote from what they are commonly quoted as saying.
- ◆Notice which of their answers resonate — that is data about you as much as about them.
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