Quote

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.

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
Music
Must
Long
Thinking
Listening
Listen
Understand

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
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It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.
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We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
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Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.
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As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
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If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed
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All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
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A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts
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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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Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.
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As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
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The Greek word for sinning means to ‘miss the point’ The point is eternal life which is here and now.
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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.
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Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
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A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
Alan Watts
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts