28 Quotes & Sayings By Alan Watts

Alan Watts was an English philosopher, poet, mystic, and social activist. He wrote The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are, which has been called "the most controversial book of our time." He was born in England in 1915, but his family moved to the United States when he was four. He lived for a short time in San Francisco before returning to England where he attended Eton College. He left Eton without graduating to pursue a career as a freelance journalist Read more

When he traveled to India for the first time, he became fascinated by Hinduism. Watts spent three years traveling around the world, including the Middle East and China. He also wrote several books on Zen Buddhism and gave lectures at Cambridge University and other prestigious institutions.

Watts's lectures were recorded and published as Alan Watts on Meditation (1966).

1
Carried to its final extreme, the logical end of this type of reaction to life is suicide. The hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already dead Alan Watts
2
Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent... this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering. Alan Watts
3
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel for love is not ours to command. Alan Watts
4
Zen is a way of liberation concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous but what is. Alan Watts
5
If we live we live if we die we die if we suffer we suffer if we are terrified we are terrified. There is no problem about it. Alan Watts
6
At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die but do not seem to make a "problem" of it. Alan Watts
7
Faith is above all openness an act of trust in the unknown. Alan Watts
8
This-the immediate everyday and present experience-is IT the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. Alan Watts
9
I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions that they exist only in the present which is what there is and all that there is. Alan Watts
10
But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. Alan Watts
11
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. Alan Watts
12
You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you. Alan Watts
13
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command. Alan Watts
14
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Alan Watts
15
Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it. Alan Watts
16
In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. Alan Watts
17
But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful. Alan Watts
18
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. Alan Watts
19
The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. Alan Watts
20
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. Alan Watts
21
But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. Alan Watts
22
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. Alan Watts
23
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts
24
You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. Alan Watts
25
Faith is a state of openness or trust. Alan Watts
26
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Alan Watts
27
No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts