So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live. Alan Watts More Quotes by Alan Watts More Quotes From Alan Watts It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description. Alan Watts description hard language A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted. Alan Watts philosopher intellectual people 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 laughter spiritual teacher Thought is a means of concealing Truth. Alan Watts concealing mean The source of all light is in the eye. Alan Watts source light eye So we down-to-earth, gutsy, tough, realistic, and practical types have just been squandering billions of dollars and unimaginable amounts of energy, nerve-work, and materials in whizzing off to the moon to discover, as astronomers knew before, that it was just a dreary slag heap. This is the true, original and scientifically etymological meaning of being lunatics. Crying for the moon. Alan Watts sunset moon night But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything---including "my" thoughts and actions---were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that "I make them"; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites. Alan Watts choices opposites play You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing. Alan Watts ocean inspiring way No work or 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. Alan Watts fear heart inspirational Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified. Alan Watts birth would-be world The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! Alan Watts rejection ego identity It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things. Alan Watts oddities spiritual feelings A holy person is someone who is whole; who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites. Alan Watts spirituality holy opposites There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it. Alan Watts pruning sex interesting Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Alan Watts ultimate-reality ultimate reality Faith is a state of openness or trust. Alan Watts openness states faith Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol. Alan Watts idols people thinking It seems to be the special peculiarity of human beings that they reflect: they think about thinking and know that they know. This, like other feedback systems, may lead to vicious circles and confusions if improperly managed, but self-awareness makes human experience resonant. It imparts that simultaneous "echo" to all that we think and feel as the box of a violin reverberates with the sound of the strings. It gives depth and volume to what would otherwise be shallow and flat. Alan Watts echoes self thinking Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it. Alan Watts environment looks world But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself. Alan Watts black self white
