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To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by 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
Free
Spurn
Convention
Deceived
Conventions
Inspiring

More quotes by Alan Watts

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To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.
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Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.
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Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.
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Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and our world.
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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
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As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
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Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.
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We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot
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By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.
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I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.
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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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There's an interdependence between flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They are really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else.
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If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.
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The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
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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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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
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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.
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What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.
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Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
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