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We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

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
Culture
Conceivable
Live
Suffers
Thing
Tremendous
Every
Disease
Way
Terrible
Particular
Dies
Suffering
Rubbed

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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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Just what should a young man or woman know to be 'in the know'? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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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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And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
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It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
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I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
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Someone once described “Christian Secularism” as the assumption that there is nothing at all to life except a pilgrimage between the maternity ward and the crematorium, and that it is within that span that Christian concern must be exercised because that is all there is.
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...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.
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The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe.
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Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
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We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot
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There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
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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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The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
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Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
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We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.
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We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
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Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done it's just doing it.
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I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.
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