Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

While living, be a dead man, thoroughly dead; Then, whatever you do, just as you will, will be right.

The part of our self that wants to change our self is the very one that needs to be changed; but it is as inaccessible as a needle to the prick of its own point.

the one important result of any really serious attempt at self-renunciation or self-acceptance is the humiliating discovery that it is impossible.

they remain under the impression that the most awkward road was the only road.

Our unwillingness to feel is the very measure of our ability to feel, for the more sensitive the instrument, the greater its capacity for pain, and so for reluctance to be hurt.

Lucretius: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (Too much religion is apt to encourage evil).

Self-consciousness is a stoppage because it is like interrupting a song after every note so as to listen to the echo, and then feeling irritated because of the loss of rhythm.

The reason that the universe is everlasting is that it does not live for itself.

And the antidote to ignorance is not action but knowledge—not what to do, but what we know.

Chinese poem says: Entering the forest, he does not disturb a blade of grass; Entering the water, he does not cause a ripple.

To know that you can do nothing is the beginning. Lesson One is: “I give up.”

Chuang-tzu’s perfect man, they employ their minds as a mirror: it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.

Some basic nonsense is entirely unavoidable,

Kena Upanishad: “Brahman is unknown to those who know It, and is known to those who do not know It at all.”

“What is the Tao?” A Zen master answers, “Usual life is the very Tao.”

When you are reading a book you defeat your purpose altogether if you think about yourself trying to concentrate on it; instead of thinking about what is written, your attention is absorbed in your efforts to concentrate. The secret is to think of the book and forget yourself. But that is not all. The book is of little use to you if you go to the other extreme and simply let it “run away with you.” On the contrary, you must bring your own understanding and intelligence to it, and then through the union of your own thoughts and the thoughts in the book, something new is born. This union is the important task; you must just do it, and not waste energy in thinking about doing it.

religious experience is like the experience of beauty;

all ways are included in God. To understand this is to wake up to your freedom to be alive.

Beware of the false freedom of doing as you like; to be really free you must also be free to do as you don’t like, for if you are only free to do as you like you are still tied up in dualism, being bound by your own whims.

“The Tao,” said Lao-tzu, “is like water; it seeks the lowly level which men abhor.”

Thoughts are often wolves in sheep’s clothing.

eternity is not just everlasting time; eternity is beyond time; it is now.

by the Avatamsaka-sutra each single atom contains in itself the whole universe. Therefore, what is done by one individual affects all others; if one man raises himself, he raises at the same time the whole universe.

“you yourself as you are—that is Buddha Dharma.”

For we are never really outside of God nor He outside of us. He is more with us than we are with ourselves.