Quote

The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Alan Watts

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hands
Neither
Clinging
Past
Unique
Regarding
Mind
Hand
Careless
Open
Wholly
Moment
Utterly
Living
Fearful
Moments
Consists
Receptive
Art
Sensitive
Drifting

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.
Alan Watts
Image
To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.
Alan Watts
Image
To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.
Alan Watts
Image
But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
Alan Watts
Image
Conscious attention is a designed function of the brain which scans the environment for any trouble making changes. If you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety.
Alan Watts
Image
...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
Alan Watts
Image
Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
Alan Watts
Image
When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, There ought not to be winter. That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat.
Alan Watts
Image
To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.
Alan Watts
Image
You can't get wet from the word 'water.'
Alan Watts
Image
We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
Alan Watts
Image
The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
Chaos is always losing, but never defeated
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.
Alan Watts
Image
To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.
Alan Watts
Image
The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.
Alan Watts
Image
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Alan Watts
Image
But we must not suffer over the suffering.
Alan Watts