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The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

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
Impoverished
Humor
Present
Reason
Live

More quotes by Alan Watts

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In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
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Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
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The world is a marvelous system of wiggles.
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Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.
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All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
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To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.
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The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.
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What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.
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There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do.
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Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
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Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.
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Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.
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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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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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You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
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When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
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We usually don't look. We overlook.
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The sound of the rain needs no translation.
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The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
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The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.
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