Quote

This is what Zen means by being detached—not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.

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
World
Emotion
Blocked
Feeling
Detached
Water
Birds
Means
Flying
Feelings
Reflection
Without
Experiences
Mean
Pass
Reflections
Like
Bird
Sticky

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To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.
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So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.
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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
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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.
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The Art of Being: A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.
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And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
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So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.
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You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.
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A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts
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The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.
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A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.
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Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.
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It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.
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A living body is not a fixed thing, but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool.
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The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.
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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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Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.
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