Quote

...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.

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
Abstract
Grid
Nature
Hatred
Paradoxically
Limits
Grids
Civilization
Stewardship
Technology
Oriented
Modern
Imposing
Goal
Materialism
Obliterate
Natural
Founded
Materiality

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I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.
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To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe.
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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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We do not come into this world we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean waves, the universe peoples. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
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A scholar tries to learn something everyday a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.
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What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present
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The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
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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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For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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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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Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
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And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
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Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
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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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You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
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The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
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When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.
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Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
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Running away from fear is fear fighting pain is pain trying to be brave is being scared
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