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
Listen
Understand
Music
Must
Long
Thinking
Listening

More quotes by Alan Watts

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And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
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Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.
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The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition... Same way in dancing, you don't aim at one particular spot in the room... The whole point of dancing is the dance.
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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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Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.
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You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.
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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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The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.
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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
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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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To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.
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A living body is not a fixed thing, but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool.
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All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.
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...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.
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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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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
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To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
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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.
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