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You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.

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
School
Using
Figure
Figures
Especially
Universe

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
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We do not come into this world we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean waves, the universe peoples. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
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When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.
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What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are coins for real thing
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When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.
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Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done it's just doing it.
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Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
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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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Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.
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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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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
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Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.
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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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Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
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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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When you look out of your eyes at nature happening out there...You're looking at you.
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Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.
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