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
We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time
It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.
this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.
We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.
Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world — a place where they are one.
The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.
Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.
Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.
The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.
You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.