Quote

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

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
Overachieving
Around
Inspiring
Obviousness
Great
Necessary
Something
Meaning
Plainness
Life
Beyond
Rushes
Achieve
Panic
Alive
Plain
Everybody
Simplicity
Simple
Obvious

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.
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But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
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If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.
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It's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
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This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe.
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So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
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You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
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You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
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By going out of your mind, you come to your senses
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If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
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Your soul isn't in your body your body is in your soul!
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You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it.
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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.
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But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
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You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.
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Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil.
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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
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A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
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You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
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