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As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.

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
Water
Thus
Exceptional
Doesn
Aware
Backgrounds
Everything
Constant
Fish
People
Awareness
Fishes
Concerned
Ignorant
Especially
Details
Constants
Consciousness
Basic
Ignores
Space
Changing
Varying

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If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you’re in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside.
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Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
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But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
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Cows scream louder than carrots.
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Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.
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You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.
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Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be
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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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In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain it only indicates.
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We are the eyes of the cosmos. So that in a way, when you look deeply into somebody's eyes, you're looking deep into yourself, and the other person is looking deeply into the same self.
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If you love a person, you say to that person, Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song.
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We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.
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Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
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There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.
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Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown.
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The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.
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We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals nor are we clear as to the role of the physician. You know, of course, that in ancient times there was no clear distinction between priest and physician.
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It's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
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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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