Alan Watts

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Alan Watts

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.

ConventionFatalForgetSeriousThinking

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Alan Watts

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

DifficultFascinateFrustrationIndividualIntelligenceOneselfWisdom

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Alan Watts

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

FinalPlayReachWriting

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Alan Watts

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

ExploreLookPhilosophyUniverse

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Alan Watts

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.

CompleteLifePlayRealizeSecretWork

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Alan Watts

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

ConsciousGloryListenMagnificantPerceiveUniverseWitness

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Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

AchievementAliveLifePanic

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Alan Watts

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.

One LinerReality

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Alan Watts

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

LifeLivePresent

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Alan Watts

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

BlackStatementUniverseWorld

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Alan Watts

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.

DutyGodInfiniteReligious

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Alan Watts

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

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Alan Watts

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

AnimalCompassionLovePlayWorld

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Alan Watts

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.

EternalFutureLifeListenLiveMusicPresentSake

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Alan Watts

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

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Alan Watts

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

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Alan Watts

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

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Alan Watts

I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

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