A Zen Legacy

What's in a legacy? We should all hope to raise children who can see expansive meaning in the contributions we have made in our lives. Often the best way to interpret our life's work is through the insights that one has into our personal journeys. Just another reason to keep on writing. Letters can tell us so much. Today, we will be getting deep inside the inner-workings of Alan Watts, widely known as the philosopher who first popularized Zen Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies for the counterculture of the 1960s. The brand new, never before published book The Collected Letters of Alan Watts is a treasure trove of letters that was discovered and lovingly curated by his first born children, Joan and Anne Watts. The book begins with letters Watts wrote home from boarding school as a teenager, highlighting his flowering interest in Zen Buddhism. As Watts comes into his own, foregoing traditional education to create his own "self imposed university" and eventually leaving the priesthood, he corresponds with such luminaries as Joseph Campbell, Henry Miller, Gary Snyder and Aldous Huxley.