Alan Watts Quotes - Page 17

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• We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

  Alan Watts

  Nature, War, Desire

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• Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific
  state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success.

  Alan Watts

  Long, Enlightenment, States

  Alan W. Watts (2012). “Nature, Man and Woman”, p.132, Vintage

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• Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

  Alan Watts

  Technology, Hands, People

  Alan Watts (2010). “Tao: The Watercourse Way”, p.35, Souvenir Press

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• What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.

  Alan Watts

  People, Needs, Movement

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• Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.

  Alan Watts

  Self, People, Curiosity

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• However much I may be impressed by the difference between a star and the dark space around it, I must not forget that I can see the two only in relation to each other, and that this relation is inseparable.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Dark, Two

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

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• The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.

  Alan Watts

  Taught Us, Common Sense, Culture

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• Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.

  Alan Watts

  Work, Quality, May

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

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• If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.

  Alan Watts

  Friendship, Spring, Men

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• You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.

  Alan Watts

  Flower, Long, Realizing

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• Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition" to the culture in which it is involved.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhism, Culture, Loyal

  "Psychotherapy, East and West" by Alan Watts, (p. 7), 1961.

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• There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.

  Alan Watts

  Believe, Trying, Peculiar

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• The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Writing, Order

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

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• ...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.

  Alan Watts

  Animal, Lust, Use

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

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• If we want justice for minorities and cooled wars with our natural enemies, whether human or non-human, we must first come to terms with the minority and the enemy in ourselves and in our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the "external" world - -especially when you realize that the world outside your skin is as much yourself as the world inside.

  Alan Watts

  Motivational, War, Heart

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 98), 1966.

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• There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.

  Alan Watts

  Mind, Culture, Way

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 90), 1966.

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• You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Bangs, Bigs

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

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• It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Oddities, Feelings

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.7, Souvenir Press

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

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Kind, All Kinds

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• In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain; it only indicates.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Energy, Stopping

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• The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.

  Alan Watts

  Ego, Tests, Hallucinations

  Alan Watts (2001). “Eastern Wisdom”, Mjf Books

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• So we down-to-earth, gutsy, tough, realistic, and practical types have just been squandering billions of dollars and unimaginable amounts of energy, nerve-work, and materials in whizzing off to the moon to discover, as astronomers knew before, that it was just a dreary slag heap. This is the true, original and scientifically etymological meaning of being lunatics. Crying for the moon.

  Alan Watts

  Sunset, Moon, Night

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal”, p.116, Vintage

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• The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.

  Alan Watts

  Morning, Heart, Years

  "The essence of Alan Watts".

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• Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.

  Alan Watts

  Sick, Interesting, Way

  Alan Watts (2017). “Alan Watts - In the Academy: Essays and Lectures”, p.360, SUNY Press

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• What are plants doing? What are plants all about? They serve human beings by being decorative, but what is it from its own point of view? It's using up air; it's using up energy. It's really not doing anything except being ornamental. And yet here's this whole vegetable world, cactus plants, trees, roses, tulips, and edible vegetables, like cabbages, celery, lettuce - they're all doing this dance.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Views, Vegetables

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

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