The book: On the taboo against knowing who you are

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.