Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Wattswas a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 January 1915
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
It is also in despair of being able to understand or make any productive contribution to the highly organised chaos of our politico-economic system that large numbers of people simply abandon political and social committments. They just let society be taken over by a pattern of organisation which is as self-proliferative as a weed, and whose ends and values are neither human nor instinctive but mechanical.
...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
There is no mission, nor interest to convert, and yet I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter. We should see at once that the high ideals for which we are killing and regimenting each other are empty and abstract substiutes for the unheeded miracles that surround us - not only in the obvious wonders of nature but also in the overwhelming uncanny fact of mere existence.
...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary...
For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor other. There is simply one all-inclusive Happening, in which your personal sensation of being alive occurs in just the same way as the river flowing and the stars shining far out in space. There is no question of submitting or accepting or going with it, for what happens in and as you is no different from what happens as it.
Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.
The question "What shall we do about it?" is only asked by those who do not understand the problem. If a problem can be solved at all, to understand it and to know what to do about it are the same thing. On the other hand, doing something about a problem which you do not understand is like trying to clear away darkness by thrusting it aside with your hands. When light is brought, the darkness vanishes at once.
At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time