Alan Watts

Daily musings curated from the works of Alan Watts—philosopher, writer, orator, and self-styled “spiritual entertainer.” Handpicked since 2009, not a bot.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

You’re only making a mess by trying to put things straight. You’re trying to straighten out a wiggly world and no wonder you’re in trouble.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

The best kind of future we can envisage is one in which we get rid of the idea of the future as an area of experience which solves problems. It doesn’t.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

The secret of waking up from the drama, the endless cycles, is the realization that the only time that there is is the present.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Regard everything that you are doing as play, and don’t imagine for one minute that you’ve got to be serious about it.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Life really is not the avoidance of death. Death is the avoidance of death: the constant terror of death, the constant putting it off, the constant vigilance that one will not die—that is death! What we call life is, fundamentally, willingness to die.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

A person who is escaping from reality will always feel the terror of it.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

We are busily fouling our own nest.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

It is a māyā, an illusion, that we all imagine ourselves to be living inside our skins separated from the rest of the cosmos. We’ve been taught to ignore this enormously significant relationship.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

We think the physical world is full of problems, and we have thought as a valuable instrument to enable us to solve them. And it’s true: thought is a valuable instrument. But valuable (we might ask) for whom?

Valuable for those who can use it. But not so valuable for those who are used by it; those who, in other words, are hoodwinked by thinking into problems which would not exist otherwise, and which really have no reason to exist.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Freedom is one of the things which we cherish as one of our greatest possessions and privileges. But if we deny ourselves freedom, then we don’t really have the power to act morally. Because all true moral acts are not the acts we are bound to do, they are the acts we are free to do.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Any place in space can be considered as the middle of all space, because it’s curved like the surface of a sphere. Any point on it is the middle of it. Everybody’s in the middle. The tiniest little amoeba thinks it’s human. So don’t lose center, see? You’re it.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

The biological process that we call life—with its marvelous proliferation of innumerable patterns and forms—is essentially playful. By that I mean that it doesn’t have a serious purpose beyond itself. It’s an artform like music and like dancing. And the point of these art forms is always their present unfolding; the elaboration of an intelligible design of steps and movements through time.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

The thing is going to end—the thing that we call “I” is going to be as it is in deep sleep with no dreams.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

When our constant attitude to the world is that we want to make something of it, we want to force it to make sense, we want to force it to make order, then, to that extent, the world hides its meaning from us.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

The more it appears to be spiritual—that is to say, something different from, aside from, apart from everyday life—the more false that kind of spirituality will be.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

When you get into the meditation consciousness, you see that nothing is more important than anything else—or less important. There is no way of wasting time, because what is time for except to be wasted?

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

If you relax psychologically and completely let go of things, you will find that you have psychological tonus; energy. And you cannot really do anything skillfully—any art, you can’t talk, you can’t think, you can’t have sexual orgasms, or anything like that—unless you have learned fundamental relaxation.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Every person, every sentient being whatsoever, is “I.” “I” is simply the universe aware of itself at a particular place and time.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

We live for the future mainly because our present is inadequate. And it’s inadequate because we are not seeing it fully; we’re seeing it in terms of abstractions. And if your present is inadequate and is only an abstract version of life, you’re like a person with a non-nutritive diet. You always, therefore, feel hungry, and you keep eating because you want more!

So, in the same way: “More life, please!” “More time, please!” More! More! More! More! Because sometime or other, it’s gotta be alright; the thing I’ve been looking for must happen—I hope!

But, of course, it never does. Not if you live that way. Because when all your goals in life are attained and you are at the top of your profession, or you’ve got beautiful children, or you—whatever it was you wanted—you feel the same as you always felt. You’re still looking for something in the future. And there isn’t any future! Not really.

Therefore, I often say that only people who live in a proper relationship to the material present have any use for making any plans at all. Because then the plans work out; then they’re capable of enjoying them. The other people aren’t.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

Art, with a capital A, is a strictly modern and Western phenomenon. Not so long ago, there were no museums, no galleries, no concert halls, and no special class of people to be known as Artists.

What our museums now exhibit as the “art” of ancient times are religious, magical, and household utensils exquisitely and lovingly made.

[Alan Watts @AlanWattsDaily]

It is almost ridiculous to ask, “Why meditate?” as if it were going out of one’s way to do something bizarre, like lying on a bed of nails.

Why look at the stars or watch clouds? Why go sailing to no fixed destination?

Nothing is really explained by its cause or motivation, for we find only causes behind causes until we can pursue them no longer.