Watts's landmark introduction to Zen Buddhism explains the history, philosophy, and practice of Zen with clarity, wit, and intellectual rigor. The book demonstrates how Zen's emphasis on direct experience over conceptual knowledge offers a corrective to the Western masculine tendency to intellectualize and systematize everything, including spiritual life. Watts shows that Zen is not a religion in the Western sense but a method of attention and a way of being that can illuminate any tradition or none. For men drawn to Eastern philosophy or frustrated by the limitations of Western religious frameworks, this remains the essential starting point. One of the most beautifully written introductions to a contemplative tradition ever published.