Zen is a way of seeing, not a system of belief

Watts insists from the outset that Zen has no creed, no god to worship, and no doctrine that must be accepted on faith — it's closer to a practical discipline for noticing something about direct experience that conceptual thought habitually obscures. Asking "what does Zen teach" is already a category error, like asking what color a particular smell is; Zen isn't a philosophy competing with other philosophies for the correct answer to life's questions.

This matters for readers approaching it as tourists of "Eastern religion," expecting scripture or moral commandments. Zen masters historically resisted systematizing their insight into propositions precisely because propositions invite belief, and belief is one more layer of concept standing between a person and their own immediate experience. The practice is oriented toward seeing directly, not toward acquiring correct opinions.

*Takeaway: approach Zen questions as invitations to notice something, not puzzles with a correct verbal answer.