Alan Watts on Strength Quotes

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."

"A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something everyday."

"Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, and mummy-dead."

"Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."

"The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other."

"To go with the grain of things is the secret of the strength of the universe."

"The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless."

"You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes."

"If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself."

"You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago."

"Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."

"One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious."

"Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal."

"You don't look at the musician and say, 'What are you trying to prove?' He's just playing."

"The real secret of life is to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now."

"But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is."

"If you want to get the knot out, you must first look at the way the string is tangled."

"What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take them too seriously."

"The menu is not the meal."

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."

"To hold your breath is to lose your breath."

"Trying to capture the future for security is a trap. The only reality is the present moment; clutching at certainty only creates the anxiety you wish to avoid."

"The willow which yields to the weight of snow is the one whose branches do not break."

"Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love."

"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."

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth."

"The more we struggle for life (as continuity), the more we are actually killing what we love."

"We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time."

"Life is a matter of being able to separate the essential from the nonessential."

"Everything that happens, happens as much because of you as because of the rest of the world."

"Zen is a liberation from the dualistic thinking that creates the false sense of a separate ego."

"No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now."

"You are not a stranger in this world. You are the universe experiencing itself in human form, much like a wave is simply the ocean rising up."