According to Deepak Chopra, "Watts was a spiritual polymatch, the first and possibly greatest."  Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic . Critics agree that this last work stands as a perfect monument to the life and literature of Alan Watts. "Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, . . . Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit."—