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Alan Watts Quotes

All Quotes Acceptance Anxiety Art Attitude Awakening Belief Birth Buddhism Change Chaos Consciousness Culture Curiosity Dance Dancing Darkness Death Desire Effort Ego Energy Enlightenment Environment Expectations Failing Faith Feelings Fighting Freedom Frustration Future Giving God Heart Human Nature Identity Ignorance Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Journey Joy Language Laughter Learning Leaving Letting Go Life Listening Love Lying Meditation Memories Mindfulness Moon Morning Motivational Nature Overcoming Pain Past Philosophy Pleasure Purpose Rain Reality Religion Risk Running Silence Simplicity Skins Sleep Soul Spirituality Suffering Taoism Technology Time Understanding Unity Universe Vision War Water Wisdom Worry Writing

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Life, Inspiring, Simple

Alan Watts (2011). “Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks: 1960-1969”, p.37, New World Library

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.

Mind Blowing, Curiosity, Pushing

This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Life, Inspiring, Monday

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

Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be

Letting Go, Ego, Purpose

No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.

Differences, Worry, Anxiety

Alan Watts (2017). “Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek”, p.93, Sounds True

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

Life, Cheer Up, Reality

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

Degrees, Measuring, Productivity

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.

Memories, Past, Reality

You are the universe experiencing itself.

Eye Opening, Universe

The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.

Thinking, Talking, Tomorrow

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

People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

People, Finding Happiness, Sometimes

All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.

How You Feel, Feels, Fronts

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

Inspirational, Trust, Faith

"The Essence of Alan Watts". Book by Alan Watts, 1977.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Inspirational, Inspiring, Freedom

Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.157, Vintage

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.

Change, World, Way

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.123, New World Library

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Motivational, Change, Moving On

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

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

Inspiring, Way, Problem

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.44, Souvenir Press

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.

Growing Up, People, Needs

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

Journey, Heaven, Musical

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.

Enlightenment, Awakening, Recognition

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

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

Eye, Perception, Listening

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

World, Meaningless

By going out of your mind, you come to your senses

Mind, Going Out, Senses

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

Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

Moving, Ready

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.53, New World Library

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see it's like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also, watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past.

Mean, Past, Thinking

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