Quotes from Alan Watts

from The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

the present is the only thing that has no end.
-Erwin Schrodinger (99)

each organism is the universe experiencing itself in endless variety (111)

What happens is neither automatic nor aribtrary; it just happens, and all happenings are mutually interdependent in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious. (114)

the goal of action is always contemplation [Aristotle] -- knowing and being rather than seeking and becoming. (126)

Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh
-Chinese Zen master (143)

on religions: 10

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world.

no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers.

Why? Where from? Whence? 14

God [the Self of the World] ... likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it -- just what he wanted to do.

on death: 34-6

Death is, after all, a great event. ...when the time comes where clinging is no longer of the least avail, the circumstances are ideal for letting go of oneself completely. When this happens, the individual is released from his ego-prison. ...Ananda Coomaraswamy once said that he would rather die ten years too early than ten minutes too late.

You were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it's no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. ...then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.

on travel: 39

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels

Soul 63

the soul is the entire network of relationships and processes which make up your environment, and apart from which you are nothing.

Social double-bind game 65-7

the child is taught that he is responsible, that he is a free agent, an independent origin of thoughts and actions ... He has no way of resisting this social indoctrination. ... He is being told that he MUST be free. ... he is thereupon commanded, as a free agent, to do things which will be acceptable only if done voluntarily! "You really ought to love us" say parents . . .

Instead of giving our children clear and explicit explanations of the game-rules of the community, we befuddle them hopelessly because we ... were once so befuddled, and, remaining so, do not understand the game we are playing.

The social double-bind game can be phrased in many ways:

The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
Everyone must play.
You must love us.
You must go on living.
Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
Control yourself and be natural.
Try to be sincere.

ego 72

the paradox of the personal ego, which is to have attained the "precious state" of being a unique person at the price of perpetual anxiety for one's survival.

corpse 73

The corpse is like a footprint or an echo -- the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

fashion 75

women are slaves to the fashion game with its basic rule, "I have conformed sooner than you."

causality: 89

Does birth cause death?

what to do 106

the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give -- to the cause of peace or of racial intergration, to starving Hindus and Chinese, or even to your closest friends. Without this, all social concern will be muddlesome meddling, and all work for the future will be planned disaster.

answer to people who don't accept responsibility for themselves: 113 Well, we're just zombies too, so you shouldn't complain if we get angry.

the world 119

The world is a spell ..., an enchantment ..., an amazement ..., an arabesque of such a stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game. We become fascinated to the point where the cheering and the booing are transformed into intense love and hate, or delight and terror, ecstatic orgasm or screaming meemies.

attitude to others 121

... bragging is deeply offensive to those who do not understand, and who honestly believe themselves to be lonely, individual spirits in a desparate and agonizing struggle for life. For all such there must be deep and unpatronizing compassion, even a special kind of reverence and respect, because, after all, in them the Self is playing its most far-out and daring game -- the game of having lost Itself completely and of being in danger of some total and irremediable disaster.

United States 122

The political and personal morality of the West, especially of the United States, is ... a monstrous combination of uncompromising idealism and unscrupulous gangsterism, and thus devoid of the humor and humaneness which enables confessed rascals to sit down together and work out reasonable deals.

the would-be angels should realize that, as their ambition succeeds, they evoke hordes of devils to keep the balance. (124)

family 141

... Dad has fallen for the hoax that work is simply something you do to make money, and with money you can get anything you want. ... because the demands of their families boil down more and more to money, [professional men] are ever more tempted to regard even professional vocations as ways of making money. All this is further aggravated by the fact that parents no longer educate their own children. Thus the child does not grow up with understanding of or enthusiasm for his father's work. Instead, he is sent to an understaffed school run mostly by women which, under the circumstances, can do no more than hand out mass-produced education which prepares the child for everything and nothing.

from The Wisdom of Insecurity

. . .to be at this moment is pure miracle.

The art of living . . . consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

23 The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.

52 There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.

53 The moment I name it, it is no longer God.

55 What is life? What is reality? What is time? [St. Augustine:] I know, but when you ask me I don't.

66 The capacity of the brain to forsee the future has much to do with the fear of death.

77 The desire for security and the fear of insecurity are the same thing.

79 What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don't like it.

85 There is simply experience. There is not something or someone experiencing experience! You do not feel feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any more than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling.

94 If, on the other hand, you are aware of fear, you realize that, because this feeling is now yourself, escape is impossible. You see that calling it "fear" tells you little or nothing about it, for the comparison and the naming is based, not on past experience, but on menory. You have then no choice but to be aware of it with your whole being as an entirely new experience. Indeed, every experience is in this sense new, and at every moment of our lives we are in the midst of the new and the unknown.

95 The art of living . . . consists in being completely sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

104 It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer.

108 The sensation of a house across the street or of a star in outer space is no less I than an itch on the sole of my foot or an idea in my brain. . . . the sun, the air, and human society are just as vital to me as my brain or my lungs.

Plucking chrysanthemums along the East fence;
Gazing in silence at the southern hills;
The birds flying home in pairs
Through the soft mountain air of dusk --
In these things there is a deep meaning,
But when we are about to express it,
We suddenly forget the words.
-Chinese poem

123 I am not free when I am trying to do something contradictory.

132 Nothing is really more inhuman than human relations based on morals.

144 everlasting time is a monstrous nightmare, so that betweeen heaven and hell as ordinarily understood there is little to choose.

149 The true splendor of science is . . . that it observes and desires to know the facts, whatever they may turn out to be.

150 to be at this moment is pure miracle.

Upanishads: God is unknown to those who know him, and is known to those who do not know him at all.

151 Goethe: The highest to which man can attain is wonder

David E. Wilkins Last modified: Thu Aug 7 15:33:23 1997