22 Famous Quotes by Alan Watts
1/6/1915 - 11/16/1973
Also Known As:
Dr. Alan Watts
Watts, Alan
Professions:
Information:
About Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.
Living on the West Coast, Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen, one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West, Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy", and in the book The Joyous Cosmology.
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Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Zen
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Zen
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Buddhism
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Illusion
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Meditation
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it becomes. It is like trying to clutch water in ones hands. The harder we grip, the more it slips through our fingers.
Present
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
War
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
Principles
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes,
such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous
arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than
a god.
Inspirational
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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No work for love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Alan Watts
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