Alan Watts Quotes - Page 18

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• The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

  Alan Watts

  Sex, Animal, Compassion

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• Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.

  Alan Watts

  Truth, Lying, Heart

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.38, New World Library

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• The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

  Alan Watts

  Religious, Ideas, Religion

  Alan Watts (1950). “The Supreme Identity: An Essay on Oriental Metaphysic and the Christian Religion”, Vintage

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• When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.

  Alan Watts

  Dance, Journey, Play

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

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• What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.

  Alan Watts

  People, Needs, Movement

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• Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

  Alan Watts

  Philosophy, Men, Expression

  Alan Watts (1995). “The Philosophies of Asia: The Edited Transcripts”, Tuttle Publishing

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• The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Writing, Order

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

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• In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain; it only indicates.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Energy, Stopping

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• You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.

  Alan Watts

  Flower, Long, Realizing

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• Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Want Something, Greed

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• Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

  Alan Watts

  Religion, Whole, Department

  Alan Watts (1999). “Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion”, p.8, Tuttle Publishing

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• Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen.

  Alan Watts

  Long, Effort, Mind

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• You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.

  Alan Watts

  Jumping, Laughing, Creeps

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• Where does my fist go when I open up my hand? Where does my lap go when I stand up?

  Alan Watts

  Hands, Doe, Lap

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• So we down-to-earth, gutsy, tough, realistic, and practical types have just been squandering billions of dollars and unimaginable amounts of energy, nerve-work, and materials in whizzing off to the moon to discover, as astronomers knew before, that it was just a dreary slag heap. This is the true, original and scientifically etymological meaning of being lunatics. Crying for the moon.

  Alan Watts

  Sunset, Moon, Night

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal”, p.116, Vintage

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• Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony

  Alan Watts

  People, Banking, Realizing

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• You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Bangs, Bigs

  "What Is Reality?". Book by Alan Watts, 1973.

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• If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

  Alan Watts

  Writing, Study, Paradox

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• ...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Lust, Use

  Alan Watts (1973). “This is It, and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience”, Vintage

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• Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.

  Alan Watts

  Lonely, Islands, Normal

  Alan Watts (1973). “Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship”, Vintage

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• We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Heart, Thinking

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 112), 1966.

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• The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens... within I don't know how many years, but in not too long a time, it's going to become basic common sense that you are not some alien being who confronts an external world that is not you, but that almost every intelligent person will have the feeling of being an activity of the entire universe.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Years, Taught Us

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• What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, People, Devil

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• The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.

  Alan Watts

  Ego, Tests, Hallucinations

  Alan Watts (2001). “Eastern Wisdom”, Mjf Books

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• Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Kind, All Kinds

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