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 WATTSWhat 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 WATTSTo 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.
ALAN WATTSNo 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.
ALAN WATTSYou 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 WATTSThe mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
ALAN WATTSI am what happens between the maternity ward and the Crematorium.
ALAN WATTSThe frightened mind that runs away from everyday terrors meets the seeking mind that wants a better world.
ALAN WATTSNothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
ALAN WATTSThe more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.
ALAN WATTSMan suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
ALAN WATTSTomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present.
ALAN WATTSJesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
ALAN WATTSNo 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.
ALAN WATTSMuddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
ALAN WATTSThe ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
ALAN WATTSI have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.
ALAN WATTS