The Watercourse Way: Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen"

Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen remains one of the best introductions to Zen Buddhism for the Western reader, and reading it after his shorter The Wisdom of Insecurity gave me a fuller sense of the tradition behind his ideas. Watts had a rare gift for explaining Eastern thought to Western minds without distorting it into mere self-help, and here he traces Zen’s roots in Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism, then explains its distinctive spirit and practice. Zen, as Watts presents it, is less a set of beliefs than a direct way of experiencing reality, an awakening to the way things actually are, beyond the filters of concept and language. It is subtle, paradoxical, and, in Watts’s hands, genuinely illuminating.

Here is what The Way of Zen taught me about Zen’s roots, about the limits of words and concepts, and about the watercourse way of acting without forcing.

Key takeaways

• Zen blends Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism into a distinctive practice.
• Direct experience, not concepts, is the heart of Zen.
• Words and ideas can obscure reality; the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.
• The koan aims to break the grip of conceptual thinking.
• The “watercourse way”: acting naturally, without forcing, like water.

The roots of Zen

Watts begins by giving Zen its proper lineage, which makes it far more comprehensible. Zen, he explains, arose from the meeting of two great traditions: Indian Mahayana Buddhism, with its emphasis on awakening and the illusory nature of the separate self, and Chinese Taoism, with its love of spontaneity, naturalness, and harmony with the flow of things. From Buddhism, Zen takes the goal of liberation and the insight into the constructed nature of the ego; from Taoism, it takes its characteristic flavour, earthy, humorous, spontaneous, deeply at home in the natural world. Understanding this dual ancestry helped me grasp why Zen feels so different from other forms of Buddhism: less doctrinal, less austere, more immediate and playful. Watts traces this history clearly, so that by the time he turns to Zen itself, we understand the soil from which its strange and beautiful flowers grew.

Beyond words and concepts

The central insight of Zen, as Watts presents it, is that ultimate reality cannot be captured in words, concepts, or doctrines, and that our usual reliance on thought and language actually stands between us and direct experience of the way things are. There is a famous Zen saying that the teachings are like a finger pointing at the moon: if you stare at the finger, you miss the moon. Concepts can point toward reality, but they are not reality itself, and clinging to them keeps us trapped in our heads, experiencing the world through a screen of words and ideas rather than directly. Zen aims at satori, a sudden awakening that breaks through this conceptual screen into immediate experience. This is why Zen so often uses the koan, the famous paradoxical riddle (such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”) designed to frustrate and finally exhaust the rational, concept-making mind, jolting it into a direct, non-conceptual apprehension of reality. The goal is not to think correctly but to see directly.

The watercourse way

The aspect of Zen I find most beautiful, and most practical, is what Watts (drawing on its Taoist roots) calls the watercourse way: the ideal of acting naturally and spontaneously, without forcing, in harmony with the way things are, like water. Water does not strain or struggle; it flows around obstacles, finds its own level, yields and yet wears away stone, accomplishing everything without forcing anything. The Zen ideal, similarly, is a kind of effortless action, deeply skilled yet utterly natural, in which the separation between the doer and the doing dissolves, the master archer who does not aim, the calligrapher whose brush moves of itself. This is the opposite of the anxious, effortful striving that characterises so much of modern life. To live the watercourse way is to stop fighting the current, to act from a place of naturalness and presence rather than forced control. It connects directly to the wisdom I found earlier in the Tao Te Ching, here given Zen’s distinctive immediacy.

What I’m taking with me

The Way of Zen deepened my understanding of a tradition I had only glimpsed, and Watts is a wonderful guide. What I am taking from it is the recognition of Zen’s roots in both Buddhism and Taoism, which makes its distinctive spirit comprehensible; the central insight that reality lies beyond words and concepts, and that the finger is not the moon; and above all the watercourse way, the ideal of acting naturally and without forcing, in harmony with the flow of things. In a life so full of effortful striving and conceptual noise, Zen’s invitation, to stop forcing, to drop the screen of concepts, to flow like water and see directly, is one I keep wanting to accept.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Way of Zen about?

It is Alan Watts’s introduction to Zen Buddhism, tracing its roots in Indian Buddhism and Chinese Taoism and explaining its spirit and practice, centered on direct experience of reality beyond words and concepts.

What is a koan?

A paradoxical riddle or question, such as “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”, used in Zen to frustrate and exhaust the rational mind, helping to jolt it into a direct, non-conceptual awakening (satori).

What is the “watercourse way”?

The Zen and Taoist ideal of acting naturally and spontaneously, without forcing, in harmony with the way things are, like water that flows around obstacles and accomplishes everything without strain.

References & further reading

1. Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. Pantheon, 1957.
2. Suzuki, D. T. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. 1934.
3. Watts, Alan. The Wisdom of Insecurity. Pantheon, 1951.