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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

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.
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
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Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.
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No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.
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To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.
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It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
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What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
Alan Watts
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You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
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But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
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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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Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
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Although profoundly inconsequential, the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.
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The Highest to which people can attain is wonder and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it there is the limit.
Alan Watts
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The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
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There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.
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You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
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I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
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