Quote

The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really exist the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes.

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
Really
Exist
Good
Therefore
Never
Goal
Disillusion
Life
Idea
Morrow
Comes
Gratification
Ideas
Goals
Without
Pursuit
Self
Begins

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The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
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Running away from fear is fear fighting pain is pain trying to be brave is being scared
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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
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We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.
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This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.
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Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.
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You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
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You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
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Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world — a place where they are one.
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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.
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They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.
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There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
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We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.
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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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The menu is not the meal.
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More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.
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