Alan Watts on Wisdom Quotes

"Faith is the act of opening up to the unknown, whereas belief is the insistence that the unknown must fit your preconceived notions."

"Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies."

"Life is a musical thing, and you are supposed to sing or dance while the music is being played."

"The art of living is neither drifting carelessly nor clinging fearfully to the past, but being sensitive to each moment."

"If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up, and if you are not ready you are going to stay asleep."

"Words can only describe the world in the same way a map describes a territory; do not confuse the map for the land."

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

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

"Waking up is realizing that the reality you are looking for is the one looking."

"The separate ego is a fiction; it is merely a social convention that tricks us into feeling isolated from the cosmos."

"You cannot improve yourself because the 'you' who needs improving is the same 'you' doing the improving."

"We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree."

"We define who we are by what is outside of us. You cannot have the concept of 'light' without 'dark', nor can you have 'self' without 'other'."

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

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

"The ultimate cosmic humor is that you are the divine playing hide and seek with yourself, pretending to be a separate ego for the thrill of waking up."

"The more you try to control your mind, the more erratic it becomes; control is the very agent of chaos."

"The future is a concept, not a reality; to live strictly for the future is to miss the only moment that actually exists."

"To hold your breath is to lose it; to hold onto life is to strangle it. We must let go to truly live."

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

"Thinking is a good servant but a terrible master; compulsive thinking is a sickness."

"You are not a stranger brought into this world; you are the universe itself, experiencing its own existence through a specific point of view."

"Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations."

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple."

"Technology often makes us faster at doing things that perhaps shouldn't be done at all. We measure everything but feel very little."

"The world is precisely the relationship between the observer and the observed."

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

"True wisdom arises when we stop trying to freeze the fluid nature of life and instead learn to swim with the current of change."

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

"We are the universe playing hide and seek with itself, pretending to be separate so we can rediscover our unity."

"Our pleasure is always a memory of the past or an expectation of the future."

"By holding your breath, you lose it. By letting it go, you find it."

"When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor; it is to enjoy each step along the way."