Alan Watts: a Guru in the Age of Aquarius

This is one of three essays I composed in a personal essay writing course at Drake University in the fall of 2015.

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I had just walked into my office when the phone rang.  “Hello.”  “Pete, it’s good to hear from you.”----“I do know Alan Watts, as a matter of fact I read his book Psychotherapy East and West  sitting by the Stones Crossing swimming pool last summer.” ---“He’s going to be here at Lafayette College, really?”  “The speaker at the annual Theological Confrontation?” “Before my time at Lafayette didn’t you invite Martin Luther King for the first Theological Confrontation?”  “In 1965?” “He couldn’t fit it into his schedule? –“- “Who could have thought then that he would be assassinated?” ----“Yes, back to Watts.” “A dinner in the Faculty Dining Room before his talk in the Chapel?”  “Pete, I appreciate the invitation.”  “Wednesday, April 23 at 6 PM, okay.” “Thanks again Pete and I’m glad you are doing this type of spiritual program--- one that is probably not at the top of the list for Presbyterian Church elders who think Lafayette has become too secular.”--- “Okay, see you then if not before.” Pete Sabey was the Pastor of the Lafayette College Church and the Chaplain of the college.  We had become good friends and we were both in harmony with the mood of the 60s and with the student concerns about the institutions of the dominant culture. In 1969 the country was on the cusp of the Age of Aquarius, the Man in the Moon had become men walking on the moon, and an event publicized as Woodstock An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music would attain Iconic status as simply “Woodstock.”

Alan Watts was popular with the students in the sixties, a real Guru. I thought of him as a Buddhist, but he was more, Psychotherapy East & West begins with these words, “If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more resembling psychotherapy.”  Watts went on to explain, “The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of  life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world.” I was anxious to hear this from the Guru himself.  In the past few weeks I had experienced considerable stress, my friend, Bev Kunkel, died on March 6, and then about a week later three student members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) came to my office with an unnegotiable demand. 

My friendship with Bev Kunkel or, more formally, Dr. Beverly Waugh Kunkel, Emeritus Professor of Biology, had begun only about one year before, it seemed like we had known each other much longer.  My time at Lafayette began in September 1967, and about a month later I attended an event put on by Lafayette at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City that honored Professor Kunkel and H. Keffer Hartline, his student while Hartline was an undergraduate at Lafayette.  The event was described as Great Teacher-Great Student to honor Hartline who had just won the Nobel Laureate in medicine and the biology Professor who taught him.  I met Bev at that formal event, but it was several months later in the Faculty Dining Room at Lafayette that we really met. We happened to sit at the same table and as we shared our views we soon knew that we thought alike.  When we talked about “education” he responded to me by saying, “Young man what department are you from?” These words of praise were ironic for several reasons. First, I was in charge of finance at the college, and even if I had been from an academic department I was talking to the professor who had just been honored as the “Great Teacher.” Dr. Kunkel had also been honored as “Great Teacher” before as Hartline was the second of Bev’s students to be awarded the Nobel Laureate in medicine.  Bev had enthusiasm for knowledge and for learning that was a delight to be around.  One day, someone at our luncheon table sort of blurted out, “My country right or wrong, who said that?” One Professor guessed Stephen Decatur, but no one was sure. As Bev and I left the Faculty Dining Room we walked in the same direction he left me at the library and went in. About forty minutes later my secretary brought Dr. Kunkel into my office.  He had researched the matter and confirmed that it was indeed Decatur who uttered those words, but he also discovered that the words are typically quoted out of context with the effect of giving the words a different meaning than originally uttered. Dr. Kunkel the scholar!  In the months that followed, luncheons together---his birthday party in October, and then . . . unfortunately I got word that he had been hospitalized in what was likely his final illness.  When I got to the hospital he was already non compos mentis and it was only days until he was gone. The finality of death.  The vulnerability of grief.

Then, the visit by three SDS members. This was only a few days after Bev’s funeral.  At Lafayette students came first so unnegotiable demand or not they were welcome in my office.  Their unnegotiable demand was that Lafayette College withdraw its accounts from Easton National Bank and Trust Company and deposit the funds at some other bank.  The issue was that the bank was not participating in a certain food stamp program---the bank had refused to sell federally subsidized food stamps to needy people on Easton’s South Side.  The SDS at its recent meeting had issued a strongly worded statement that “decried the bank’s anti-humanitarian values.”  Marty Solomon was the leader of the SDS group.  Marty, class of ’70 was a pre-med student and what I remember most about his appearance was a bunch of black, black hair.  I am not sure exactly how I felt, but I know at first I must have felt, in the words of William Butler Yeats, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; /Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”  I listened. Marty made their case. The longer I listened the more sense their case made. The situation was tense for a while and I would be a liar if I didn’t admit to few sleepless nights, but we negotiated with the bank President, Robert Jones and the matter was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction including Marty and the SDS.  The bank president seemed to be okay with the bank providing the food stamp service. There is a Buddhist proverb, “when the student is ready the teacher will appear.” This may have been one of those moments.

To prepare for the Watts visit I studied about Buddhism.  I learned the four Noble Truths are: suffering is inherent in human existence; the cause of our suffering is craving things physical and emotional, the cure is enlightenment, and the eight-fold path will lead us to enlightenment, i.e., Nirvana.  The eight fold path consists of eight Right or Correct ideas about: View—Intention ---Action---Speech---Livelihood---Effort---Mindfulness---Concentration.  In my reading Watts answered my concern about Reincarnation when in referring to Zen Buddhists teachers he said, “I have not found one that believes in Reincarnation as a physical fact, still less one who lays claim to any miraculous powers over the physical world. All such matters are understood symbolically.”

Attachment/Detachment was another of my concerns. There was a phrase popularized by Timothy Leary, “Turn on, Tune in and Drop out” and while it was uttered by Leary in the very different context of indulgent psychedelic drug use there does seem to be a similarity between the ascetic life of the Buddhist and Leary’s life of dropping out.  Buddhism would require followers to live an ascetic life away from the usual day-to-day routine.  Last but not least--is there not an authoritarian ruler lurking behind that Buddha smile?  Surrender and the relinquishing of control to a Guru may be difficult to undo---enlightment may be an elusive goal.  Operating from what one psychologist called “an internal locus of evaluation” is, for me, the touchstone of human existence.

The days went by and each day I did the countdown to the date April 23 circled on my calendar. The week before the event I read in the student newspaper, “The Lafayette,” under the heading “Where and When” “Alan Watts, president of the Society for Comparative Philosophy, will speak at 8:00 p.m. Wednesday in Colton Chapel.”  I was surprised that the student journalists hadn’t written a full article on Watts.  Allen Ginsberg, the counter-culture beat poet and also a Buddhist, who was to appear at Lehigh University, got a full article in the Lafayette student newspaper.  I looked out the window of my office in Markle Hall and in one of those stream of conscious moments I thought about the student Sit-In in the halls of this building a little over a year ago.  The students were protesting the Dow Chemical Company recruiters who were on campus to do student job interviews. The hallways were blocked by students sitting, while protestors outside shouted, “Hell No We Won’t Go,” and other such chants, some a bit scurrilous.  Dow produced the napalm that was being used in the Viet Nam war and this was the reason for the student protest.  Our students had the best of moral reasons for opposing the Viet Nam war, but their student draft deferments were a sign of a vested interest in their opposition as well. This reality was apparent when a student I had gotten to know well confided in me that if he were to get a draft notice he would move to Canada.

When the day of the Watts visit came I was so busy I had little time to think about the dinner.  The beautiful spring day would have been perfect for a hike in the Pocono Mountains nearby.  Instead I met with Jerry the bookstore manager.  We reviewed the financial statements for March and we discussed how the bookstore business was doing.  Then Jerry wanted to prove that the bookstore was more than textbooks so he showed me a display of popular novels that the bookstore was featuring, some of which were: I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou The Godfather by Mario Puzo and Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. After that meeting I went to the President’s Council meeting that continued on through the catered luncheon. We were discussing whether Lafayette would become a co-educational college.  We, in the administration, were all convinced it should happen and that from a market position it had to happen.  The administration would be recommending to the Board of Trustees that Lafayette College go co-ed. The Trustees were scheduled to consider the proposal in late June at the University Club in New York City.  Several of the traditional Trustees, who happened to be donors to the college of large sums of money, wanted Lafayette College to remain an all male school.   In the meeting we were studying market research on the co-ed issue.  The research supported the notion that males and females both wanted to attend a coeducational college.  From the meeting I went back to my office and did some paperwork---soon it was time to go to the Watts dinner.  I took the ten minute walk from my office to the Marquis Dining Hall.

When I entered the room I saw a number of students, two professors, Pete and Watts. Pete introduced me. Watts was a handsome fifty-three year old man with a slight beak nose and hair down nearly to his shoulders.  He radiated charisma as he spoke, but, he also gave off that inscrutable aura typical of the believers of the Eastern religions.  Even though I had doubts about Buddhism and Watts's interpretation thereof my reaction to Watts was childlike—it was like my being a six-year old boy again at the Nemaha County Creamery Cooperative Fair watching the magician blow quarter-dollar coins from his nose. I was seated across from Watts.  When he was served it was apparent he was a vegetarian, which I did not find surprising. He seemed to feel a need to explain his reasons for being a vegetarian, none of which were unusual, these were, slowing the aging process, living longer, and being compassionate to animals.  And then in what was surely a repeat performance, he said, “but the real reason is cows scream louder than carrots.” On cue, everyone laughed. 

Watts then gave a preview of what he would be talking about in the upcoming talk in the chapel. The talk was about the Western concept of God. He would ask the question "What God is dead?  He would describe the Western idea of God as the "monarch" concept; the typical church as a medieval royal court; the religious titles as akin to the language of the "court flatterer."  Watts would portray Nietzsche’s "death of God,” as the abandonment of the Western concept of God as the Big Daddy who is judge and punisher, and who keeps everyone under constant surveillance.  This God was anathema to modern man, so his death was arranged. Watts thought that the death of God in this sense implies no real loss of religion. 

The conversation was first and foremost focused on Watts; he was the center of attention.  “Where is your lap when you stand up?” Watts quipped.  Of course, the koan has no answer. Watts also told us about his trips to the Far East and the Zen Masters he had met there. He talked about the basics of Buddhism. In particular he talked about our attachment to time and to time schedules.  The watch.  The calendar.  We crave the instruments of our obsession with “when.” His words were meaningful for me, since I felt that he was describing me and my grasping of time schedules.   Watts brought up the meaning of a “New York minute” to show how the minute can be recalibrated to incorporate the frenzied pace of New York City.  Watts argued that “attachment” is much broader than simply attachment to physical things.  We also attach to ideas and opinions about ourselves and the world around us, and, yes, to the way we experience time.  We go through life craving one thing after another to get a sense of security about ourselves.  Dessert plates were eaten clean, so the dinner had come to its final course.  At that moment, ironically, people began glancing at their watches, since it was about time to go to the Chapel where Watts would be speaking.  Pete, who was seated at the far end of the table called, “Alan, what classes will you be speaking to tomorrow?” Watts replied, “I’m not sure I need to check, but I must be at the ABE airport by 11 o’clock.” Watts seemed unaware that his words contradicted his earlier assertions on attachment to time schedules.  It would be an understatement to say I was disillusioned.  What happened to, “there’ll be another bus along soon enough?” Was this a mortal defect or was it an insignificant lapse of an otherwise liberating philosophy?  I have never been able to answer this question to my satisfaction.  But in fairness to Watts, possibly, the issue is as simple as, Buddhist or not, if you want to get back to California in time for dinner you will need to be at the ABE Airport by 11 AM.