New York 1939-41
“ When you standing on the top of a collapsing skyscraper there is nothing for it but to take wings, if you can find them. I was lucky,” wrote Watts. He was in Manhattan and full of enthusiasm for the place.
Almost immediately, Watts took up study with Sokei-an Sasaki, who had founded the Buddhist Society of America. Around 60 years old, he was a master for Ruth, his mother in law. Sokei-an was a quiet, but, in his way, charismatic figure who sometimes shocked Western sensibilities by farting to show the true Zen moment.
Watts paraphrased “No pahpose anywhere in rife itser’f. When you drop fart you do not say, ‘At nine o clock, I drop fart.’ It just happen.”
He was, according to Watts, “ a gentle, stocky man with his hair close shaved and head shaped like a short watermelon”. He was perhaps the first to insist to Watts that “Zen is to realize that life is simply nonsense, without meaning other than itself or further purpose beyond itself” This was a theme that Watts was to reiterate again and again during his career.
Sokei-an gave Watts a series of koans to solve – ostensibly impenetrable riddles such as ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping’. These were part of the standard method of Zen training at the time. They simply made Watts bored and angry, although he worked very hard at them. At the end of 9 months, he gave up saying it was ‘like looking for a needle in a haystack’
In November 1941 – Ruth’s husband, Warren, had recently died – Ruth set up the First Zen Institute of America for Sokei-an on East 56th Street. However, in December that year Pearl Harbour was bombed and Sokei-an was, like most Japanese-Americans, interned a few months later.
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