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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.

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
Given
Others
Men
Confuses
Definition
Definitions
Universal
Unique
Longer

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
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Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
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The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
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In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
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Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
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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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...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.
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To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
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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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To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
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We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.
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You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.
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We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.
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It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
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We usually don't look. We overlook.
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Faith...is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown.
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The only serious side-effect of # marijuana is that you might get arrested.
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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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Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe.
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The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
Alan Watts