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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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In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play.
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The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.
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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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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
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To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.
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I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.
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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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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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All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.
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Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.
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The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
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The wake doesn't drive the ship
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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.
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However much I may be impressed by the difference between a star and the dark space around it, I must not forget that I can see the two only in relation to each other, and that this relation is inseparable.
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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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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
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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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To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
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For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them – the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.
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How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
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