Alan Watts Quotes About Water

Quotes about: Water

• To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Trust, Faith

  "The Essence of Alan Watts". Book by Alan Watts, 1977.

• What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Running, Stars

  Alan Watts (2010). “Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation”, p.92, New World Library

• As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.

  Alan Watts

  Freedom, Water, Leaving

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.157, Vintage

• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Play, Ideas

  Alan Watts (1999). “Buddhism the Religion of No-Religion”, p.29, Tuttle Publishing

• Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.

  Alan Watts

  Water, Mind, Trying

• Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Freedom

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.157, Vintage

• The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.

  Alan Watts

  Hands, Water, 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.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Reality, Clouds

• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Faith, Letting Go, Hands

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

• A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.

  Alan Watts

  Baby, Philosophy, War

  Alan W. Watts (2007). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality”, p.23, New World Library

• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Reflection, Water

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

• As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details; it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.

  Alan Watts

  Space, People, Water

• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Ocean, Moving, Reality

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

• We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.

  Alan Watts

  Running, Stars, Fire

  Alan Watts (2010). “Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation”, p.92, New World Library

• You can't get wet from the word 'water.'

  Alan Watts

  Water, Wet

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

• The Chinese word Li may therefore be understood as organic order, as distinct from mechanical or legal order, both of which go by the book. Li is the asymmetrical, nonrepetitive, and unregimented order which we find in the patterns of moving water, the form of trees and clouds, of frost crystals on the window, or the scattering of pebbles on beach sand.

  Alan Watts

  Beach, Moving, Book

  Alan Watts (2010). “Tao: The Watercourse Way”, p.54, Souvenir Press

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