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We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.

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
Time
Therefore
Concerts
Conceptions
Thinking
Numbers
Conception
Courteous
Stop
Symbols
Verbal
Names
Useful
Concert
Audience
Tools
Symbolic
Talking
Sick
Fascination
Art
Begin
Signs
Ideas
Meditation
Somewhat
Suspending

More quotes by Alan Watts

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To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to your senses. And if you stay in your mind all of the time, you are over rational, in other words you are like a very rigid bridge which because it has no give no craziness in it, is going to be blown down by the first hurricane.
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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.
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The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.
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A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
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Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
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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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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
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...the habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns.
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The world is a marvelous system of wiggles.
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Everyone is the fabric and structure of existence.
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Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
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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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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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Conscious attention is a designed function of the brain which scans the environment for any trouble making changes. If you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety.
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Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
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Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart.
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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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Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
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