Alan Watts Quotes

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself."

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. 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.”

“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.”

“When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

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

“A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.”

“If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.”

“Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”

“The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.”

“What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

“Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.”

“Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment.”

“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.” 

“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.” –