Western authors writing about eastern mysticism

>>9764956
Just read the source works themselves. You don't want to fall down the rabbit hole of just reading Alan Watts without reading the actual Eastern Canons and then patting yourself on the back for being enlightened. Also, you need to meditate every day.

>>9764956
Literally FUCK ANYTHING that isn't a Western perspective

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>>9764956

Herman Hesse is the perfect author for Eastern mysticism in the form of novels.
>Siddartha
>Demian
>Steppenwolf
>Journey To The East
>Narcissus And Goldmund

Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology series is so damn fun to read, especially the books about Eastern mysticism specifically.
>Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal
>The Hero With A Thousand Faces
>Sake & Satori: Asian Journals — Japan
>Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

Pretty much everything Alan Watts as well.
>The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
>Out Of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek
>The Way Of Zen
>Beat Zen Square Zen and Zen
> The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

Just some ones I've been reading over the years, if anyone else has some good suggestions I'd like to know as well. What about Robert Pirsig's view upon Zen appealed to you OP?

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>>9764966
>Just read the source works themselves. You don't want to fall down the rabbit hole of just reading Alan Watts without reading the actual Eastern Canons and then patting yourself on the back for being enlightened. Also, you need to meditate every day.

That's a fair point, but I don't think there's anything wrong with reading Alan Watts. His writings and views upon social institutions as games is incredibly interesting from a stand point of having that as a structure in how you conduct in reality. He's fun to read, and his interpretations in Western writing and lectures won't deny someone the option to read source material as well. Seems like a shallow jab m8.

>>9765012
Herman Hesse is great but why on Earth would you read so many Alan Watts books? One is enough, after that you should try to focus on reading translations of Eastern books. Reading so many books about Eastern mysticism by westerners without a daily meditation practice is like wasting ten hours a day reading about C++ and barely getting past learning how to write a fizzbuzz program.

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>>9765041
>Herman Hesse is great but why on Earth would you read so many Alan Watts books? One is enough, after that you should try to focus on reading translations of Eastern books.

Because I like to read for one, and we're on /lit/. Why is that a bad thing? You're missing the point of the thread m8. Aside from that, what books specifically would you recommend?

>>9765037
>won't deny someone the option to read source material as well.
No, but in my experience there are a lot of people out there who stop at Watts and don't even bother to establish a daily meditation practice. Mysticism isn't a spectator sport. Like any skill, mindfulness requires focused practice. I think that if you only read Watts and other Western middlemen and didn't move past that, you're actually worse off than if you hadn't bothered with Eastern mysticism at all.

>>9765069
>No, but in my experience there are a lot of people out there who stop at Watts and don't even bother to establish a daily meditation practice. Mysticism isn't a spectator sport. Like any skill, mindfulness requires focused practice. I think that if you only read Watts and other Western middlemen and didn't move past that, you're actually worse off than if you hadn't bothered with Eastern mysticism at all.

In your anecdotal experience sure, but Alan Watts says the same thing more of less many times about meditation without the pointless judgement lol.

>>9764966
Sounds like solid advice. I was thinking that reading about it from a western point of view at first may make it easier to understand for someone who has little previous knowledge of the subject, but yeah I see what you mean. I guess it'd be mildly comparable to reading popsci books rather than working through actual textbooks.
I'll probably try to read both types at the same time desu.

Do you have any entry-level recommendations?

>>9765012
Thanks for the ideas. I read Siddartha in high school and enjoyed it, so I'll check out Hesse. It was the specific contrasts between Western and Eastern thought that Pirsig addressed that made Zen especially enjoyable for me, so thanks for recommending Campbell, assuming that's what the comparative in comparative mythology means. Alan Watts seems great too.

>>9764956
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is boring and the author comes across as a hand-me-down Jack Kerouac with a son.

>>9765083
>>9765083
The thing about Watts is that I actually agree with this kernel of truth of his, which you seem to agree with, too. In "The Book", he says something to the effect of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "This is the one book I wish I had read, and that I want my kids and everyone to read. You should only have to read this book once, and it will give you the most important insights you will need to truly understand life." He goes on to list a bunch of analogies and philosophical arguments for a lot of the central tenets of Zen, Hindu mysticism, and Buddhist philosophy. Right away, there are a few problems here.

1) If the reader were to take his advice at face value and only read the book once, and see it as sufficient for an understanding of Eastern mysticism, then she would come away with a rather confused mishmash of teachings of various Eastern mystical traditions, as interpreted by Alan Watts

2) Watts treats the core ideas of Eastern mysticism as knowledge that can be learned in a book. This basically goes against the core of what mysticism (not just Eastern mysticism, but Christian mysticism. He doesn't spend a lot of time emphasizing the importance of meditation practice or daily focus on mindfulness in the book, but rather he focuses on explaining the ideas. I only read the book once (because Watts told me in the book that I should only need to read it once) but I don't think he even explicitly tells the reader to meditate daily, which would be like if I wrote a book called "Christianity: Everything you need to know about the core ideas of Christianity" and ignored the role of prayer, which is a central part of the practice of Christianity.

3) The reader may come away thinking "wow! This Watts fellow sure is smart! I'm going to read more of his work!" But I think even Watts himself would admit that a lot of his work rehashes and repeats the same messages, so by giving the OP the advice to check out all these books by Watts you're potentially wasting his time that could be spent meditating. I'm not saying never read books about Eastern mysticism, I'm saying if you read one book about Eastern mysticism and want to learn more, you should spend at least a month meditating daily to get in the right mindset, because that's what students of most of these mystical traditions have been doing for hundreds of years. They didn't spend all their time reading a bunch of books that rehashed the same ideas, they spent it practicing.

Apart from that, I think there is a lot of evidence that Watts is a false teacher. I mean, the guy made a lot of money selling books offering life advice but he himself went through two difficult divorces. You can call this an ad hominem but that would just show that you're still caught in the western philosophical paradigm where ideas can be nearly separated from each other like atoms/modules/parts of a machine.