Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Alan Watts Quotes - Page 4

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

Do you see yourself as a victim of the world, or do you see yourself as the world?

Do you see yourself as a victim of the world, or do you see yourself as the world?

World, Victim, Define Yourself

"Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek".

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared

Running, Pain, Fighting

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

Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

Motivational, Reality, Missing

If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

May, Forget, Improving

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.

Suicide, Commitment, Intellectual

this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.

Time, Mind, Moments

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.56, New World Library

Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

Eye, Phones, Meditation

The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.

Ego, Ego Trip

"Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks: 1960-1969".

We have a strange anxiety in us; that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.

Roots, Anxiety, Strange

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.

Inspiring, Forests, Quiet

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

Inspirational, Life, Yoga

Alan Watts (2010). “Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation”, p.90, New World Library

The difference between a baby and adult is that a baby believes in everything while the adult doubts everything. Babies also only tell the truth until they learn what a lie is.

Baby, Lying, Believe

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

Thinking, Long, Listening

Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

Spiritual, Vanity, Self

Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.191, New World Library

The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.

Sacred, Mundane

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.29, New World Library

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

Reality, Play, Ideas

Alan Watts (1999). “Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion”, p.29, Tuttle Publishing

We are the eyes of the cosmos. So that in a way, when you look deeply into somebody's eyes, you're looking deep into yourself, and the other person is looking deeply into the same self.

Eye, Self, Energy

"The essence of Alan Watts".

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Love, Life, Relationship

Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.

Goal, Missing, World

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

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.

Inspiring, Sleep, Trying

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

Motivational, Individual, Enjoyment

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.78, Souvenir Press

Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.

Thinking, Numbers, People

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Inspiring, Pain, Mental Health

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

If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.

Stupid, Order, Important

I owe my solitude to other people.

People, Solitude

You May Also Like: