The Wisdom of Insecurity - The IPS Book Library

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“The perfect guide for a course correction in life, away from materialism and its empty promise” (Deepak Chopra), The Wisdom of Insecurity shows us how—in an age of unprecedented anxiety—we must embrace the present and live fully in the now in order to live a fulfilling life.

Spending all our time trying to anticipate and plan for the future and to lamenting the past, we forget to embrace the here and now. We are so concerned with tomorrow that we forget to enjoy today.

Drawing from Eastern philosophy and religion, Alan Watts shows that it is only by acknowledging what we do not—and cannot—know that we can learn anything truly worth knowing.

“Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Watts had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the unwritable.’”

Alan Watts

Alan Wilson Watts (1915–1973) was a British-American philosopher who interpreted and popularised Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master’s degree in theology.

Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”