Recently I came across the following passage in Robert Lawlor's captivating book on Australian Aboriginal culture, Voices of the First Day:
The materialistic industrial societies are increasingly caught in a round-the-clock whirl in which people are trapped, day after day, in a breathless grind of facing deadlines, racing the clock between several jobs, and trying to raise children and rush through the household chores at the same time. Agriculture and industrialism, in reality, have created a glut of material goods and a great poverty of time. Most people have a way of life devoid of everything except maintaining and servicing their material existence 12 to 14 hours every day. In contrast, the Aborigines [spent] 12 to 14 hours a day in cultural pursuit. [p. 65].
As Lawlor points out, "their traditional way of life provided more time for the artistic and spiritual development of the entire society. Dance, ritual, music-in short, culture-was the primary activity." The Aborigines passed the message of their ancestors down through a rich tradition of ritual storytelling, and their myths reflect the qualities of one of the oldest and most interesting surviving human cultures.
The Aboriginal view of creation is rooted in the idea of an original dreamtime, perhaps corresponding to a historical age, in which the conscious and unconscious aspects of mankind were unified "on the first day." Aboriginal ceremonies emphasize remembering that primal unity through ritual acts. According to their mythology, these ceremonies are visited by the Rainbow Serpent, described by Lawlor as "the original appearance of creative energy in the dream time." In the parallel Hindu myth of creation, the god Vishnu dreams the world into being while riding a great serpent in the cosmic ocean. In these Aboriginal and Hindu stories, one can see two similar tellings of the same essential myth.
Robert Lawlor shares his interest in the mythology of the Proto-Australoid peoples common to Australia and ancient India with joseph Campbell, who was a great friend of Alan Watts and the posthumous editor of the works of Henrich Zimmer. Working from Zimmer's notes, Campbell wrote The Philosophies of India, which offered a tantalizing glimpse into the traditions from which Buddhism grew several thousand years ago. Sadhus of Dravidian ancestry still roam beyond the villages in India today, living much as the Aborigines did-without huts or clothes, in direct relationship and harmony with the physical and invisible worlds. As one becomes familiar with the religious psychologies in play, it is apparent that the unity of the human and the divine is embodied in the emergence of the individual from the dreaming of the godhead. This view is the essence of Hinduism and, ultimately, Buddhism. By contrast, the myths of creation adopted by the West place man on the earth beneath the celestial throne of an almighty Lord of the Heavens, to whom we owe not only our existence but also our complete obedience. Any aspiration or emulation of the deity is coupled with a fundamental separation from the deity.
Alan Watts's life can be described in part as a journey away from the limited conception of the divine he came to know in his early training for the priesthood. It was a journey that took him from London to California, through encounters with D. T. Suzuki, joseph Campbell, and Gary Snyder, and from the Episcopal Church to the beatniks.
As a young man attending King's School in Canterbury, prior to entering the church as an Episcopal priest, Alan Watts was troubled by the image of God as a "cosmic tyrant." It just didn't make sense to him. Why would an infinitely wise ruler treat his subjects so harshly for their sins? God, in His infinite wisdom, had created such sinners, after all. Watts began to frequent the bookstores of London in search of a more plausible and comprehensive view of the divine. He read extensively, and within a few years he had followed his curiosity about such matters to the Buddhist Society in London, a philosophical organization guided by Christmas Humphrys. There he came into contact with the way of liberation known as Zen Buddhism. He was later to meet D. T. Suzuki there, and instead of going to Oxford, Watts became deeply involved in the activities of the Buddhist Society, including the publication of its journal, The Middle Way. After contributing several articles, he became its editor and wrote a regular column. These articles were soon followed by a pamphlet entitled An Outline of Zen Buddhism and then by a short book, The Spirit of Zen.
Alan Watts subsequently married Eleanor Everett, and they moved to America in 1938. In 1940, his book The Meaning of Happiness was published by Harper in New York. Much of the following decade was spent trying to fit in as a priest in the Episcopal Church. However, his early exposure to Zen Buddhism raised many difficult questions. In 1949, he wrote The Supreme Identity in a valiant attempt to reconcile Christianity with Buddhism and Vedanta, but in 1950 he left the church-and his wife-and soon married Dorothy DeWitt. Together they moved to a farmhouse in Millbrook, New York where later the same year he wrote The Wisdom of Insecurity.
On New Year's Eve in 1950, Alan and Dorothy invited joseph Campbell and his wife, the accomplished dancer jean Erdman, to dinner along with the avant-garde composer john Cage and Luisa Coomaraswami. The evening's conversations ranged from discussions of possible early transpacific voyages from Asia to America, to the latest innovations in music and dance, and then on to Joseph's experiences on the West Coast. The evening made quite an impression on Alan, who had already decided to move to San Francisco. On February 6, 1951, he and Dorothy departed for California to begin a new life.
Alan had accepted a teaching position offered by Fredric Spiegelberg at the Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. There he met poet Gary Snyder and Japanese artist Saburo Hasegawa. Both of them, in their own way, broadened his aesthetic appreciation of Zen and introduced him to various northern California artists and writers who were living what was known as the Beat way of life. When the academy moved to the Pacific Heights area of San Francisco, Spiegelberg asked Watts to give up his teaching position to serve as dean. The school was poorly organized, and the job proved to be quite stressful. On more than one occasion, Saburo invited Alan to stop by and enjoy a relaxing cup of tea in his office. The tea was Japanese green tea, offered in the style of the tea ceremony while participants were seated on the carpet. The tea ceremony eventually became quite popular in certain areas of San Francisco, due in part to the ongoing classes offered by Saburo's wife, Kiyoko.
Traditional brushstroke calligraphy also gained a following in the Bay Area, due to the influence of both Saburo and Hodo Tobase. The well-known surrealistic painter Gordon Onslo-Ford became an avid student of Hasegawa's and later Tobase's, and both he and Alan fell in love with the paper, inks, and brushes used in calligraphy. Years later Gordon spoke of his first meeting with Saburo Hasegawa in an interview with Michael Wenger of the San Francisco Zen Center:
I should perhaps say how my interest in calligraphy started. There was a well-known japanese painter called Sabra Hasegawa, who had been in New York, and had been a great friend of Franz Klein. Hasegawa was the editor of a calligraphy magazine in japan, and he was interested in the liaison between the East and the West. He was scheduled to talk at the Asian Academy. Alan Watts, who was then the dean, telephoned me and told me that he was going to stay for a week, and would I look after him, and I agreed. So I went to Hasegawa's lecture, which was absolutely brilliant.
The next day I met Hasegawa and I took him for a walk in Muir Woods. We walked for two hours. Hasegawa was a man of tea. He was dressed in the most immaculate brown kimono. We walked for two hours, and he didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything. When we came back, I said to him, "Would you rather go and have some lunch at my house or would you rather go to my studio?" Hasegawa said "I would rather go to your studio." My studio was on board a ferry boat at that time. When we got on board, he looked around-he looked at the floor and he indicated that he would like to do some calligraphy. He started clearing the junk away and prepared a beautiful little place. Out of his sleeve he brought a wonderful stick of two-hundred-year-old