Alan Watts Quotes - Page 16

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• To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!

  Alan Watts

  Death, Space, Secret

  Alan Watts (2000). “What is Zen?”, p.81, New World Library

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• I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.

  Alan Watts

  Mind, Today, Humans

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

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• But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.

  Alan Watts

  Taken, Law, Land

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

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• Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.

  Alan Watts

  Order, Names, Knowing

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

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• But, as Douglas E Harding has pointed out, we tend to think of this planet as a life-infested rock, which is as absurd as thinking of the human body as a cell infested skeleton. Surely all forms of life, including man, must be understood as "symptoms" of the earth, the solar system, and the galaxy in which case we cannot escape the conclusion that the galaxy is intelligent.

  Alan Watts

  Men, Thinking, Intelligent

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• The problem is to overcome the ingrained disbelief in the power of winning nature by love, in the gentle (ju) way (do) of turning with the skid, of controlling ourselves by cooperating with ourselves.

  Alan Watts

  Love, Nature, Winning

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• The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Mistake, Cat

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

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• Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Frustrated, Want

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• The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Insecure, Hands

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

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• ...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.

  Alan Watts

  Together, World, Letters

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• So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

  Alan Watts

  Able, Bodhisattva, Preaching

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• To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Change, Trying

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• 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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• 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

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• But the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker, of the ego trying to watch the mind without interfering.

  Alan Watts

  Letting Go, Effort, Ego

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

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• The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Men, Brain

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

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• What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.

  Alan Watts

  Discipline, Giving, Understanding

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• We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Soul, Consciousness

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• More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Mean, Thinking

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

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• For me, being literate and articulate is a form of judo, of overcoming the [system] by its own method.

  Alan Watts

  Overcoming, Form, Method

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• If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you’re in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside.

  Alan Watts

  Grateful, People, Track

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• The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

  Alan Watts

  Religious, Ideas, Religion

  Alan Watts (1950). “The Supreme Identity: An Essay on Oriental Metaphysic and the Christian Religion”, Vintage

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• For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Organization, Anxiety

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

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• To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. You feel, in other words, that the whole energy, which expresses itself in the galaxies, is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you, whatever it is, are intimately bound up. That in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving, you express that which it is that moves the sun and other stars.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Moving, Thinking

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• Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

  Alan Watts

  Philosophy, Men, Expression

  Alan Watts (1995). “The Philosophies of Asia: The Edited Transcripts”, Tuttle Publishing

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