Alan Watts Quotes About Suffering

Quotes about: Suffering

• But we must not suffer over the suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Adversity, Suffering

• Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhist, Fun, Buddhism

  Alan Watts (2003). “Become what You are”, p.29, Shambhala Publications

• If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.

  Alan Watts

  Moon, Suffering, World

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

• Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Two, Alcohol

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.76, New World Library

• We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

  Alan Watts

  Suffering, Culture, Disease

• Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.

  Alan Watts

  Acceptance, Frustration, Men

• If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.

  Alan Watts

  Acceptance, Suffering, Problem

• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Fun, Play, Knowing

• At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Envy, Simplicity

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

• We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that "I myself" is a seperate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body-a center which "confronts" an "external" world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange.

  Alan Watts

  People, Feelings, Suffering

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.8, Souvenir Press

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