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

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Don't hurry anything. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about what progress you're making. Just be entirely content to be aware of what is.
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The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.
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If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.
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The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
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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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We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
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Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.
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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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And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.
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Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.
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The whole point of Zen is to suspend the rules we have superimposed on things and to see the world as it is
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But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
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Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
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A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.
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To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.
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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!
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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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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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