Quote

The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?

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
Understand
Neither
Right
Empty
Really
Ignorance
Tao
Like
Beyond
Drag
Doubt
Belongs
Knowing
False
Understanding
Sky
Wrong
Blind

More quotes by Alan Watts

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One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.
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Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
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this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.
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The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
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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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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
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Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.
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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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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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The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.
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Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
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The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
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Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
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