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Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

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
Good
Advantageous
Discovering
Liberation
Concerned
Way

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The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.
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When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, There ought not to be winter. That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat.
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Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
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Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
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Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
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The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.
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Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.
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The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that happens in it is good or bad. Because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune. Or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
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I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.
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If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
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We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot
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What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present
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What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
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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.
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You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.
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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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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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What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
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The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
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