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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 13

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

We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

Suffering, Culture, Disease

And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords

Hands, Ignorant, Used

Faith...is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown.

Faith, Letting Go, Oneself

A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.

Culture, Body, Clock

...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.

Problem, Chopping, Horns

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

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.

Life, Inspiring, Formulas

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

Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.

Reality, Ultimate, Ultimate Reality

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

To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.

God, Way, Feels

Alan Watts (1998). “The Culture of Counter-culture: The Edited Transcripts”, Tuttle Publishing

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

Way, Liberation, Discovering

It seems to be the special peculiarity of human beings that they reflect: they think about thinking and know that they know. This, like other feedback systems, may lead to vicious circles and confusions if improperly managed, but self-awareness makes human experience resonant. It imparts that simultaneous "echo" to all that we think and feel as the box of a violin reverberates with the sound of the strings. It gives depth and volume to what would otherwise be shallow and flat.

Thinking, Echoes, Self

Everyone is the fabric and structure of existence.

Fabric, Structure, Existence

Alan Watts (2018). “Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek”, p.21, Souvenir Press Ltd

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.

Rain, Book, Sound

The Greek word for sinning means to ‘miss the point;’ The point is eternal life which is here and now.

Mean, Missing, Greek

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

Ego, Life Is, Inches

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

The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss."

Real, Chinese, Masters

As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details; it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.

Space, People, Water

Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.

Thinking, Idols, People

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

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

Inspiring, Conventions

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

The Art of Being: A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.

Art, Ego, Mind

We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that is the attitude of attacking the unknown. And that causes us not to realize that we are already on the most magnificently equipped spaceship, which could hardly be improved upon. It has got a source of temperature and energy just at the right distance from it. It's beautifully equipped with oxygen, with food supplies, with all kinds of delightful things to do while on the journey.... and it's traveling through space at a colossal speed... and it's called the planet Earth.

Attitude, Distance, Journey

A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

Trying, World, Term

To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.

Silence, Stopping, Looks

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

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.

Wave Of Life, Light, Forever

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

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

Telescopes

Alan Watts (1999). “The Tao of Philosophy”, p.37, Tuttle Publishing

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.

People, Giving, Limits

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