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Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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
Spirit
Peel
Doe
Confuse
Soul
Relaxation
Thinking
Potatoes
Godly
Spirituality
Humor
Spiritual
Peeling

More quotes by Alan Watts

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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.
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Courage is the goal of cowards.
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The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
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Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
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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.
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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.
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To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.
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The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.
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Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.
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We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day. When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses.
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now, and you are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing... The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep-down you is the whole universe.
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If we live, we live if we die, we die if we suffer, we suffer if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.
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Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
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...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.
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When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, I am all this! There is simply all this.
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The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
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Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
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