Alan Watts
c/alan-watts
The largest collection of talks by Alan Watts — the British-American philosopher who made Eastern wisdom accessible through witty and profound teachings.
c/alan-watts
The largest collection of talks by Alan Watts — the British-American philosopher who made Eastern wisdom accessible through witty and profound teachings.
Memorable moments captured from Alan Watts transcripts and documents
“This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you're doing in the here and now.”
“You are the whole works that there is that always was and always has been and always will.”
“You don't aim at a particular spot in the room that's where you should arrive the whole point of the dancing is the dance.”
“What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. You are something the whole universe is doing.”
“You are the big bang, the original force of the universe coming on as whoever you are.”
“The sound of the rain needs no translation, no explanation.”
“The old old basic double bind. You must be spontaneous.”
“You cannot lift yourself up by your own bootstraps however hard you try.”
“We always find the interchange of two personality types which I call prickles and goo.”
“In music, though, one doesn't make the end of a composition the point of the composition. If that were so the best conductors would be those who played fastest.”
“The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. As the proverb says, tomorrow never comes.”
“The whole world is wiggly lines. Clouds, mountains people, rivers, everything is wiggly lines.”
“The ego is a social institution. In other words a convention.”
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end.”
“The universe is sort of watching itself through your eyes. You are an aperture through which the universe is aware of itself.”
“A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.”
“To will is present with me but how to do that which is good I find not. For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do.”
“So then, 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. You can not conceive but feel yourself not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on sufferance on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”
“I remember when I was a boy we had a common saying: talking to yourself is the first sign of madness. Now obviously if I talk all the time I don't hear what anyone else has to say. And so in exactly the same way if I think all the time that is to say if I talk to myself all the time I don't have anything to think about except thoughts and I'm never in relationship with reality. All right now that's the first basic reason for meditation.”
“It's usually and popularly understood that what happens to you, either fortunate or unfortunate, is the result of good or bad deeds in a previous life. Well that's popular superstition. The real meaning of karma, the word in sanskrit means simply doing, and if I say of an event it is your karma it is saying it is your doing.”
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