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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
Future
Place
Change
Take
Always
Illusion

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But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
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To be alive spiritually man must have union with God and must be conscious of it. Apart from this union his religious life will be an empty drudgery, a mere imitation of true spirituality.
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What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.
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This-the immediate, everyday, and present experience-is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe.
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I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.
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We do not come into this world we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
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Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.
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You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.
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A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
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That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.
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Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
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...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
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We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
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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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Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
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The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
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The source of all light is in the eye.
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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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