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The Art of Being: A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.

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
Second
Freely
State
Sensations
Art
Club
States
Ego
Without
Clubs
Mind
Easily
Wholeness
Function
Sensation
Standing
Functions

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.
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Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up.
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We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
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People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'
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Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
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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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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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Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.
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The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.
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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
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Society is our extended mind and body.
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How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
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Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
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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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By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.
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Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
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If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.
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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
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If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.
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