Zen and a Buddhist Atheist

I had long been attracted to Zen and its impossible questions. The very first book I read on Buddhism was The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, which I struggled to make sense of when I was eighteen, shortly after I left grammar school in Watford. I was drawn to Zen's pithy, enigmatic sayings, its down-to-earth simplicity, its stark aesthetic, its ruthless honesty. Throughout my time as a scholar monk in Switzerland, I would occasionally pick up a book of Zen poems by Ryokan or Basho and be struck anew by the crystalline imagery of mountain paths, blades of grass, and bowls of tea. Of all the schools of Buddhism, it seemed the only one that embraced the arts--poetry, painting, calligraphy, landscaping--as integral features of its practice rather than decorative adornments of its rituals and beliefs.

---Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, by Stephen Batchelor---