Alan Watts was the Joyous Cosmologist, as the title of a book he wrote claimed. He was a major philosophical figure in the 50s and 60s, the writer of many books, and a popularizer of Asian religions and philosophies.
Here he gives a Ted Talk that long predates Ted, and gets to one of the key questions about life. He does it artfully, uses the word retch in a memorable phrase, and you can listen here.
lyrical
You’re not a Watts guy. But you probably were, at least a little, once upon a time.
Am I right?
I used to stay up and listen to him on the WNEW overnight (I think) on Sundays, rather than get that sleep that science shows is so needed for good studies on Monday. My grandmother was a Buddhist by instinct, a Methodist by practice, and she and Watts were big influences on me.
Good to see, too, as I browsed Wikipedia, that the Eastern acolyte and dude to tell everyone else how to do it most likely died of big long-term alcohol use. (I have no idea that this is true, but someone wrote it on Wikipedia, and if so, is provocative.)
But that doesn’t make this bit wrong.