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Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.

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
Desire
Essentially
Keep
Possess
Things
Doctrine
Impermanent
Men
Acceptance
Suffers
Cause
Craving
Causes
Buddha
Forever
Immediate
Suffering
Frustration

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The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
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Change is an illusion because we're always at the place where any future can take us.
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In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
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Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
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Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.
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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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Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.
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The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
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When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
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Your world is all these elements. Of light and sound, of taste, smell, and touch, woven together in many dimensions on the fabulous loom of your brain. Your brain the most complicated thing in the world, which you yourself grew...without even thinking about it.
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Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
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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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