In his definitive introduction to Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts explains the principles and practices of this ancient religion to Western readers. With a rare combination of freshness and lucidity, he delves into the origins and history of Zen to explain what it means for the world today with incredible clarity. Watts saw Zen as "one of the most precious gifts of Asia to the world," and in The Way of Zen he gives this gift to readers everywhere.

Drawing on ancient and modern sources, Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic The Way of Zen. Critics agree that this last work stands as a perfect monument to the life and literature of Alan Watts.

In Nature, Man and Woman, philosopher Alan Watts reexamines humanity s place in the natural world and the relation between body and spirit in the light of Chinese Taoism. Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideas that human beings stand separate from a nature that must be controlled; that the mind is somehow superior to the body; that all sexuality entails a seduction that in some way underlie our exploitation of the earth, our distrust of emotion, and our loneliness and reluctance to love. Here, Watts fundamentally challenges these assumptions,...

"Our main object will be to describe one of the most incomparably beautiful myths that has ever flowered from the mind of man, or from the unconscious processes which shape it and which are in some sense more than man.... This is, furthermore, to be a description and not a history of Christian Mythology.... After description, we shall attempt an interpretation of the myth along the general lines of the "philosophia perennis," in order to bring out the truly catholic or universal character of the symbols, and to share the delight of discovering a fountain of wisdom in a realm where so many...