Become What You Are

Become What You Are is a collection of Watts’ essays on Eastern Religion. As much as something like Taoism or Buddhism can be explained in words, Watts does it. But words are entirely inadequate to grasp a non-dual reality, to undue a lifetime of Western scientific thought. Logic is a tooth which can bite everything except itself. Doctrine is pointing at the moon and mistaking the finger for the cosmos.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but I couldn’t help but hear a nagging voice saying “Aren’t all these traditions different?” Maybe to an American, the Tao and Karma and Dharma can be talked about as one school of philosophy, borrowing ideas freely, but internally, to the people who historically lived with them, weren’t they very much distinct religions?