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Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 - 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, "from a literary point of view-the best book I have ever written." He also explored human consciousness in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958) and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."

He was an Episcopal priest before converting to Zen Buddhism.

He moved to the United States in 1938 and became a citizen in 1943.

His body was cremated very shortly after his death and his ashes were split with half buried near his library at Druid Heights and half at the Green Gulch Monastery.

He became an Episcopal priest in 1945 and left the priesthood in 1950 when he moved to California.

He is considered one of the key figures in spreading and popularizing the teachings of Zen Buddhism to western audiences.

His novels and lectures, most of which have been posted online in print or recorded format, are still immensely popular.

He briefly worked in a printing house and a bank.

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Alan W. Watts

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