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Just as the ocean is waving so each one of us is a waving of the whole cosmos, the entire works, all there is.

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
Whole
Waving
Cosmos
Entire
Ocean
Works

More quotes by Alan Watts

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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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The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.
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The style of God venerated in church, mosque, and synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
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The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
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Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.
Alan Watts
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Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration.
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That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.
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The wake doesn't drive the ship
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If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed
Alan Watts
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If the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.
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Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.
Alan Watts
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These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.
Alan Watts
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The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
Alan Watts
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I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.
Alan Watts
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Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.
Alan Watts
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How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
Alan Watts
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At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a problem of it.
Alan Watts
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Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
Alan Watts