People can’t be talked out of illusions.
ALAN WATTSA 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.
More Alan Watts Quotes
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The present is always changing the past.
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The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.
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To 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.
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We know that from time to time, there arise among human beings, people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat.
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People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
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The past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
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If one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.
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It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
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You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
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The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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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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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
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Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
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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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The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
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The source of all light is in the eye.
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Faith is an act of trust in the unknown.
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Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.
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To 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.
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I am what happens between the maternity ward and the Crematorium.
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Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
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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.
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Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated.
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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
ALAN WATTS