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Alan Watts trained to be an Episcopal priest, was ordained in 1944, and spent six years serving a congregation before deciding the whole framework of Western institutional religion couldn’t hold what he was actually trying to say. He left the priesthood in 1950, moved to California, and spent the rest of his life translating Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Hindu philosophy into language a Western audience with no religious training could actually use — first through more than 25 books, then through lectures and a Bay Area radio program that made him one of the most recognizable voices of the 1960s counterculture. He never claimed to be anything more than what he called a “philosophical entertainer,” but The Way of Zen and the books that followed it did more than almost anything else in English to make Eastern philosophy legible in the West. He died at his home in Marin County in 1973, at 58.
By Lisanne Swart · 15 books · Philosophy & Eastern Thought · Spirituality · Philosophy · Psychology · Non-Fiction · Updated July 2026
Zen
The Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East
Written when Watts was only 20, and drawing heavily on the work of D.T. Suzuki, this short book was one of the earliest English-language introductions to Zen Buddhism aimed at a general reader rather than an academic one.
Watts himself later considered it derivative of Suzuki and not fully his own voice yet — read it as a historical artifact of his earliest thinking, not as representative of his mature work.
Comparative Religion
The Legacy of Asia and Western Man: A Study of the Middle Way
An early attempt to draw out common ground between Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, written while Watts was still in his early twenties and working through the ideas that would occupy him for the rest of his career.
A minor early work, useful mainly for readers tracing the development of his thought from these first attempts through to his more assured later books.
Philosophy
The Meaning of Happiness
Written shortly after Watts moved to the United States, this book examines happiness through the lens of both Eastern philosophy and Western psychology, already showing the comparative approach that would define his career.
One of his first books written specifically for an American audience — a useful marker of how his thinking shifted once he’d left England for good.
Theology
Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
Written while Watts was still an ordained Episcopal priest, this book argues for the necessity of direct mystical experience within Christianity itself, criticizing what he saw as an overly moralistic, doctrinal Christianity that had lost touch with contemplative practice.
A revealing snapshot of Watts still working from inside institutional Christianity, three years before he left the priesthood entirely — useful for understanding what he was reacting against in his later, more explicitly Eastern-facing work.
PhilosophyCore book
The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Written the year after Watts left the priesthood, this book argues that the modern search for psychological and material security is itself the source of much anxiety, and that genuine peace comes from accepting impermanence and living fully in the present moment rather than grasping for certainty.
Often cited as the book where Watts fully finds his own voice, independent of institutional religion. Its argument anticipates much of what would later be called mindfulness, decades before the term became popular.
ZenCore book
The Way of Zen
Watts’s most famous book traces the historical development of Zen Buddhism from its roots in Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism through to its flowering in Japan, then explains its core practices and ideas in clear, accessible prose. It became one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism in the West and introduced Zen to the emerging Beat Generation and, later, the broader 1960s counterculture.
This is the book his entire reputation rests on, and the reason to start here is simple: it remains the clearest single-volume introduction to Zen Buddhism written for a general Western reader, nearly seventy years after publication.
Philosophy
Nature, Man and Woman
An exploration of sexuality, the body, and the natural world through the lens of Taoist and Zen philosophy, arguing against a Western tendency to treat nature, sexuality, and materiality as inferior to spirit and intellect.
One of his more unusual books thematically — a useful counterpoint to readers who associate Watts purely with abstract mysticism; here he applies the same framework directly to embodiment and physical life.
Essays
This Is It: And Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience
A collection of essays exploring peak spiritual experience, the nature of consciousness, and what Watts calls “cosmic consciousness,” extending ideas from The Way of Zen into more personal, essayistic territory.
Read this once The Way of Zen has given you the historical and conceptual grounding — these essays apply that framework more directly and personally to the question of spiritual experience itself.
Psychology
Psychotherapy East and West
Watts argues that Western psychotherapy and Eastern liberation practices like Zen and Taoism are addressing the same fundamental human problem — a false sense of separation between self and world — and that psychotherapy could become the West’s own path to liberation if it shed its residual dualism.
His most direct engagement with psychology as a discipline, and a useful bridge for readers coming from a therapy or psychology background who want to see how his ideas map onto more familiar clinical language.
Consciousness
The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
A short, lyrical account of Watts’s own experiences with psychedelics, including LSD and psilocybin, framed as a serious exploration of altered states of consciousness and their relationship to the mystical experiences described in Eastern religious traditions.
Controversial in its time and still divisive today, but historically significant as one of the more literary and philosophically serious accounts of psychedelic experience from that era, distinct from more clinical or purely recreational accounts.
Mythology
The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity
A comparative study of myths across cultures that express reality as a play of polar opposites — light and dark, good and evil, self and other — arguing that these are ultimately unified rather than truly separate.
A more scholarly, less personal book than much of his other output — useful if you want to see the comparative-mythology research underneath his more popular writing.
Theology
Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship
A critique of conventional Western theology’s image of a separate, judging God, proposing instead a more mystical, non-dual understanding of divinity closer to Eastern conceptions of ultimate reality.
His most direct theological argument since leaving the priesthood — read this if you want to understand exactly what Watts thought was wrong with the Christian framework he was trained in.
PhilosophyCore book
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Watts argues that the Western sense of being a separate, isolated ego trapped inside a body is a kind of cultural hallucination, a “taboo” against recognizing one’s fundamental interconnection with the rest of the universe, and that most human suffering stems from this false sense of separation.
Arguably his most philosophically dense and personally influential book — the closest thing to a direct statement of his core worldview, distilled into a single, relatively short argument.
Autobiography
In My Own Way: An Autobiography, 1915-1965
Watts’s autobiography, covering his childhood in England, his early fascination with Buddhism, his years as an Episcopal priest, and his subsequent life in California as a writer and lecturer, up through the mid-1960s.
Essential for understanding the biographical context behind everything else on this list — written with the same candor and self-deprecating humor that made his lectures so engaging.
Taoism
Tao: The Watercourse Way
Left unfinished at Watts’s death in 1973 and completed by his collaborator Al Chung-liang Huang, this book is a close, personal study of Taoist philosophy, focusing on the concept of wu wei, or effortless action in harmony with the natural flow of things.
His final book, published posthumously, and a fitting capstone — Taoism was arguably the tradition closest to his own temperament, and this is his fullest treatment of it.
Where to start with Alan Watts
If you have never read him
→ Start with The Way of Zen. It’s the book his reputation rests on, and it remains the clearest single-volume introduction to Zen Buddhism written for a general reader.
If you want his most personally distilled worldview
→ The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are is the closest thing to a direct statement of his core philosophy.
If anxiety and the search for security are what draw you to his work
→ The Wisdom of Insecurity anticipates much of what’s now called mindfulness, decades before the term existed.
If you want the biographical context behind everything else
→ In My Own Way, his autobiography, fills in the life behind the ideas.
If spirituality and connecting with something larger than yourself is what you’re after
→ My books on spirituality reading list has more writers in this tradition.
If it’s philosophy and psychology more broadly you want
→ My best philosophy books list and my best psychology books list both have more in this register.
Looking for what else I recommend
→ Every book I’ve personally reviewed lives on my bookshelf.
Frequently asked questions about Alan Watts’s books
Watch
Alan Watts's final radio interview, 1973
Recorded shortly before his death, Watts reflects on his childhood, his path from the priesthood to Zen, and the meaning behind ritual.
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