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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

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
Language
Thoughts
Languages
Given
Realize
Invent
Think
Emotion
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Images
Realizing
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More quotes by Alan Watts

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Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
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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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The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.
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A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.
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Your world is all these elements. Of light and sound, of taste, smell, and touch, woven together in many dimensions on the fabulous loom of your brain. Your brain the most complicated thing in the world, which you yourself grew...without even thinking about 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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Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it.
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When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, I am all this! There is simply all this.
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The individual may be understood as one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself - as an incarnation of the self, or of the Godhead, or whatever one may choose to call it.
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For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.
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...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.
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Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
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Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
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Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.
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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 'you' who you think you are does not exist.
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