Alan Watts Quotes

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination.

We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see its like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past.

"This state of affairs is known technically as the "double-bind." A
person is put in a double-bind by a command or request which contains
a concealed contradiction...
This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't
situation which arises constantly in human (and especially family)
relations...

The social doublebind game can be phrased in several ways:The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
Everyone must play.
You must love us.
You must go on living.
Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
Control yourself and be natural.
Try to be sincere.
Essentially, this game is a demand for spontaneous behavior of certain
kinds. Living, loving, being natural or sincere — all these are
spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like
digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire
that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone
deplores — weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like
forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate
them. Faith — in life, in other people, and in oneself — is the attitude of
allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its
own time."

It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt

If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.

"You have seen that the universe is at root a
magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate
"you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The
only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws
itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the
universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that
come and go so that the vision is forever new."

Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. I know that I am listening to a rhythm which has been just the same for millions of years, and it takes me out of a world of relentlessly ticking clocks. Clocks for some reason or other always seem to be marching, and, as with armies, marching is never to anything but doom. But in the motion of waves there is no marching rhythm. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, of marking out how much still remains. It is the breathing of eternity, like the God Brahma of Indian mythology inhaling and exhaling, manifesting and dissolving the worlds, forever. As a mere conception this might sound appallingly monotonous, until you come to listen to the breaking and washing of waves.