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Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

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
Experience
Reality
Problem
Life
Solved

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events--that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies--and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.
Alan Watts
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Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.
Alan Watts
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You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it.
Alan Watts
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There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.
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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Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.
Alan Watts
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Alan Watts
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People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
Alan Watts
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Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.
Alan Watts
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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
Alan Watts
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We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
Alan Watts
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Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.
Alan Watts
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In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
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.
Alan Watts
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Faith...is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown.
Alan Watts
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
Alan Watts