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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

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
Entirely
Inspiring
Words
Everything
Something
Undefinable
Isolate
Conventions

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The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.
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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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Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world - the world of stars and waters, clouds, mountains and living organisms. There is such a thing as rhythm - rhythm of tides, rhythm of biological processes... There is rhythm and there is motion. Time is a way of measuring motion.
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The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
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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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I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.
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We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
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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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We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
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In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain it only indicates.
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The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it.
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For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
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You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.
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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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Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
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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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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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The mind's the standard of the man.
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The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
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