Alan Watts

Through his books and lectures, Alan Watts (1915–1973) introduced millions of Westerners to Eastern philosophies such as Vedanta, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism. Born in England, Watts began attending the London Buddhist Lodge in his teenage years. He immigrated to the United States in his twenties, worked as a chaplain and teacher, and wrote more than twenty books, including the bestseller The Way of Zen. Watts was sometimes called a “guru” to the counterculture, but he preferred to think of himself as a “philosophical entertainer.”