This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Alan Watts

Categorized in : Life Inspiring Monday

I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.

humans mind today

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhis... by Alan Watts

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.

buddhism learning education

Religion is always falling apart. by Alan Watts

Religion is always falling apart.

falling-apart fall

But the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker, of the ego trying to watch the mind without interfering.

effort ego letting-go

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.

limitless want desire

There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.

young said men

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails wi... by Alan Watts

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.

scraping violin cat

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves fr... by Alan Watts

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

this-world tree world

Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

expression men philosophy

The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.

realizing mind way

The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.

doctrine simple world

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.

curiosity self people

I knew of a physicist at the University of Chicago who was rather crazy like some scientists, and the idea of the insolidity, the instability of the physical world impressed him so much that he used to go around in enormous padded slippers for fear he should fall through the floor.

crazy ideas fall

...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.

lust use animal

Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical. When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.

knives buddhism hands

...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.

differences real littles

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.

race running long

At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.

envy simplicity animal

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.

style universe church god