Alan Watts Quotes - Page 11

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• But we must not suffer over the suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Adversity, Suffering

  8 Copy quote

• If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiration, Meditation Practice, Boiler Room

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• You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Ocean, Way

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• In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion; and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play.

  Alan Watts

  Philosophy, Latin, Mean

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

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• If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhist, Memories, Real

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

  20 Copy quote

• To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.

  Alan Watts

  Running, Pain, Fighting

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

  12 Copy quote

• There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Said, Poetry Is

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• There is no mission, nor interest to convert, and yet I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter. We should see at once that the high ideals for which we are killing and regimenting each other are empty and abstract substiutes for the unheeded miracles that surround us - not only in the obvious wonders of nature but also in the overwhelming uncanny fact of mere existence.

  Alan Watts

  Laughter, Believe, Miracle

  17 Copy quote

• You can't make love without art.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Making Love

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• When your eyes are functioning well you don't see your eyes. If your eyes are imperfect you see spots in front of them. That means there are some lesions in the retina or wherever, and because your eyes aren't working properly, you feel them. In the same way, you don't hear your ears. If you have a ringing in your ears it means there's something wrong with your ears. Therefore, if you do feel yourself, there must be something wrong with you. Whatever you have, the sensation of I is like spots in front of your eyes - it means something's wrong with your functioning.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Eye, Imperfection

  Alan Watts (1977). “The essence of Alan Watts”, Celestial Arts Publishing Company

  18 Copy quote

• The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Struggle, Killing

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

  10 Copy quote

• Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil.

  Alan Watts

  Strong, Love Is, Men

  Alan W. Watts (2012). “Nature, Man and Woman”, p.11, Vintage

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• For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them – the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.

  Alan Watts

  Giving Up, Ideas, Vision

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

  6 Copy quote

• ...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.

  Alan Watts

  Technology, Civilization, Goal

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• That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

  Alan Watts

  Rain, Book, Sound

  14 Copy quote

• The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.

  Alan Watts

  Roles, Guru, Shows

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• Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Views, Sea

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• Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones.

  Alan Watts

  Cute, Simple, Practice

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• I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.

  Alan Watts

  Wave Of Life, Light, Forever

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.11, Souvenir Press

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• The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.

  Alan Watts

  Hands, Water, Trying

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• A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

  Alan Watts

  Christian, Buddhist, Laughter

  Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.57, New World Library

  16 Copy quote

• Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration.

  Alan Watts

  Frustration, Self, Perfect

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• Everybody is I, you all know you are you. And wheresoever's beings exist throughout all galaxies it doesn't any difference. You are all of them, and when they come into being that's you coming into being, you know that very well. Only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland. You don't have to know how to shine the sun, you just do it, like you breathe. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education on how to do it.

  Alan Watts

  Past, Thinking, Differences

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• All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.

  Alan Watts

  People, Complicated, Consciousness

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• I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Teacher, Laughter

  7 Copy quote

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