Alan Watts Quotes - Page 10

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• The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

  Alan Watts

  Focus, Ego, Attention

  Alan Watts (2017). “Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek”, p.21, Sounds True

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• Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Mind, Wish

  "The Wisdom of Insecurity".

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• Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones.

  Alan Watts

  Cute, Simple, Practice

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• Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Inspiring, Yoga

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

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• A holy person is someone who is whole; who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.

  Alan Watts

  Opposites, Spirituality, Holy

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• The further and further we look out with our telescopes and the further and further we look in with our microscopes, the larger and larger and smaller and smaller the universe becomes in order to escape the investigation because we are the universe looking at itself.

  Alan Watts

  Order, Looks, Telescopes

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• To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Religious, Men

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• The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Unique, Past

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

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• When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, "I am all this!" There is simply all this.

  Alan Watts

  Running, Thinking, Countryside

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

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• Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Symphony, Joy

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• If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed

  Alan Watts

  Trust Yourself, Mistrust, Whole

  Alan Watts (2010). “Tao: The Watercourse Way”, p.43, Souvenir Press

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• No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary.

  Alan Watts

  Risk, Superstitions, Currents

  Alan Watts (2017). “Alan Watts - In the Academy: Essays and Lectures”, p.275, SUNY Press

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• How did you know you're alive, unless you'd once been dead?

  Alan Watts

  Alive, Knows, Did You Know

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• Everybody is I, you all know you are you. And wheresoever's beings exist throughout all galaxies it doesn't any difference. You are all of them, and when they come into being that's you coming into being, you know that very well. Only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland. You don't have to know how to shine the sun, you just do it, like you breathe. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education on how to do it.

  Alan Watts

  Past, Thinking, Differences

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• I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.

  Alan Watts

  Realizing, Heard, Too Real

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.18, Souvenir Press

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• A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

  Alan Watts

  Christian, Buddhist, Laughter

  Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.57, New World Library

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• We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals; nor are we clear as to the role of the physician. You know, of course, that in ancient times there was no clear distinction between priest and physician.

  Alan Watts

  Science, Tolerance, Religion

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• To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.

  Alan Watts

  God, Way, Feels

  Alan Watts (1998). “The Culture of Counter-culture: The Edited Transcripts”, Tuttle Publishing

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• This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe.

  Alan Watts

  Everyday, Existence, Ultimate

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

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• 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.

  Alan Watts

  Eye, Past, Reality

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

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• You can't make love without art.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Making Love

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• I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.

  Alan Watts

  Lonely, Stress, Cutting

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• So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

  Alan Watts

  Loving Yourself, Self Love, Realization

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• The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really exist the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes.

  Alan Watts

  Self, Ideas, Goal

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

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• 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

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