Alan Watts Quotes About Human Nature
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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.
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Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
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Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.
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The menu is not the meal.
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What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.
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You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
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When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
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No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
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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.
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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
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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.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
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So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
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But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
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Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
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A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.
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