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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

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
Unduly
Absorbed
Altogether
Improving
Forget
Lives
May
Live

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Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
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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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What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.
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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.
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When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, There ought not to be winter. That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat.
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You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
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The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
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The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.
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In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
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You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
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If we live, we live if we die, we die if we suffer, we suffer if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.
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Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world.
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So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
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What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
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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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The Greek word for sinning means to ‘miss the point’ The point is eternal life which is here and now.
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What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.
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It's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
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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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I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
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