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PREFACE

The poem on the preceding page, by Chia Tao of the T’ang dynasty, suits my mood and provides the title of this book. I live between two places—a ferryboat on the Sausalito waterfront and a lonely cottage in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco; a mountain sacred to the Indians which wraps itself in an at­mosphere of strange beneficence. During the past three years I have done almost all my writing in this cottage. This includes my recently published autobiography, In My Own Way, and a considerable number of short pieces written for my Journal (published for subscribers), and for such magazines as Playboy and Earth. Most of the latter are assembled here in the form of a journal with dated entries, though they are ordered by content rather than chro­nology because my thinking spirals: it does not go ahead in a straight line.

Some critics will therefore call me repe­titious, but I have found, in the process of teaching, that most students do not under­stand one’s ideas unless they are repeated —under differing analogies or in varying forms of words, as a musician constructs variations on a theme. Besides, what I mean by understanding is not simply verbal comprehension: it is feeling it in your bones.

The form of this book is therefore that of a “mountain journal” concerned with the philosophy of nature, ecology, aesthetics, religion, and metaphysics, and the entries are grouped more or less according to those topics. The dates will allow those who are chronologically oriented to rearrange them in their mind’s eye.

Alan Watts

Druid Heights, California

Spring 1972

CONTENTS

The Water

And the Mountain

The Watercourse Way

Flowing with the Too

The Future of Ecstasy

The Reality of Reincarnation

Implications of Karma

Spectrum of Love

Black and/or White

Consider the Lilies

What on Earth Are We Doing?

Incantation of the Stars

Was Jesus a Freak?

What Shall We Do with the Church? 153 Do You Smell?

On the Tantra

The Art of Contemplation

The Zero-One Amazement

Protogenesis

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