quotes by Alan Watts

"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"
— Alan Watts

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth"
— Alan Watts

"The menu is not the meal."
— Alan Watts

"You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."
— Alan Watts

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."
— Alan Watts

"How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god."
— Alan Watts (The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are)

"***

here's an example: someone says, "master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "please give me the other end," he says. and the master replies, "what would you do with the other end?" this is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical.

when the question is, "master, what is the fundamental principle of buddhism?" then he replies, "there is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." that is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. the mundane and the sacred are one and the same."
— Alan Watts (What Is Zen?)

"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."
— Alan Watts

"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
— Alan Watts

""For there is a growing apprehension
that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,
are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the
other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them
out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new
tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.
At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with
eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to
swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus
energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises
by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in
groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an
abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as
mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms.
There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general
there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube.
All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think
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about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems
extremely odd.""
— Alan Watts

"For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new
tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an
abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd."
— Alan Watts

"The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless."
— Alan Watts

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

"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."
— Alan Watts

"Most of us assume as a matter of common sense that space is nothing, that it's not important and has no energy. But as a matter of fact, space is the basis of existence. How could you have stars without space? Stars shine out of space and something comes out of nothing just in the same way as when you listen, in an unprejudiced way, you hear all sounds coming out of silence. It is amazing. Silence is the origin of sound just as space is the origin of stars, and woman is the origin of man. If you listen and pay close attention to what is, you will discover that there is no past, no future, and no one listening. You cannot hear yourself listening. You live in the eternal now and you are that. It is rally extremely simple, and that is the way it is."
— Alan Watts

"The art of living...is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive."
— Alan Watts

""Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated""
— Alan Watts

"“The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”"
— Alan Watts

"“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”"
— Alan Watts

"People become concerned with being more humble than other people."
— Alan Watts (Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation)

"“Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.”"
— Alan Watts

"“To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.”"
— Alan Watts

""I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.""
— Alan Watts

"I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination."
— 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."
— Alan Watts

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

"Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command."
— Alan Watts

"It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt"
— Alan Watts (Zen and the Beat Way)

"The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years."
— Alan Watts

"Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves."
— Alan Watts