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The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

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
Infinity
Duty
Full
Religious
Religion
Idea
Cannot
Ideas
Metaphysical

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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.
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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
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Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
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Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
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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.
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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.
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A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.
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You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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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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But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
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Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
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You are the universe experiencing itself.
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Cows scream louder than carrots.
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As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
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Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
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More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.
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Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.
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