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Alan Watts Quotes about Reality

All Alan Watts 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 quotes Religion Risk Running Silence Simplicity Skins Sleep Soul Spirituality Suffering Taoism Technology Time Understanding Unity Universe Vision War Water Wisdom Worry Writing

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

Life, Cheer Up, Reality

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.

Memories, Past, Reality

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

Wisdom, Reality, Thinking

"Alan Watts Teaches Meditation". Audiobook by Alan Watts, 1992.

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

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

The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Past, Reality, Concrete

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

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

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

Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.

Reality, Views, Sea

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Eye, Past, Reality

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

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality.

Reality, Purpose, Definitions

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

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

Reality, People, Confusion

"Individual and Society". Audio lecture,

Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.

Reality, Ultimate, Ultimate Reality

"What Is Reality?". Book by Alan Watts, 1973.

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Reality, Men, Ink

In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.

Ocean, Moving, Reality

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

Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.

Reality, Kind, All Kinds

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.

Stars, Moon, Reality

Alan Watts (2003). “Become what You are”, p.126, Shambhala Publications

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

Reality, Negative

Alan Watts (1996). “Myth and Religion: The Edited Transcripts”, p.10, Tuttle Publishing

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