My dad gave me this book when I was traveling back to college sophomore year. If you've read it you might think, "Oh, that is such a sweet and special gift," so maybe I should clarify: he stumbled across it when he was cleaning out his bookshelves and he basically just tossed it at me. There wasn't anything ceremonious about it.



Anyway, I really liked it. It was my literary introduction to Zen philosophy, and it resonated with me immediately. Incidentally, I read it three months after my first trip. I think that had a lot to do with my appreciation of it.



Drawbacks: Watts quotes Jesus a few times. When you go to look up the quote, it's from a non-canonical gospel, I think The Gospel of Thomas. This made it instantly lose cred with my Christian biblical scholar friend with whom I tried to share it ("Jesus never said that!!"). The more I read of Watts, the more I found him making unsupported claims against modern Christianity. Also, he tends to say the same thing in all of his books, over and over, so if you've read one, you've basically read 'em all.



Still, it's a great book for reminding yourself that you always have the here and now to just be. I've reread parts of it several times.