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 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.
More Alan Watts Quotes
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If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.
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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.
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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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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.
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If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself – so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed
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My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.
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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.
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We confuse money with actual wealth.
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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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Only doubtful truths need defense.
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Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
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If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
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Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
ALAN WATTS