The Truth About Religion (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; the Right Reverend Alan Watts (alanwatts.org)

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, which truth is the truest of all?"

The Episcopalian minister turned Zen Buddhist priest Alan Watts blows the lid on the real meaning of religion as it is practiced in the West and East. It is staggering what we have come to in the West looking to the insights of the East for guidance. Watts originally delivered this two part talk under the name "Democracy in the Kingdom." Part 2 will be played on the first Sunday in July at 8:00 am. This one was aired on June 29, 2014 at 8:00 am. AUDIO: PLAY

What is Mahayana Buddhism? (video)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts ("Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life," KQED TV, San Francisco); The Partially Examined Life

Mahayana pantheon of saints surround Catholic-style Kwan Yin (Dlakme/flickr)

Mahayana monastics of the "northern" school, Far East (Ian's/flickr.com)

What is the later "Great Vehicle" (Maha-yana) school of Buddhism, and why is it so mixed up with ancient Vedic Brahmanism and modern Hinduism?

• RADIO: Alan Watts on KPFK 90.7 FM, worldwide

ZEN: "The Void," "Sex in the Church" (video)

Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts (alanwatts); P. Examined Life

"Thou Shalt Have Great Sex" (July/Aug 2013 issue, spiritualityhealth.com)

Brad Warner (Hardcore Zen)

British Zen Buddhist, Taoist, Episcopalian teacher Alan Watts is an inspiration to Californians, where his show continues to air on Los Angeles' Pacifica Radio (KPFA.org) thanks to Roy of Hollywood Tuckman (8:00 am Sundays, midnight Thursdays).

This video is the fourth episode of Alan Watts' 1959 KQED TV series "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life." (DVDs available at alanwatts.com/collections).

Alan Watts was an unabashed lover

A native of England, Watts attended the King's School near Canterbury Cathedral. At 14 he became fascinated with the philosophies of the Far East. By 16 he regularly attended the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met Zen scholars Christmas Humphries and D.T. Suzuki. As a speaker and contributor to the Lodge's journal, The Middle Way, he wrote a series of philosophical commentaries and published his first book on Eastern thought, The Spirit of Zen, at age 21. In the late thirties he moved to New York, and a few years later he became an Episcopalian priest. In 1942 he moved to Illinois and spent the wartime years as chaplain of Northwestern University.

• BUDDHIST RADIO: PLAY AUDIO "Sex in the Church" Part 1 (alanwatts.org)
• PLAY AUDIO "Sex in the Church" Part 2 (Sunday mornings, KPFK.org, 8:00 am, Alan Watts)

Square to hippie (ianmack.com)

In 1950 he left the church, and his life took a turn away from organized religion back toward Eastern ways and expanding horizons. After meeting author and mythologist Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in New York he headed to California and began teaching at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco.

There his popular lectures spilled over into coffehouse talks and appearances with the well-known beat writers Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. In late 1953 he began what would become the longest-running series of Sunday morning public radio talks, which continue to this day with programs from the Alan Watts Tape Archives.

• Something's Happening - A: PLAY AUDIO Alan Watts "Aldous Huxley's 'Island'" Part 4 (concluding) // Aldous Huxley, “Visionary Experience” // Shinzen Young, "Learning from the Marathon Monks" (Friday, June 20, 2014 12:00 am, somethingshappening.com)

In 1957 he published the bestselling The Way of Zen, beginning a prolific ten-year period during which he wrote Nature, Man and Woman; Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen; This Is It; Psychotherapy East and West; The Two Hands of God; The Joyous Cosmology; and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.

By 1960 Watts' radio series "Way Beyond the West" on Berkeley's KPFA.org had an avid following on the West Coast, and NET TV began national broadcasts of the series "Eastern Wisdom in Modern Life." The first season, recorded in the studios of KQED, a San Francisco TV station, focused on the relevance of Buddhism, and the second on Zen and the arts.

• VIDEO: Watts' account of nirvana (Celestial Elf)
• ZEN RADIO: Alan Watts (audio)
• The Michael Slate Show (Fridays, 10:00 am) PLAY/download How should we understand the dramatic occupation of Iraq's second largest city by ISIS? What about our criminal and immoral invasion and occupation? What should we do in the face of a possible US escalation? Guests: Larry Everest, Revolution Newspaper, Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party (revcom.us), Stop Mass Incarceration Network. An army of 400 cops descended on Harlem June 4 (revcom.us).

Alan Watts: Karma, Time, Meditation (audio)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Western Zen teacher Alan Watts "Way Beyond the West" via Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org, Pacifica Free Speech Radio, Berkeley, California)

Science maps the brain, while Buddhism maps consciousness (thinkprogress.org)

 

"Mind" (citta) is heart

Karma does not mean "cause and effect." That is an unfortunate translation, a misleading oversimplification based on wanting to show that Buddhism is "scientific."

Buddhism is more than scientific. We will not experience most science we are taught, but we can personally experience all the important things Buddhism teaches.

Science class says "cause and effect," and a budding Buddhist says, "Hey, that's like what Siddhartha said!" That's very superficial and separates past from present as if they were separate. They are quite connected and unbroken, like a snake's head and tail.

Cool cats (Dee McIntosh/deemac/flickr.com)

What is the right view on this matter? Karma means "action," based on kri, "doing." What happens is our doing. What is happening to us, we are doing. It isn't happening to us. Our actions are.

• (What comes to fruit in the future and present, like it did in the past, is intentional-action). 

But this is a deep insight fraught with risk as we try to bring it into conventional language: "You mean, I did it? I'm to blame? Yada, yada, yada." Alan Watts explains it beautifully. Karma is action.

• (The tangible karmic-fruit, the phala, and the mental-resultants, the vipaka, are distinguished from the action, the karma, by the Buddha. But this is for the sake of understanding a process; in reality, they are inseparable).

• AUDIO: PLAY (download) (May 15, 2014, 10:00 am, MP3)

ZEN: Who in the world is Alan Watts?

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; AlanWatts.org

Zen Birthday Card: "Not thinking of you." (Piraro/bizarro.com)

  

Early Alan Watts, London (colorized photo)

Alan Watts was born in London in 1915, at the start of World War I. At a young age he became fascinated with the Far East, and at 14 he began to write and was published in the Journal of the London Buddhist Lodge before writing his first booklet on Zen in 1932. He moved to New York in 1938 and then to Chicago, where he served as an Episcopal priest for six years before leaving the Church. In 1950, he moved to upstate New York before going on to San Francisco to teach at the Academy of Asian Studies. Among Alan Watts' earliest influences were the novelist Sax Rohmer and Zen scholars D.T. Suzuki and Christmas Humpreys. In late 1950, he visited with Joseph Campbell and composer John Cage in NYC.

 

Worldview

Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta [the "best of the ancient Vedas"] and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan.
 

"Why cats are awesome" (RantsRavesT)

After leaving the [Anglican] Church, he never became a member of another organized religion. And although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, he was criticized by American Buddhist practitioners for not sitting regularly in zazen. Alan Watts responded simply by saying, "A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away."

• Don't be like Alan, kids. Here's how to zazen
• VIDEO: Be like Alan, kids: Watch cartoons

Expect the unexpected, and you won't be disappointed ("Zen Comics"/Ioanna Salajan)

  

1950's and early '60's

Later wild-eyed Alan Watts, Berkeley

After teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, he became Dean and began to give regular radio talks on KPFA FM, the Berkeley free radio station. In 1957, he published his bestselling Way of Zen, and in 1958 returned to Europe where he met with C.G. Jung. He was an early subject in pioneering psychedelic trials and, after recording two seasons of the public television series "Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life," traveled to Japan several times in the early sixties. By the late sixties, he had become a counterculture celebrity, and traveled widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe.
 

The adventures of a doctoral candidate in "PHD ZEN" (phdcomics.com/Jorge Cham)

 
Later Years

The animated Alan Watts is not just for kids

By the early seventies, Alan Watts had become a foremost interpreter of Eastern thought for the West and was widely published in periodicals including Earth, Elle, Playboy, and Redbook. He appeared on CBS television's "Camera Three" in 1969, and in 1971 he recorded a pilot for a new show titled "A Conversation with Myself" for NET, the precursor to PBS. When the series was not produced, he recorded the shows with his son Mark and his long-time audio archivist Henry Jacobs in 1972. Overall, Alan Watts developed an extensive audio library of nearly 400 talks and wrote more than 25 books during his lifetime, including his final volume, Tao: The Watercourse Way. Alan Watts died in his sleep in November of 1973, after returning from an intensive international lecture tour. More

(Wiki featured article, May 15, 2014) Mycena aurantiomarginata, commonly known as the golden-edge bonnet, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Mycenaceae. First formally described in 1803, it was given its current name in 1872. It is common in Europe and North America, and has also been collected in North Africa, Central America, and Japan... More

"What You Give Comes Back to You" (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Roy of Hollywood Tuckman (kpfk.org), Alan Watts, May 4, 2014

"Did you learn Zen today? - "Yes. No. I don't know. It doesn't matter."

 

Early Alan Watts on U.S. TV

Pacifica Free Speech Radio is in fund drive mode. Sunday mornings (8:00 am), along with Thursday nights (12:00 am), are "Zen Master" Alan Watts hours on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. Today Watts was interviewed "In the Spirit," and a wonderful talk on ecology was broadcast. Watts was so far ahead of his time that he was decrying plastics half a century ago. What he had to say has endured the test of time with stunning accuracy and foresight. LISTEN

The Revolution MAY be televised (video)

CC Liu, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; KPFK; KPFA (support free speech)

What is important enough to protest about: peace, war, student loans, taxes, pot, jobs?

(UprisingRadio) Join Uprising TV's exciting new campaign to televise Uprising for Free Speech TV. Contribute, get involved, join the revolution...or at least watch it from your couch. We have only until April 30th 2014 to raise the funds to make it possible!

UC Berkeley artist Favianna Rodriguez joins Sonali Kohlhatkar on Uprising Radio

It all began in Berkeley as Lewis Hill and others protested U.S. wars in Asia (KPFK)

 

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman agrees: we need Uprising TV

As Pacifica Radio's flagship station in Berkeley (KPFA FM), across from San Francisco, turns 65 on April 15, 2014, a revolutionary thing is happening in Los Angeles (KPFK FM). UPRISING has a crowdfunding campaign on Indie Go Go to televise the show and other Pacifica programming.

Radio host and Wisdom Quarterly friend in Pasadena Sonali Kohlhatkar has been active in bringing attention to the liberation of women in Afghanistan (RAWA) as well as covering the most gripping social justice issues of our day. More

Zen teacher Alan Watts called Pacifica the only truly "free speech" outlet in the world.

Pacifica Radio on TV (coming soon)

Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kohlhatkar (UprisingRadio.org)

Watts was transformed by Asia

Uprising may be coming to a TV near all of us. Today host Sonali Kohlhatkar announced that a cable station wants to carry the show turning a radio program into an audio-visual odyssey. 

 

The best part is that this would mean the entire Los Angeles branch of Pacifica, second only to the flagship station in Berkeley (KPFA FM), would be televised. And here all this time we were told THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED. Of course, it may not be. A crowd funding campaign is being launched to make it a reality:

• LISTEN: PLAY NOW (or download)

Who cares? What's so special about Pacifica?

Buddhist TV?

1. Suffering, 2. Thirsting, 3. Cooling

Zen philosopher/entertainer Alan Watts -- who is still played weekly only in L.A. (in what we call "Buddhist Radio," thanks to Roy of Hollywood Tuckman's Thursday-midnight and Sunday-morning broadcasts) -- called Pacifica "the only truly free radio station" anywhere.

 

It's radical, it sticks it to The Man, and even though it could be bolder and more forceful, it touches on topics no one in mainstream media dares to touch.

Buddhism has already come to television but has never been quite what it could be -- although we can't find the BuddhistChannel.TV on our sets yet.

ZEN: The animated Alan Watts (cartoon)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts; Gábor Hényel; Krishnamurti

Buddha FGS Dong Zen Temple CNY Lantern and Flora Festival (Jimmy Chuah/flickr.com)

(GH) "All In One" - animated Alan Watts by the creators and animators of "Southpark"

The Principles of Parents to Children
(Spiritual Buzz)

Let us embark on "a pilgrimage of inquiry from which there is no return."

The mind that has really gone into all this, that has entered upon a pilgrimage of inquiry from which there is no return, that is inquiring not only now, during this hour, but from day to day -- such a mind [heart] will have discovered a state of creation which is all existence. 

 

It starts with preschool then the first grade.

It is what we call truth or "God." For that creation to take place, there must be complete aloneness, an aloneness in which there is no attachment, no companionship, either of words or thoughts or memories. It is a total denial of everything which the mind has invented for its own security.

 

The complete aloneness, in which there is no fear, has its own extraordinary beauty. 

A god with nothing else to do

It is a state of love because it is not the aloneness of reaction; it is a total negation, which is not the opposite of the positive. And I think it is only in that state of creation that the mind is truly "religious."

Such a mind needs no meditation: it is itself the eternal [a Hindu/Christian concept rather than, ultimately, a Buddhist one although the idea has seeped into Mahayana Buddhism and Zen]. Such a mind is no longer seeking -- not that it is satisfied, but it is no longer seeking because there is nothing to seek. It is a total thing, limitless, immeasurable, unnameable. 

 

- Jiddu Krishnamurti (the Chosen One, groomed to be the new World Teacher, as selected by Madame Blavatsky, the great Buddhist Colonel Olcott, C.W. Leadbeater, Annie Besant and other Buddhism-loving Theosophists)

Alan Watts: "Why Not Now" (video)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org); TragedyandHope (youtube.com) 

"Why Not Now" and "Dhyana: The Art of Meditation" by Alan Watts (redtelephone66.com)

 

Alan Watts in Buddhist robes, California

January, 2014 - There is a new documentary film (two DVD set) on the life and works of British-American Buddhist broadcaster Alan Watts. Each film comes with "The Animated Alan Watts" and "The Essential Alan Watts," a bonus disc of video materials that did not fit into the film.

• LISTEN: PLAY AUDIO NOW (download MP3, 10.28 MB)
• Letters and Politics, Feb. 19, 2014 - KPFA.org 10:00 am
• About the Show / Archives of Show / Playlists from Show

One 23-minute DVD includes extracts from the 1972 series "The Fine Art of Goofing Off" as well as a couple of animations produced by SouthPark creators and animators. The reel has met with joyous laughter and standing ovations at recent film showings and is not to be missed.

"Why Not Now" follows the life of one of the most inspiring philosophers of our time -- Alan Watts -- as told though none other than Alan Watts himself accessing a wealth of material and lectures that were left behind after his passing.

"Why Not Now?" was created by Alan Watts' son, Mark Watts, who has given TragedyandHope exclusive rights to create the trailer for the documentary. More (alanwatts.org)

What is reality? Zen with Alan Watts (audio)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Alan Watts (Pacifica Radio, L.A., KPFK.org, Jan. 26, 2014)

Pondering human origins and existence in a Zen garden in California (desktopc.com)

  

A portrait of  Alan Watts (ianmack.com)

What is reality? "I came into this world," I say. "You didn't; you came out of it," insists British philosopher and Zen teacher Alan Watts. We bounce between a ceramic (that we created out of clay) and an automatic theory of the universe. So beginning with a Big Bang view, assuming that's how it happened, how we came to be, Watts follows that view to its logical conclusion. We are way out in space, way out in time, and now here we are: Who am I? I am the Bang, not something that came out of it. It is an entirely different and very Mahayana/Hindu way at looking at the question. Are we the primordial energy of the universe defining ourselves separately from it? "There are no such things as things, at least no such things as separate things. We are wiggly goo imagining a world of thorny lines. LISTEN NOW: AUDIO 

• VIDEO: Stupid Christian questions for the Vegan Atheist 
• What can animals teach us? Zoobiquity: the Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health (zoobiquity.com) 
• Did Snowden spy for Russia -- or is he a heroic whistleblower like Manning, Assange, Albrecht, Scahill, Greenwald, and others?

Debate: Is Zen Stupid? (cartoons)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Old Zen Master to fellow monk: "Nothing happens next. This is it." (Gahan Wilson)

 

"Not thinking of you." (Dan Piraro)

The American-Zen school is getting old and hackneyed. It "stinks of Zen." 

 

Shall we ignore koans from now on and focus instead on the wonderful devotional teachings of Pure Land (which seems fresh in the hands of Master Miao Lien) or the magical chanting of Nichiren (Nam myoho renge kyo) Buddhism?

• Zen is not what Americans think (Prof. Robert Buswell on Why Zen is not "Zen")

Zen novice: "Master, why did Bodhi-Dharma come from the West?" How the koan would I know, dummy? (Ioanna Salajan/Zen Comics)

To think that we could be on bowing-pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash or doing 100,000 Tibetan prostrations at the Bodhi tree shrine in Bodh Gaya, but instead we are sorting koans ("main cases," aphorisms, riddles) from Japan's most perplexing school -- it just does not seem right. (Zen may have begun in China and grown in Korea, but it is the Japanese version that became most famous and distinctive).

We forgive you. - I still feel guilty!

Certainly if it were not for Alan Watts, cartoonist Ioanna Salajan, D.K. Suzuki, and Bernie ("The Little Lobowski") Glassman, we would not have come this far. How did we come this far except that Roshi Albrizze believes and the post-WW II and Korean "Conflict" American GIs and their generation overcompensated with a fascination for all things "Oriental" in general and Japanese in particular?

But "Zen is stupid." That is the proposition. Who can say different? Zazen (just sitting in meditation) is good, satori (epiphany) good, luohans (arhats) good, ch'an (zen, dhyana, jhana, or "meditative-absorption") great! But Zen as a path of practice-of-practice or non-practice? Humbug!
 

Look how clever I can be in college! "What is the sound of no hands typing?" (PHD ZEN)

  
It's complete foolishness, a whole school with a single message, or so it seems: "Don't strive," "There is nothing to strive for," "What are you striving for, dummy?"

 

Can anyone utter 100 words without a cute aphorism, a dull platitude, or unconventional mode of expression like setting a grass sandal atop the head and walking out of the room?

Readers will not sit just to sit, not even in Zen circles. Everyone is itching to talk and socialize. Can words be said that engender serene sitting, emotional-intellectual stilling, and self-development toward tranquility (jhana) and insight (vipassana), toward enlightenment (bodhi), toward final liberation (nirvana)?

Q: Now, Master Albrizze, how say you?

A: It's kind of like this, like when "Ryuge..."

KOAN: Ryuge Passes the Chin Rest

PasaDharma Koan Study Group (pasadharma.org), The Book of Equanimity, Case 80

PREFACE TO THE ASSEMBLY

A great sound is rarely heard; a great vessel matures slowly.

In the hurly-burly of a hundred chatterings, one plays the fool, patiently letting time pass for thousands of years.

Tell me: What kind of person is this?

MAIN CASE

Here I am, wasn't I? (Ioanna Salajan)

Attention!

Ryuge asked Master Suibi, “What is the meaning of the Patriarch [Bodhidharma] coming from the West?”

Master Suibi said, “Go and get the chin rest for me.”

Ryuge brought the chin rest for Master Suibi, and Suibi then treated him to a blow.

Ryuge remarked, “Hit me if you wish, but there’s still no meaning to the Patriarch’s coming from the West.”

Later Ryuge asked Master Rinzai, “What’s the meaning of the Patriarch coming from the West?”

Master Rinzai said, “Go get the cushion for me.”

Ryuge brought Master Rinzai the cushion, and Rinzai treated him to a blow.

Ryuge remarked, “Hit me if you wish, but there’s still no meaning to the Patriarch’s coming from the West.”

Much later still, when Ryuge was living in a temple, a monk asked him: “Great teacher, in former times you asked Suibi and Rinzai about the meaning of the coming of the Patriarch. Did they both clarify it or not?”

Ryuge replied, “They clarified it alright -- but there’s still no meaning to the Patriarch’s coming from the West.”

APPRECIATORY VERSE

Cushion and chin rest confront Ryuge.

Having the chance, why are you not an adept?

He doesn’t think to clarify it by making quick conclusions.

He’s afraid of their loss of position and having to go to heaven’s edge.

How can you hang a sword in the vast sky?

ZEN RADIO: Alan Watts (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (Letters & Politics, 9-9-13, KPFA.org), AlanWatts.com

1. Disappointment, 2. Craving, 3. Freedom -- a clean cut Alan Watts on American TV

  

Mystical Watts in 60s California

Pacifica Berkeley's beloved history buff Mitch Jeserich finally went overtly Buddhist coordinating an entire show about the late great British-born Zen, Taoist, Eastern Philosophy master Alan Watts. It was the first day of the fund drive, and he would be following up the next day (today) with an all meditation show featuring salesman George Quant and his post-TM "IQM." The wonders of meditation were extolled but slightly sullied by Quant's crass salesmanship. It was like listening to a motivational speaker wing it on stage while thinking that nobody is noticing all the speech errors and redundancies, the misused terminology and overreaching to sound scientifical. At least he has the background for it (with TM and Deepak Chopra Foundation credentials and what he learned in one day at UCLA), and goodness knows selling mantras as a panacea has been in vogue since the 1970s. Just think of that funny scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" at the California party. But sales are sales, and it is a fund drive. And if it helps Jeserich meditate more, then it was all for aught.

• PLAY NOW! (Oct. 9, 2013, 10:00 am, download MP3 clip, 10.28 MB)

 

Who cares about Watts (RIP)?

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha initiated a missionary movement

It all started in Berkeley, but Alan Watts changed our lives in Los Angeles. KPFK FM remains the only Pacifica Radio station to regularly schedule segments of Watts from the archives. Thanks are due to Roy (of Hollywood) Tuckman, whose Sunday morning show (8:00 am) and overnight ("Something's Happening," 12:00 am-5:00 am) Thursday broadcasts keep Watts alive in our ears and minds. 

Watts was perhaps the first Westerner in America to really understand Zen, the way of the Tao, Asian culture, and Mahayana Buddhism more generally. He, of course, had help from the early Occidentals, those British, German, and French scholars of the Pali Text Society and their Wisdom of the East (Orientalist) translations and interpretations. 

What we have today by way of accurate accounts of the historical Buddha's words and teachings in English owe much more to the work of these European pioneers than that of the ordained monastics in Asia whose missionary efforts tried to carry the message across the sea in the tradition of the Buddha's earliest disciples. 

It was the Buddha who began to set in motion the Wheel of the Dharma by teaching five hearers then sending out 60 enlightened disciples, no two in the same direction, to spread the news that enlightenment was possible for ordinary householders regardless of caste, socioeconomic status, gender, race, or other social barriers. 

Those Buddhist missionaries apparently succeeded far outside of India to the west even before the Dharma spread east to the shores of Vietnam (Indochina) on the South China Sea. They (and their own followers) traveled from modern day Afghanistan and Iran (Baluchistan) up through Central Asia and, centuries later, through the future Indo-Greco empires of Bactria and Sogdia, into Israel (cosmopolitan Jerusalem) and Europe (Kalmykia), Mongolia, Russia, Siberia, and China. The message even seems to have reached Catholic Rome through the Church Father Origen.

Jesus the Buddhist

A wild eyed householder Watts who drank

Saint Issa (Jesus of Nazareth) apparently heard something that called his attention to travel to India/Ladakh/Tibet in search of truth and a mission of his own. (But few Christians will stand for that story being widely told; fortunately, Holger Kersten, Elmar Gruber, the BBC, and others do tell it widely. 

Few would believe that Buddhism was in an arm of ancient Greece (the "West") before it made it to China. Fewer would believe that the Buddha's teachings first came to the Americas from China a thousand years ago. But that incredible journey is documented in Rick Field's How the Swans Came to the Lake. Of course, truth has always been stranger than fiction. And now as then the world get the universal Dharma from all directions. Do we understand it? Alan Watts did.