Alan Watts

The history and the geographical distribution of the myth are uncertain, but for several thousand years we have been obsessed with a false humility—on the one hand, putting ourselves down as mere "creatures" who came into this world by the whim of God or the fluke of blind forces, and on the other, conceiving ourselves as separate personal egos fighting to control the physical world. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the "harmony of contained conflicts" in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole universe into being. In the act of putting everything at a distance so as to describe and control it, we have orphaned ourselves both from the surrounding world and from our own bodies—leaving "I" as a discontented and alienated spook, anxious, guilty, unrelated, and alone.

Hasta el punto en que una persona se haga consciente de que el mal esta tanto en el como en el otro, resultara menos pobable que proyecte sobre alguna cabeza de turco y comenta actos de violencia criminal contra los demas.

You cannot teach an ego to be anything but egotistic, even though egos have the subtlest ways of pretending to be reformed.

We can’t reimpose old myths on ourselves or believe in new ones made up out of a desire for comfort; therefore, the path of self-examination is the only one a person of conscience can reasonably follow. Otherwise, we will only numb ourselves to the meaninglessness of life, seizing present pleasure to avoid pain, a futile strategy — here

Almost more common is the sensitive boy who learns in school to encrust himself for life in the shell of the “tough-guy” attitude. As an adult he plays, in self-defense, the role of the Philistine, to whom all intellectual and emotional culture is womanish and “sissy.” 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.

결코 당신이 실제로 느끼지 않는 사랑에 가장하지 말라, 왜냐하면 사랑은 명령할 것이다 우리 것이 아니다.

The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.

Todėl neapleidžia jausmas, kad mes gyvename ypatingo nesaugumo laikotarpiu. Per pastarąjį šimtmetį iširo daugybė ilgai gyvavusių tradicijų: šeimos bei socialinio gyvenimo, valdžios, ekonominės santvarkos bei religinių įsitikinimų. Metams bėgant, rodos, lieka vis mažiau uolų, į kurias galėtume įsitverti, mažiau dalykų, kuriuos galėtume laikyti visiškai teisingais ir tikrais bei nekintamais.

He learns the art of “letting things happen,” which is no mere passivity but, on the contrary, a creative technique familiar to the activity of many artists, musicians, and inventors in our own culture, whereby skill and insight are found to be the fruits of a certain “dynamic” relaxation.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

En effet suggérer à quelqu'un de ne pas penser à ses réactions, équivaut à l'inciter à réfléchir sur la manière dont il pourrait s'emêcher d'y penser. De même, parler d'harmoniser l'Espirit indroduit iposo facto le concept du soi « s'efforçant d'harmoniser » et, par conséquent, détourne notre attention de la vie.

Your hair grows by itself, your heart beats by itself, and your breath happens pretty much by itself. Your glands secrete the essences by themselves and you do not have voluntary control over these things, and so we say they happen spontaneously. So, when you go to bed and try to go to sleep you interfere with the spontaneous process of going to sleep. If you try to breathe real hard you will find you get balled-up in your breathing. So if you are to be human, you just have to trust yourself to go to sleep, to digest your food, and to have bowel movements. Of course if something goes seriously wrong and you need a surgeon that is another matter, but by and large the healthy human being does not from the start of life need surgical interference. One lets it happen by itself, and so with the whole picture that is fundamental to it. You have to let go and let it happen, because if you don’t then you are constantly going to be trying to do what happens easily only if you do not try. When you think a bit about what people really want to do with their time, and you ask what they do when they are not being pushed around or somebody is telling them what to do, you find they like to make rhythms. They listen to music and they dance or they sing, or perhaps they do something of a rhythmic nature like playing cards, bowling, or raising their elbows. Given the chance, everybody wants to spend their time swinging.

Recollection — or the practice of the presence of God. The ideal is to have this running constantly through the day. The point is not to try to feel God’s presence but to recollect that, like the present moment, you cannot get away from it even if you try.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way, like the problem of cause and effect. Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.

The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.