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Society is our extended mind and body.

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
Extended
Society
Body
Mind

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At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a problem of it.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol.
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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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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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Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life.
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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
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It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.
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The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
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...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.
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And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.
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The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
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In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
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For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.
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