Sublime
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Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of the universe break down, and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a “principle of uncertainty.” We find such a world meaningless and inhuman, but familiarity with Chinese and Japanese art forms might lead us to an altogether new appreciation of this wor
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
For Western philosophers are constantly bedeviled by the discovery that they cannot think outside certain well-worn ruts-that, however hard they may try, their “new” philosophies turn out to be restatements of ancient positions, monist or pluralist, realist or nominalist, vitalist or mechanist. This is because these are the only alternatives which
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
you have been hypnotized or conditioned by an educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly leading to some ultimate Success.
Alan Watts • The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
un-English style of life. For me she became the archetypal representative of relaxed, urbane society seasoned with wit and fantasy—which is what I would like to be understood by the word “civilization.” Francis Croshaw was a
Alan Watts • In My Own Way: An Autobiography
Because the teaching of the Buddha was a way of liberation, it had no other object than the experience of nirvana. The Buddha did not attempt to set forth a consistent philosophical system, trying to satisfy that intellectual curiosity about ultimate things which expects answers in words.
Alan W. Watts • The Way of Zen

the measuring of worth and success in terms of time, and the insistent demand for assurances of a promising future, make it impossible to live freely both in the present and in the “promising” future when it arrives. For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
Alan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
But dhyana as the mental state of the liberated or awakened man is naturally free from the confusion of conventional entities with reality. Our intellectual discomfort in trying to conceive knowing without a distinct “someone” who knows and a distinct “something” which is known, is like the discomfort of arriving at a formal dinner in pajamas. The
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
