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
Long
Thinking
Listening
Listen
Understand
Music
Must

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.
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Chaos is always losing, but never defeated
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The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
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We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day. When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses.
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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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For me, being literate and articulate is a form of judo, of overcoming the [system] by its own method.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
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What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.
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The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
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The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?
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The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.
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Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.
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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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It's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
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The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.
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We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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