Watts’s major work, The Way of Zen (1957), was a bestseller that was instrumental in bringing Zen Buddhism to national attention in the West and greatly influenced the counterculture of the 1960s.
He became a popular lecturer and radio broadcaster, known for his ability to convey complex spiritual concepts in an accessible and engaging style. He often described himself as a “philosophical entertainer.”
Ego and Nonself
Topics Include: 1) The concept of non-self in Buddhism and its connection to the non-dual traditions of the world; 2) Alan Watts: our ego as a social construct; 3) The consequences of identifying with an egoic self; 4) Seeing ourselves as waves as part of the ocean; 5) Seeing the teaching of non-self as part of the non-dual traditions of the world; 6) The development of language and abstract symbolic thought through human evolution; 7) The benefits of language and symbolic thought; 8) the negative consequences of language and symbolic thought; 9) The development of the subject/object relationship; 10) Language and psychological distancing; 11) Language and the creation of a narrative self; 12) Language and the creation of the concept of time; 13) Language and the creation of the “social self”; 14) Language and the fall from innocence and redemption in our spiritual traditions; 15) The final question: Who am I?
January 31, 2026
The Harsh Truth You Forgot at Birth
Topics Include: 1) The two ideas fundamental to the Dharma: Our inherent Buddha nature and the law of karma. 2) Alan Watts: how karma conditions us into a false sense of reality; 3) How we are robbed of our ability to live in the present moment; 4) How we are an expression of the universe playing out through our lives; 5) How do we recognize the profound intelligence that we already are? 6) How we resist the flow of life moving through us; 7) Discovering the fundamental awareness that moves through our lives; 8) Understanding that consciousness has never left us; 9) Understanding the effects of karma through the evolution of homo sapiens: how language creates our separation from reality; 10) Integrating our karmic selves with our sacred presence.
January 24, 2026
Illusion and Reality
Topics Include: 1) How our identification with our karma causes us to create a sense of self which is the basis for suffering in the world; 2) The words of Alan Watts: Life is a film playing out in our mind, and we are actors in the play; 3) What it means to wake up; 4) How our karma creates our sense of identity, our sense of self; 5) How we identify with our stories to create a sense of a solid self; 6) Awareness: the silent witness that observes the comings and goings of our mind; 7) How our reality is created through our perception; 8) How awakening occurs; 9) How suffering becomes our teacher; 10) The final awakening; 11) How, as a species, we have become alienated from reality; 12) How we begin to see ourselves as manifestations of the universe, as manifestations of what is sacred and divine.
January 17, 2026
What Reality Is Not
Topics Include: 1) The breadth of Alan Watt’s perspective; 2) We are not separate from reality; 3) Perception creates reality; 4) How we create reality through language and karma; 5) The constant steady presence of awareness; 6) The role of culture and language in distorting our perception of reality; 7) The difference between being lost in thought and aware of thought; 8) The price of trying to control life; 9) Awakening is the recognition of what always has been present; 10) Understanding how we become separated from who we truly are and how we need to return.
January 10, 2026
The Observer Effect
Topics Include: 1) How our relationship to reality determines the basis for the Four Noble Truths; 2) How our karma determines the way we see the world; 3) What is the observer effect? 4) We are not separate from reality, but create realty through the act of perception; 5) Reality is co-created: we shape the world as the world shapes us: 6) We are the universe perceiving itself through our presence; 7) Who is it that is looking out through your eyes right now? 8) What it means to be the observer or to see with mindfulness; 9) How the world you experience is shaped by the lens through which you perceive it; 10) The power of attention in focussing our sense of reality; 11) How the universe mirrors back the inner state that we embody; 12) How mindfulness creates transformation and awakening; 13) What it means to truly understand who we are.
December 20, 2025
What is Reality?
Topics Include: 1) The fundamental question in Buddhism: why we don’t see reality as it truly is; 2) Alan Watts: We create reality through the act of perception: the role of the observer; 3) The observer and the observed are one; 4) The two layers of existence: our conventional life and the awareness that observes it; 5) The benefits of being the observer; 6) Understanding what awareness is and realizing awakening or enlightenment; 7) The role and value of meditation; 8) Realizing our non-dual presence in the world…who we already are!
November 29, 2025
Desire and Attachment
Topics Include: 1) Desire and craving as the cause of suffering in the world; 2) Alan Watts on the difference between desire and attachment; 3) Life itself is a form of desire; 4) The difference between desirelessness and contentment; 5) Non-wanting as a form of passive resignation from life; 6) The foundation of life energy that infuses all sentient beings; 7) How to live fully without causing suffering; 8) How to want things but not be enslaved by those wants; 9) Desirelessness and our inability to understand value and preference; 10) The difference between wanting nothing and needing nothing; 11) Desire and finding a sense of purpose in life; 12) Playing the game of life with total commitment but not attachment; 13) Seeing ourselves as the sacred energy that pervades all life, while at the same time manifesting our own unique identities.
November 22, 2025
Eight Brutal Lessons That Will Wake You Up
Topics Include: 1) Our relationship with the divine or sacred; 2) The work of Alan Watts; 3) The eight brutal lessons that will wake you up; 4) How our perceived reality gaslights us into delusion and suffering; 5) Lesson #1: You are not your thoughts; 6) If we are not our thoughts, we don’t have to be controlled by our karma; 7) Lesson #2: Resistance creates suffering; 8) The Buddha’s teaching of the two darts: We create suffering by the stories we build around our pain; 9) How our expectations cause us to suffer; 10) Lesson #3: Your Ego is a Fiction; 11) How our sense of self is a constructed illusion; 12) How we live simultaneously in two realities: conventional reality and absolute reality; 13) What is the sacred transcendent reality that resides within us?
8 November, 2025
Eight Brutal Lessons Part 2
Topics Include: 1) Lesson #1: You are not your thoughts; 2) Lesson #2: Resistance creates suffering; 3) Lesson #3: You ego is a fiction; 4) Lesson #4: Most of your problems are invented; 5) Lesson #5: You are not separate from life; 6) You are the universe expressing itself through awareness; 7) How our choices are based on our karma; 8) Lesson #6: Your desire for certainty is making you stupid; 9) Lesson #7: Your need to be right is keeping you wrong; 10) Lesson #8: Nothing matters. And that’s what makes everything matter; 11) The universe already exists within us.
15 November, 2025
You Are Not Your Thoughts
Topics Include: 1) The evolution of Buddhist thought from Theravada to Mahayana; 2) The parallel history of eastern spirituality and the Abrahamic traditions; 3) The non-dual traditions of eastern and western religions; 4) The work of Alan Watts: You Are Not Your Thoughts: How we mistake our thoughts for our self; 5) What is mindfulness? 6) You are the silent witness.; 7) Seeing your mind as your most devoted personal assistant; 8) How karma creates our thoughts and our sense of self; 9) Weakening the power of thoughts through mindfulness; 10) The mind as our biological radar system; 11) What is the sacred core of our being? 12) The benefits of increasing awareness.
1 November, 2025
