Quote

That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.

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
Needs
Dictionary
Really
Bible
Time
Rain
Waste
Sound
Wonderland
Understand
Alice
Use
Translation
Book
Translations

More quotes by Alan Watts

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We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.
Alan Watts
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If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.
Alan Watts
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Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world.
Alan Watts
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To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.
Alan Watts
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It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
Alan Watts
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The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition... Same way in dancing, you don't aim at one particular spot in the room... The whole point of dancing is the dance.
Alan Watts
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A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.
Alan Watts
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All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
Alan Watts
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The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.
Alan Watts
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Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.
Alan Watts
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There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to get culture or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.
Alan Watts
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We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.
Alan Watts
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I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.
Alan Watts
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As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.
Alan Watts
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Faith...is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown.
Alan Watts
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But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present
Alan Watts