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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 5

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

Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of

Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.

Art, Games, Perfection

When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.

Exercise, Giving, Human Nature

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Inspiring, Faith, Letting Go

There's an interdependence between flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They are really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else.

Flower, Way, Bees

What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

Spending, Enjoy, Objects

The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.

Art, Light, Sculpture

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

If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.

Pain, Ghost, Forgotten

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.29, Souvenir Press

The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.

Real, Puppets, Whole

Alan Watts (1999). “The Tao of Philosophy”, p.36, Tuttle Publishing

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe.

Worry, Energy, Eternal

Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.105, New World Library

A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts

Thinking, Too Much, Persons

Change is an illusion because we're always at the place where any future can take us.

Illusion

Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.

Looks, World, Environment

Alan W. Watts (2010). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality”, p.36, New World Library

It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.

Inspirational, Life, Eye

A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.

Attention, Paradox, Standing

Alan Watts (1994). “Talking Zen”, Shambhala Publications

Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.

Secret, Together, Different

Alan Watts (1999). “The Tao of Philosophy”, p.28, Tuttle Publishing

To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.

Beautiful, Depressing, Ocean

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

When you look out of your eyes at nature happening out there...You're looking at you.

Eye, Looks, Happenings

It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.

Jobs, Moving, Careers

We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.

Rushing, Looking Forward, Enough

Alan W. Watts (2010). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality”, p.31, New World Library

And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.

Love Is, Ideas, Two

The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.

Life, Motivational, Memories

Alan W Watts (2012). “Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety”, p.22, Random House

The only serious side-effect of #‎ marijuana is that you might get arrested.

Marijuana, Might, Sides

You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.

Feelings, Certain

The wake doesn't drive the ship

Ships

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