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The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

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
Trouble
Imagination
Show
Shows
Deplorable
Enough
Wishful
Many
Accused
Thinking
Religions
Lack

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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.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
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The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
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In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
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It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are.
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The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it.
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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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The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
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To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.
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...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality.
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We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
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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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By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us.
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To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.
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The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
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