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

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
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Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
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I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.
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I owe my solitude to other people.
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A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft.
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The world is a marvelous system of wiggles.
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The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
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Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
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I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.
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In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
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A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.
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A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts
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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 further and further we look out with our telescopes and the further and further we look in with our microscopes, the larger and larger and smaller and smaller the universe becomes in order to escape the investigation because we are the universe looking at itself.
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That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.
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Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
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Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.
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The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.
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Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
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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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