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Change is an illusion because we're always at the place where any future can take us.

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
Illusion
Future
Place
Change
Take
Always

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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.
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I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.
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We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
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Where does my fist go when I open up my hand? Where does my lap go when I stand up?
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To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.
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If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.
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We see what we believe rather than what we see.
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The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
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The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.
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Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
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And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.
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Black implies white self implies other
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As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
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We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
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...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
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Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation.
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You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.
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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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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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