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We see what we believe rather than what we see.

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
Rather
Believe

More quotes by Alan Watts

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A holy person is someone who is whole who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.
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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.
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For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
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There is no coming toward it or going away from it it is, and you are it.
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A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft.
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Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
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The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
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People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
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Our educational system in its entirety does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life.
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What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present
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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.
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The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.
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The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent.
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For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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Someone once described “Christian Secularism” as the assumption that there is nothing at all to life except a pilgrimage between the maternity ward and the crematorium, and that it is within that span that Christian concern must be exercised because that is all there is.
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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.
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