Alan Watts Quotes, Rain Quotes, Book Quotes

That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Rain Quotes , Book Quotes

The Highest to which people can attain is wonder; and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content; nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it; there is the limit.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , People Quotes , Giving Quotes

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.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Discipline Quotes , Giving Quotes

Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Want Something Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Self Quotes , Mind Quotes

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Death Quotes

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

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Life Quotes , Change Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Order Quotes , Names Quotes

We usually don't look. We overlook.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Spiritual Quotes , Journey Quotes

The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Roles Quotes , Guru Quotes

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , People Quotes , Effort Quotes

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Worry Quotes , Energy Quotes

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Long Quotes

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Inspiring Quotes

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

6 years ago

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These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Beach Quotes , California Quotes

The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Past Quotes , Reality Quotes

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

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The source of all light is in the eye.

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Eye Quotes , Light Quotes

For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Watts Quotes , Real Quotes , Trying Quotes