Category: Watts_Quote
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Don’t take this risk
The most dangerous risk of all: the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later. Alan Watts
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God vs Tao
Whereas the idea of God involves the control of everything going on, the idea of the Tao is the ruler who abdicates and trusts all the people to conduct their own affairs, to let it all happen. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a unified organism and everything is in chaos. It means that the…
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Education: an indoctrination
As I get older, I begin more and more to feel that being brought up and “educated” is a form of hypnosis, brainwashing, and indoctrination that is extremely difficult to survive with one’s senses intact. Alan Watts
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Life explained
Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present. Alan Watts
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Future: a hoax
For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able…
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The hopeless pursuit
Human desire tends to be insatiable. We are so anxious for pleasure that we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive, so that if pleasure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self- defense the body gets ill from the strain, but the…
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The habit of distraction
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,…
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Present experience and Spontaneity
YOU ARE LISTENING TO A SONG. SUDDENLY I ASK, “AT this moment, who are you?” How will you answer this question immediately and spontaneously, without stopping to find words? If the question does not shock you out of listening, you will answer by humming the song. If the question surprised you, you will answer, “At…
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When Lao-Tzu met Confucius
“Tell me,” said Lao-tzu, “in what consist charity and duty to one’s neighbour?”“They consist,” answered Confucius, “in a capacity in rejoicing in all things; in universal love, without the element of self. These are the characteristics of charity and duty to one’s neighbour.”“What stuff!” cried Lao-tzu, “Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your…
Ink&Roses 