Alan Watts Inspirational Quotes

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

If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself – not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke - but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental.

‪A wise man once said, 'Life is like breathing. If you try to hold it, you'll lose it. But let it come & go & you'll always be connected to it.'‬

If we are open only to discoveries which will accord with what we know already, we may as well stay shut.

We have been accustomed to make this existence worth-while by the belief that there is more than the outward appearance--that we live for a future beyond this life here. For the outward appearance does not seem to make sense. if living is to end in pain, incompleteness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile experience for being who are born to reason, hope, create, and love. man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more that what he see-- unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.

How would you really enjoy spending your life? Imagine when we get to the final moment in which the world is blown up. Have you never experienced what’s on the inside of this game? You never got down to the root of reality, you don’t know that state of consciousness. You’ve never experienced bliss, and so you’re frantically trying to patch everything up and pin it all together and screw the universe up so that its fixed. You can never do it. Why don’t you do something for yourselves? Because you’re going to find out now who you really are. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life, love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, music beyond belief. What could you take? Abandonment of your power. What dimension of that could you stand? To be able to realise that this world is simply a dream; a dancing play of smoke, you know, imagine the count down. This is the end, somebody’s pushed the button, 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1…. People who live for the future never get there. We are such stuff as dreams are made of.

Just as a wave is one with the ocean, you are one with the Universe. Like a wave in the ocean, you travel in your own unique form, on your own unique path. Like a wave, you are changed by things around you. Like a wave, you can change things around you in good ways or in bad ways. You can choose a path to love, heaven, joy.

One of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.

For our radically misnamed “materialistic” civilization must above all cultivate the love of material, of earth, air, and water, of mountains and forests, of excellent food and imaginative housing and clothing, and of cherishing our artfully erotic contacts between human bodies. Certainly, all these so–called “things” are as impermanent as ripples in water, but what life, what love, what energy is there in a perfectly pure abstraction or a totally solid and eternally indestructible rock?

There is no way, no method, no technique which you or I can use to come into accord with the Tao, the Way of Nature, because every how, every method implies a goal. And we cannot make the Tao a goal any more than we can aim an arrow at itself.

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, ‘Now, I’ve arrived!’ Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.” ― Alan Watts ― The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

experimenter. For instance, when it came to developing his art of jeet kune do, he delved not just into standard martial arts for inspiration and information; he looked at Western boxing, fencing, biomechanics, and philosophy. He admired the simplicity of boxing, incorporating its ideas into his footwork and his upper-body tools (jab, cross, hook, bob, weave, etc.). And from fencing, he began by looking at the footwork, range, and timing of the stop hit and the riposte, both techniques that meet attacks and defenses with preemptive moves. From biomechanics, he studied movement as a whole, seeking to understand the physical laws of motion while understanding biological efficiencies and strengths. And within philosophy, he read widely from both Eastern and Western writers, such as Lao Tzu, Alan Watts, and Krishnamurti, while also picking up popular self-help books of the day. He was open to all inspiration and all possibilities—his only limit being the limit of his own imagination and understanding.

while understanding biological efficiencies and strengths. And within philosophy, he read widely from both Eastern and Western writers, such as Lao Tzu, Alan Watts, and Krishnamurti, while also picking up popular self-help books of the day. He was open to all inspiration and all possibilities—his only limit being the limit of his own imagination and understanding.

See, there are basically two kinds of Philosophy - one's called prickly, the other one is called goo. Prickly people are precise, rigorous, logical - they like everything chopped up and clear. Goo people like it vague, big picture, random, imprecise, incomplete and irrational. Prickly people believe in particles, goo people believe in waves. They always argue with each other but what they don't realize is neither one of them can take their position without their opposition being there. You wouldn't know you are advocating prickles unless someone else was advocating goo. You wouldn't even know what prickles was and what goo was. Life is not prickles or goo, its gooey-prickles or prickly-goo.

Man is not to be an intellectual porcupine, meeting his environment with a surface of spikes.

To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what live puts before us.