Alan Watts Quotes - Page 10

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• The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

  Alan Watts

  Past, Reality, Concrete

  Alan Watts (1989). “The way of Zen”, Vintage

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• We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.

  Alan Watts

  Time, Past, Thinking

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• Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Symphony, Joy

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• No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Fear, Heart

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.79, Souvenir Press

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• The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Jobs, Men

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• What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

  Alan Watts

  Ocean, Future, Zest

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Book by Alan Watts, 1966.

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• Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Tasks, Our Society

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.54, Souvenir Press

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• What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Ideas, Example

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• Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Humor, Godly

  "The Way of Zen". Book by Alan Watts, 1957.

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• How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Faith, Eye

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Book by Alan Watts, 1966.

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• Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Two, Alcohol

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.76, New World Library

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• To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.

  Alan Watts

  Ego, Life Is, Inches

  "Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety".

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• We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day.
  When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses.

  Alan Watts

  Mind, Needs, Senses

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• You're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe...

  Alan Watts

  Bangs, Puppets, Ends

  "The Nature of Consciousness". Book by Alan Watts, 1960.

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• In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

  Alan Watts

  Ideas, Matter, Certain

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• Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.

  Alan Watts

  Death, Sexy, Mean

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal”, p.135, Vintage

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• If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.

  Alan Watts

  Acceptance, Suffering, Problem

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• Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.

  Alan Watts

  Jesus, Atheist, Men

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal”, p.147, Vintage

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• At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Envy, Simplicity

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• Thought is a means of concealing Truth.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Concealing

  Alan Watts (1982). “Play to Live: Selected Seminars”

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• But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

  Alan Watts

  Rate

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• A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.

  Alan Watts

  Baby, Philosophy, War

  Alan W. Watts (2007). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality”, p.23, New World Library

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• Substances like LSD, which give away a secret about the nature of the social game - the human game and what underlies it - are potentially dangerous, of course, like any good thing is. Electricity is dangerous, fire is dangerous, cars are dangerous, planes are dangerous, but not so dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all.

  Alan Watts

  Fire, Games, Giving

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• Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated

  Alan Watts

  Light, Like Love, Expectations

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• The Highest to which people can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content; nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it; there is the limit.

  Alan Watts

  People, Giving, Limits

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