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The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.

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
Play
Hide
Self
Plays
Seek
Game
Forever
Games
Universe
Ever

More quotes by Alan Watts

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More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.
Alan Watts
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Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world — a place where they are one.
Alan Watts
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To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
Alan Watts
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
Alan Watts
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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
Alan Watts
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...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
Alan Watts
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To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
Alan Watts
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Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
Alan Watts
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The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist, and a bad one at that, since he has given no thought to his position.
Alan Watts
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When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, I am all this! There is simply all this.
Alan Watts
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As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
Alan Watts
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The problem is to overcome the ingrained disbelief in the power of winning nature by love, in the gentle (ju) way (do) of turning with the skid, of controlling ourselves by cooperating with ourselves.
Alan Watts
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Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
Alan Watts
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What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
Alan Watts
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You're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe...
Alan Watts
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You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
Alan Watts
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These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.
Alan Watts
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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
Alan Watts