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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 18

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

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.

Stars, Moon, Reality

Alan Watts (2003). “Become what You are”, p.126, Shambhala Publications

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

Writing, Study, Paradox

To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.

Ideas, Stink, Masters

Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.130, Vintage

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

People, Banking, Realizing

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

Inspiring, People, Devil

The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.

Simple, Doctrine, World

Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.58, Vintage

It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about "I".

Self, People, Interesting

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

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.

Eye, Heart, Thinking

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

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?

Thinking, Government, Republic

The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe.

Ideas, Gentleman, Marvelous

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Attitude, Opposites, Belief

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself.

Self, White, Black

...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

Share

Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.19, Vintage

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

Hands, Doe, Lap

If the human race develops an electronic nervous system, outside the bodies of individual people, thus giving us all one mind and one global body, this is almost precisely what has happened in the organization of cells which compose our own bodies. We have already done it. [...] If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now!

Race, Cells, Organization

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.34, Souvenir Press

Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.

Example, Philosopher, Failing

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

Money, Thinking, People

The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.

Wise, Philosophy, Ignorance

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that happens in it is good or bad. Because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune. Or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

Impossible, Process, Fortune

The police have enough work to keep them busy regulating automobile traffic, preventing robberies and crimes of violence and helping lost children and little old ladies find their way home. As long as the police confine themselves to such activities they are respected friends of the public. But as soon as they begin inquiring into people's private morals, they become nothing more than armed clergymen.

Children, Home, Long

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.

Intelligent, Years, Taught Us

The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it.

Self, May, Spirituality

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.56, Souvenir Press

To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.

Purple, Feelings, Insecurity

What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.

Attitude, Mean, Example

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

Lonely, Islands, Normal

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

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