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Alan Watts Quotes - Page 8

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

Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and our world.

Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and our world.

Our World, Doctrine, Way

Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use - which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing - for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.

Thinking, Artist, Swings

"The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 92), 1966.

Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.

Cutting, Men, Survival

Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.4, New World Library

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Independent, Knowing, Ego

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.10, Souvenir Press

We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.

Accountability, Doe, Be Careful

We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.

Past, Thinking, World

Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.48, New World Library

Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.

Motivational, Art, Animal

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.7, Souvenir Press

You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.

Mean, Reality, Trying

You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.

Faith, Letting Go, Hands

Alan Watts (2011). “Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks: 1960-1969”, p.67, New World Library

For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.

Bird, Decision, Singing

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

No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.

Order, Bridges, Insane

Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.84, New World Library

Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Spiritual, Humor, Godly

"The Way of Zen". Book by Alan Watts, 1957.

Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable - that is, human - men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.

War, Fighting, Simple

"The Way of Zen".

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

People, Intellectual, Philosopher

Alan Watts (2011). “Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life: Collected Talks: 1960-1969”, p.73, New World Library

And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is.

Self, Realizing, Connected

Alan Watts (1999). “The Tao of Philosophy”, p.37, Tuttle Publishing

Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death...to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up-never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation; it's like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You'll get wonderful things out of that.

Sleep, Acceptance, Skeletons

For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor other. There is simply one all-inclusive Happening, in which your personal sensation of being alive occurs in just the same way as the river flowing and the stars shining far out in space. There is no question of submitting or accepting or going with it, for what happens in and as you is no different from what happens as it.

Stars, Fate, Self

Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.

Inspiring, Life And Love, Attitude

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.53, Souvenir Press

Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated

Light, Like Love, Expectations

Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.

Buddhist, Morning, Reflection

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Inspirational, God, Sky

Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world - the world of stars and waters, clouds, mountains and living organisms. There is such a thing as rhythm - rhythm of tides, rhythm of biological processes... There is rhythm and there is motion. Time is a way of measuring motion.

Stars, Reality, Clouds

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Inspiring, Ocean, Wave

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.

Inspiring, Unique, Tree

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

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Real, Home, Way

Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.31, Souvenir Press

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