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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 6

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

The menu is not the meal.

The menu is not the meal.

Inspiring, Philosophy, Meals

Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.

Accountability, Great Company, Deals

We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot

War, Thinking, Giving

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

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.

Inspiring, Conventions, Deceived

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

Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up.

Meditation, Way, Shut Up

Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.

Inspirational, Life, Buddhist

Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.27, New World Library

We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.

Talking, Listening, Ordinary

If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.

Wake Up, Littles, Poor

You can't have something without nothing.

Alan Watts (2007). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography, 1915-1965”, p.357, New World Library

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the I out of the experience... Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realisation that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate I or mind can be found .... [Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.

Pain, Real, Lying

When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

Journey, Discovery, Meditation And Yoga

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

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

Laughter, Humanity, Oneself

Chaos is always losing, but never defeated

Losing, Chaos, Defeated

Alan Watts (2017). “Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek”, p.72, Sounds True

If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.

Past, Games, Matter

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

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

Communication, Unique, Men

Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.7, New World Library

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

Inspiring, Frustration, Trying

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

We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.

Past, Puppets, Driven

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

This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.

Mean, Reflection, Water

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

Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy. ... I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It's a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird.

Stars, Science, Men

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

Life, Music, Symphony

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

Happiness, Death, Future

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

So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

Money, People, Saving

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

You're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe...

Bangs, Puppets, Ends

"The Nature of Consciousness". Book by Alan Watts, 1960.

Everything is perpetually becoming new.

Change, Becoming, Becoming New

They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.

Fun, Play, Knowing

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