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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 17

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 are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

Nature, War, Desire

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

Technology, Hands, People

Alan Watts (2010). “Tao: The Watercourse Way”, p.35, Souvenir Press

However much I may be impressed by the difference between a star and the dark space around it, I must not forget that I can see the two only in relation to each other, and that this relation is inseparable.

Stars, Dark, Two

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

...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.

Together, World, Letters

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

Flower, Long, Realizing

Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.

Work, Quality, May

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

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.

Taught Us, Common Sense, Culture

If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.

Friendship, Spring, Men

Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition" to the culture in which it is involved.

Buddhism, Culture, Loyal

"Psychotherapy, East and West" by Alan Watts, (p. 7), 1961.

...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.

Animal, Lust, Use

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

There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.

Believe, Trying, Peculiar

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.

Spiritual, Writing, Order

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

If we want justice for minorities and cooled wars with our natural enemies, whether human or non-human, we must first come to terms with the minority and the enemy in ourselves and in our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the "external" world - -especially when you realize that the world outside your skin is as much yourself as the world inside.

Motivational, War, Heart

"The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 98), 1966.

There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.

Mind, Culture, Way

"The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 90), 1966.

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

Inspiring, Bangs, Bigs

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

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

Reality, Kind, All Kinds

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.

Spiritual, Oddities, Feelings

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.7, Souvenir Press

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

Ego, Tests, Hallucinations

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

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

Art, Energy, Stopping

What are plants doing? What are plants all about? They serve human beings by being decorative, but what is it from its own point of view? It's using up air; it's using up energy. It's really not doing anything except being ornamental. And yet here's this whole vegetable world, cactus plants, trees, roses, tulips, and edible vegetables, like cabbages, celery, lettuce - they're all doing this dance.

Life, Views, Vegetables

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

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

Men, Said, Young

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

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.

Sunset, Moon, Night

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

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.

Morning, Heart, Years

"The essence of Alan Watts".

Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.

Sick, Interesting, Way

Alan Watts (2017). “Alan Watts - In the Academy: Essays and Lectures”, p.360, SUNY Press

The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.

Mind, Way, Realizing

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