To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. Alan Watts More Quotes by Alan Watts More Quotes From Alan Watts Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. Alan Watts hallucinationsunityserious In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Alan Watts certainmatterideas To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end. Alan Watts depressingoceanbeautiful If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. Alan Watts buddhistrealmemories 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. Alan Watts insanebridgesorder In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life. Alan Watts certainfeelings We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears. Alan Watts pastworldthinking Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment. Alan Watts enjoymentindividualmotivational The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp†reality. Alan Watts definitionspurposereality Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone. Alan Watts mindtryingwater Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost. Alan Watts viewsseareality Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony Alan Watts bankingrealizingpeople The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists. Alan Watts languagebodysoul What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. Alan Watts realexampleideas But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything. Alan Watts forestsinspiringquiet Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is. Alan Watts discoveringliberationway Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death. Alan Watts sexymeandeath There's an interdependence between flowers and bees. Where there are no flowers there are no bees, and where there are no bees, there are no flowers. They are really one organism. And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else. Alan Watts flowerbeesway Black implies white self implies other Alan Watts blackselfwhite Everybody is I, you all know you are you. And wheresoever's beings exist throughout all galaxies it doesn't any difference. You are all of them, and when they come into being that's you coming into being, you know that very well. Only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland. You don't have to know how to shine the sun, you just do it, like you breathe. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all of this and you never had any education on how to do it. Alan Watts differencespastthinking
