Everything Is Fine, Actually

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - The Bookish Boy in the Garden
2. Chapter Two - Eastward Looking Eyes
3. Chapter Three - Transplanting the Mind
4. Chapter Four - The Philosopher of No Beliefs
5. Chapter Five - Zen and the Art of Not Trying
6. Chapter Six - Tao: The Flow That Cannot Be Forced
7. Chapter Seven - Psychedelics and Perception
8. Chapter Eight - Culture Is Not Your Friend (But It’s Hilarious)
9. Chapter Nine - The Game, the Mask, and the Self
10. Chapter Ten - Death, Dissolution, and the Great Dance
11. Chapter Eleven - The Meme Monk

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE The Bookish Boy in the Garden HE WAS A strange little boy. Not strange in a troubling way. Not a menace or a misfit. But peculiar, in the quiet, curious, watching-too-much sort of way. The kind of kid who stared at raindrops racing down glass windows and tried to figure out why one bead moved faster than the other. The kind of boy who didn’t just ask “why is there a God?” but followed it up with “...and why does He need a cathedral?” Alan Watts was born in 1915, in a patch of England that still smelled like empire. Chislehurst, Kent. His father worked for Michelin. His mother was a housewife with an artistic streak and a strong Christian backbone. They were middle class, proper,...