Quote

To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.

Alan Watts

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ideas
Stink
Remain
Caught
Masters
Words

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
The fools standpoint is that all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game playing. That's why, when people take their games seriously and take on stern and pious expressions, the fool gets the giggles because he knows that it is all a game.
Alan Watts
Image
Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
Alan Watts
Image
The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.
Alan Watts
Image
Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost.
Alan Watts
Image
...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
Alan Watts
Image
I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
Alan Watts
Image
You are the universe experiencing itself.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
When you feel that you are a lonely, put-upon, isolated little stranger confronting all this, you are under the influence of an illusory feeling, because the truth is quite the reverse. You are the whole works, all that there is, and always was, and always has been, and always will be.
Alan Watts
Image
Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
Alan Watts
Image
Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
Alan Watts
Image
One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
Alan Watts
Image
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Alan Watts
Image
What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now, and you are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing... The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep-down you is the whole universe.
Alan Watts
Image
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Alan Watts
Image
You can't make love without art.
Alan Watts
Image
Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
Alan Watts
Image
As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
Alan Watts
Image
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
Alan Watts
Image
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
Alan Watts