black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Alan Watts

The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
ALAN WATTS

Abstraction Future Past Reality
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.
ALAN WATTS

Gone Imagination Night Sleep Wake Up
Society is our extended mind and body.
ALAN WATTS

Body Extend Mind One Liner Society
Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Duty Genius Guilt Knowledge Love Sense
The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
ALAN WATTS

Constant Construction Ego Empty Expectation Future Memories Past Reality Regret
Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
ALAN WATTS

Delay Hurry Present Resistance Try
One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Deal Freedom Guilt Perfection Worry
What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.
ALAN WATTS

Discover Finding Imagination Pain Safety Seek
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
ALAN WATTS

Attitude Aware Environment Immense Learning Mirror Ourselves People Power Social Teaching
You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
ALAN WATTS

Ocean Physical Universe Wave
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
ALAN WATTS

Destruction Hand People Process Realize Same Technology Universe
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.
ALAN WATTS

Attempt Avoid Control Deep Exercise Power
Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double.
ALAN WATTS

Alcohol Conscious Ourselves Philosophy
Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
ALAN WATTS

Arrangement Deal Experience Hospital Interesting Learning Sick
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

Anxiety Dead Each Other Equality Laugh Priest Religion Transformation
You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
ALAN WATTS

Final Play Reach Writing

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Watts Quotes