Alan Watts is one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of 20th century thought. Although he is known as a great popularizer of Eastern philosophy (especially Zen) in the West, Watts left a vast philosophical work, as well as talks, conferences and radio programs on topics such as philosophy of science, history of religions. , Taoism, environmentalism and avant-garde music.
Summarizing his thoughts in a handful of sentences would be impossible. However, like every great thinker, the germ of his teachings can also be found in his fragments.
This brief compilation of quotes offers not only a range of Watts’s interests, but also a myriad of windows through which we can observe ourselves and rediscover the wonder of simply being who we are, in the here and now.
10 quotes to meet you again in the here and now
1
Man aspires to govern nature, but the more we study ecology, the more absurd it seems to talk about any characteristic of an organism, or of an organism/environmental terrain, as if this one ruled over the others.
2
The true splendor of science is not so much that it designates and classifies, archives and makes predictions, but that it observe and want to know the factswhatever they turn out to be.
3
We do not ‘arrive’ into this world; we come out of it, like the leaves of a tree. As the sea ‘makes waves’, the universe ‘makes people’. Each individual is an expression of the entire scope of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
4
The mud clears up better letting it rest.
5
You feel much less anxious if you sit perfectly free from being anxiousand the same can be said about guilt.
6
If you can’t trust yourself, then you can’t trust your distrust of yourself either; so without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature, you are simply paralyzed.
7
I find that the feeling of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is actually a hallucination.
8
Zen is a release of time. Well, if we open our eyes and observe clearly, it becomes evident that there is no other time than this momentand that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
9
For there is never anything other than the present, and if one cannot live in it, can’t live anywhere.
10
You are under no obligation to be the same person that you were 5 minutes ago.
Bonus track
Peace can only be made by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will arise from guiltfear or emptiness of heart, as well as no valid plan for the future can be made by those who lack the ability to live in the now.
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