Rosa Bertram Psyche 4 aug 2021, 06:00

Leestijd: 4 minuten

Dit zijn de mooiste 19 quotes van schrijver en filosoof Alan Watts

In de Bedrock-serie ‘De mooiste quotes van…’ delen we regelmatig inspirerende citaten van wijze mensen. Eerder kwamen Mathma Gandhi, Eckart Tolle en Jezus al aan bod. Dit keer delen we de 19 meest inspirerende woorden van Engels filosoof, schrijver, spreker, anglicaans priester, hoogleraar én beoefenaar van de vergelijkende godsdienstwetenschappen. 

Alan Watts is bij velen bekend om zijn prachtige uitspraken over menselijk geluk (volgens hem níét was het door alleen maar te werken), liefde, angst, spiritualiteit, religie en de betekenis van het leven. Hij schreef er wel meer dan 25 boeken over en ontelbare artikelen.

Zijn boeken waren de populairste filosofie boeken van de vorige eeuw. Hoog tijd om zijn werk uit te lichten!

Dit zijn de 19 meest inspirerende quotes van Alan Watts op een rij:

1. “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
2. “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
3. “This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
4. “Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves – mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.”
5. “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.”
6. “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
7. “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
8. “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
9. “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.”
10. “Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on.”
11. “A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.”
12. “Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.”
13. “Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.”
14. “Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.”
15. “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.”
16. “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.”
17. “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
18. “When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.”
19. “Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.”

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• Dit zijn de 20 mooiste quotes van Rupi Kaur
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