Alan Watts quotes - page 6

Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present. (Alan Watts)
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. View quote
Alan Watts
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. View quote
Alan Watts
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. View quote
Alan Watts
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. View quote
Alan Watts
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere. View quote
Alan Watts
Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home. View quote
Alan Watts
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. View quote
Alan Watts
Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself. View quote
Alan Watts
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. View quote
Alan Watts
I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. (Alan Watts)
No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle. View quote
Alan Watts
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world. View quote
Alan Watts
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. View quote
Alan Watts
If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black. View quote
Alan Watts
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing. View quote
Alan Watts
The source of all light is in the eye. View quote
Alan Watts
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin. View quote
Alan Watts
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment. View quote
Alan Watts
Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated. View quote
Alan Watts
The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually "grasp” reality. (Alan Watts)
I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities. View quote
Alan Watts
It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description. View quote
Alan Watts
Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. View quote
Alan Watts
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself. View quote
Alan Watts