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But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

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
Trying
World
Independently
Altogether
External
Pretend
Exists

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At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a problem of it.
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Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.
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Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.
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...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.
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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
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Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.
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... nets, grids, and other types of calculus.
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