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

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe.
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...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
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To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.
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...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.
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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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We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
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Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it.
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Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
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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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Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.
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If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
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The problem is to overcome the ingrained disbelief in the power of winning nature by love, in the gentle (ju) way (do) of turning with the skid, of controlling ourselves by cooperating with ourselves.
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What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.
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Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.
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Faith is, above all, openness an act of trust in the unknown.
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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.
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The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.
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Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.
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The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
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