Become What You Are

by Alan W. Watts

If I did not dislike fear, it would not be fear.

A person who did not feel frightened at the threat of danger would be like a tall building with no “give” to the wind. A mind which will not melt—with sorrow or love—is a mind which will all too easily break. Now,

psychotherapy, on philosophy. To use another Buddhist simile: The doctrine is like a finger pointing at the moon, and one must take care not to mistake the finger for the moon.

If you want to know what reality is, you must look directly at it and see for yourself.

attention, one has no self—that is, no self-consciousness. This is because the so-called self is a construct of words and memories, of fantasies which have no existence in immediate reality.

The morning glory blooms for an hour, Yet it differs not at heart From the giant pine which lives a thousand years.

The message of the Eastern wisdom is that the forms of life are maya and therefore profoundly lacking in seriousness from the viewpoint of reality. For the world of form and illusion which the majority take to be the real world is none other than the play of the Spirit, or, as the Hindus have called it, the Dance of Shiva. He is enlightened who joins in this play knowing it as play, for man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

when logical philosophy asserts that “true meaning is a verifiable hypothesis,” it must recognize that this very statement is meaningless if unverifiable.

“there is nothing infinite apart from finite things.”

“The Tao,” said Lao-tzu, “is like water; it seeks the lowly level which men abhor.” And while we are busy trying to add cubits to our stature so that we may reach up to heaven, we forget that we are getting no nearer to it and no further away. For “the kingdom of heaven is within you.”