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The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.

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
Greater
Designed
Part
Permanent
Human
Experiences
Humans
Changing
Make
Inspiring
Activity
Joy
Lovable
Wisdom
Joys

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We have a strange anxiety in us that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.
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There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.
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...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
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Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life.
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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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There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
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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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Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
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The only serious side-effect of # marijuana is that you might get arrested.
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Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
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Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
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There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to get culture or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.
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The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent.
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...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.
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Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.
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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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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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If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.
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Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.
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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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