| To those individuals who felt alienated and disillusioned by traditional Western forms of religion, Alan Watts offered a different way of looking at the world and a new understanding of what it means to be religious. Borrowing heavily from Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Vendanta Hinduism and other Eastern traditions, Watts argues that our widely accepted notion of a person as an active, willing agent existing as a lonely island of consciousness is an illusion rooted in social and linguistic conventions.;If education is concerned with the task of enabling a person to grow and mature as a full human being and religion is concerned with fostering the uniquely human capacity to be fully present and open to the mystery and wonder of existence, then it follows that being educated and becoming religious are part of the same process. For Watts, religious education is characterized not according to a specific content but rather an underlying set of values which promote an awareness of humanity's interrelationship and interdependence with the rest of the universe.;In place of the typical Western image of God as an external personal being governing the universe by means of his omnipotent will and omniscient intellect, Watts argues in favour of the Eastern image of God as the mysterious depth and ground of all being. |
