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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 3

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

You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world; you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean.

You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world; you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean.

Ocean, World, Energy

To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give; no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.

Bridges, Giving, Mind

What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present

Inability

To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.

Spiritual, Mind, Important

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

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

Love, Good Morning, Sexy

Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.189, New World Library

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

Buddhist, Fun, Buddhism

Alan Watts (2003). “Become what You are”, p.29, Shambhala Publications

The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?

Realizing, Should, Right Now

Your soul isn't in your body; your body is in your soul!

Soul, Body, Your Soul

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.110, New World Library

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

Inspiring, Thinking, Example

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.50, Souvenir Press

There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.

Running, Moving, Past

"The Way of Zen".

Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life.

Educational, Clothes, Giving

Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.

Secret, Wipe, Take A Deep Breath

Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.

Jesus, Crazy, Congratulations

Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.

Trying, Way, Hurrying

Alan W. Watts (2010). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality”, p.32, New World Library

If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song."

Love, Song, Bird

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Self Esteem, Humor, Deep Thought

Life Magazine, April 21, 1961.

We usually don't look. We overlook.

Spiritual, Journey, Looks

There is a deep, peaceful calm in the dawning of a new day.

New Day, Peaceful, Calm

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.

Intellectual, Inability, Accepting

Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.112, New World Library

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Past, Listening, Life Is Like

Alan Watts (1983). “The Way of Liberation: Essays and Lectures on the Transformation of the Self”, Weatherhill, Incorporated

Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

Unity, Chaos, Duality

Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.126, New World Library

You can't get wet from the word 'water.'

Water, Wet

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

Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.

Art, Skills, Energy

A living body is not a fixed thing, but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool.

Flames, Events, Body

Alan W. Watts (2010). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality”, p.23, New World Library

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.

Spiritual, Wisdom, Ocean

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.8, Souvenir Press

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