Quote

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

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
Fear
Hollowness
Inspirational
Flourish
Heart
Valid
Work
Guilt
Made
Capacity
Love
Plans
Future
Living

More quotes by Alan Watts

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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.
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Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.
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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.
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You're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe...
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Conscious attention is a designed function of the brain which scans the environment for any trouble making changes. If you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety.
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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.
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Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
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We usually don't look. We overlook.
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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.
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Running away from fear is fear fighting pain is pain trying to be brave is being scared
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When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
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Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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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.
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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.
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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
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Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
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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.
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The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
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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.
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