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And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.

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
Cannot
Skins
Certain
Although
Body
Except
Kind
Exist
Outside
Bounded
Inside
Differentiate
Environment
Bodies
Natural
Skin

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
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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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Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.
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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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The Greek word for sinning means to ‘miss the point’ The point is eternal life which is here and now.
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We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
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It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.
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Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
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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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What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
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What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
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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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What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are coins for real thing
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But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
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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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Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
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You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
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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 hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events--that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies--and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.
Alan Watts
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It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
Alan Watts