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
Alan Watts quotes about
Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.
Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.
The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?
...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard.
People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'
Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.
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.
Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
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.
In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
Just what should a young man or woman know to be 'in the know'? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?
But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.