Writer, speaker, and British philosopher Alan Watts is best known for his interpretation popularization of Asian culture and philosophy for the West. With more than 25 books, multitudes of articles on higher consciousness, identity, the nature of reality, the meaning of life, and the pursuit of happiness, he left an impressive body of work that continues to inspire people 40 years after his death.
Perhaps the most profound part of Watts was that he had the incredible ability of expressing complex thoughts in the simplest of ways.
Here is a glimpse into some of his profound wisdom.
1. “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.”
2. “The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”
3. “Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.”
4. “Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of 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.”
5. “What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money … but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth … In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are ‘coins’ for real things.”
6. “The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.”
7. “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”
8. “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.”
9. “No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.”
10. “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
11. “Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.”
12. “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.”
13. “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.”
14. “Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.”
15. “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.”
16. “Faith is a state of openness or trust. 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. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”
17. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
18. “There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering.”
19. “To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”
20. “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
21. “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.”
22. “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.”
23. “Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.”
24. “You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”
25. “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”
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