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Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.
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
Normal
Imagery
Consciousness
Theological
Sense
Island
Persons
Islands
Person
Dramatic
Lonely
Illusion
Based
More quotes by Alan Watts
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Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
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Imagine a multidimensiona l spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
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Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.
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You can't get wet from the word 'water.'
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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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That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.
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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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Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.
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Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
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Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
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The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really exist the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes.
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Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.
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Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world - the world of stars and waters, clouds, mountains and living organisms. There is such a thing as rhythm - rhythm of tides, rhythm of biological processes... There is rhythm and there is motion. Time is a way of measuring motion.
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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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Thought is a means of concealing Truth.
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Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.
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