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The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

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
Still
Unselfish
Persons
Invariably
Person
Efforts
Feel
Ego
Feels
Tells
Always
Ought
Moralist
Like
Effort
Egos
People
Stills
Futile

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Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
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We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.
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Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.
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We do not come into this world we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
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The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.
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Your soul isn't in your body your body is in your soul!
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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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You can't make love without art.
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You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean.
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We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
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A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.
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Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.
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Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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