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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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Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
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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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To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!
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Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
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If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
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The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.
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Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
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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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They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.
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We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
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If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.
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Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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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.
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
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Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.
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Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
Alan Watts
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The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.
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