Quote

Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.

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
Talent
Preparing
Education
Showing
Alive
Skill
Future
Enjoyment
Energy
Entire
Art
Skills
Littles
Capacity
Little
Instead
Deprived

More quotes by Alan Watts

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All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.
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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
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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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Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
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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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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.
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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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The mind's the standard of the man.
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Cows scream louder than carrots.
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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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If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.
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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.
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When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
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There is a deep, peaceful calm in the dawning of a new day.
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Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.
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The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?
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Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.
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