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The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

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
Inspirational
Life
Plain
Obvious
Meaning
Alive
Simple

More quotes by Alan Watts

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To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition....Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought.
Alan Watts
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Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world — a place where they are one.
Alan Watts
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Alan Watts
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I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.
Alan Watts
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You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
Alan Watts
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Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.
Alan Watts
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Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.
Alan Watts
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The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.
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.
Alan Watts
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There is no coming toward it or going away from it it is, and you are it.
Alan Watts
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The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.
Alan Watts
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The sense of wrong is simply failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.
Alan Watts
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Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.
Alan Watts
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Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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The fools standpoint is that all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game playing. That's why, when people take their games seriously and take on stern and pious expressions, the fool gets the giggles because he knows that it is all a game.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.
Alan Watts