Alan Watts Quotes - Page 9

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• You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, God, Sky

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• Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.

  Alan Watts

  Would Be, World, Birth

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.61, Souvenir Press

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• We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.

  Alan Watts

  Accountability, Doe, Be Careful

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• What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Fabric, Structure

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

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• Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use - which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing - for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Artist, Swings

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, (p. 92), 1966.

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• What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.

  Alan Watts

  Safety, Painful, Imagine

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

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• You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.

  Alan Watts

  School, Figures, Ifs

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• Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.

  Alan Watts

  Cutting, Men, Survival

  Alan W. Watts, Daniel Pinchbeck (2013). “The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, p.4, New World Library

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• Substances like LSD, which give away a secret about the nature of the social game - the human game and what underlies it - are potentially dangerous, of course, like any good thing is. Electricity is dangerous, fire is dangerous, cars are dangerous, planes are dangerous, but not so dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all.

  Alan Watts

  Fire, Games, Giving

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• For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.

  Alan Watts

  Bird, Decision, Singing

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

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• So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

  Alan Watts

  Levels, Harmony, Discord

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• In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

  Alan Watts

  Ideas, Matter, Certain

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• But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

  Alan Watts

  Rate

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• Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.

  Alan Watts

  Differences, Galaxy

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• When your eyes are functioning well you don't see your eyes. If your eyes are imperfect you see spots in front of them. That means there are some lesions in the retina or wherever, and because your eyes aren't working properly, you feel them. In the same way, you don't hear your ears. If you have a ringing in your ears it means there's something wrong with your ears. Therefore, if you do feel yourself, there must be something wrong with you. Whatever you have, the sensation of I is like spots in front of your eyes - it means something's wrong with your functioning.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Eye, Imperfection

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

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• Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Unique, Tree

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.56, Souvenir Press

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• To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition....Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought.

  Alan Watts

  Morning, Thinking, Limits

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• The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Imagination, Trouble

  Alan Watts (1967). “Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship”

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• 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

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• No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

  Alan Watts

  Inspirational, Fear, Heart

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.79, Souvenir Press

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• We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide

  Alan Watts

  Decision, Doe, Our Actions

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

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• 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

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• Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Views, Sea

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• What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

  Alan Watts

  Ocean, Future, Zest

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

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• You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.

  Alan Watts

  Mean, Reality, Trying

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