Alan Watts Quotes

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be

No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.

You are the universe experiencing itself.

We see what we believe rather than what we see.

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.

Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.

As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.

Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

Don't hurry anything. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about what progress you're making. Just be entirely content to be aware of what is.

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.

All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.

Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.

The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.

We have a strange anxiety in us; that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.

People sometimes fail to live because they are always preparing to live.

Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.

Faith is, above all, openness; an act of trust in the unknown.

You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!

The mind's the standard of the man.

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

The destination of life is this eternal moment.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.

The difference between a baby and adult is that a baby believes in everything while the adult doubts everything. Babies also only tell the truth until they learn what a lie is.

Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

There is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.