Daily Zen - Friday, December 6

...You don't need to do anything, because if you 

see yourself in the correct way, you are all as 

much extraordinary phenomena of nature 

as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, 

the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars...

You are all just like that, and

there is nothing wrong with you at all.

~ Alan Watts

Weekend Zen, October 27-28

You have to cultivate an attitude to life where you're 

not trying to get anything out of it. You pick up

a pebble on the beach, look at it. It's beautiful. 

Don't try and get a sermon out of it. Just enjoy it. 

Don't feel you've got to salve your conscience 

by saying that this is for the advancement

of your aesthetic understanding. Enjoy the pebble.

If you can do that, you become healthy.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Tuesday, September 10

Muddy water is best cleared 

by leaving it alone.

~ Alan Watts 

Daily Zen - Friday, July 5

Waking up to who you are

requires letting go of

who you imagine yourself to be.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Tuesday, April 30

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.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, March 28

There will always be suffering.

But we must not suffer 

over the suffering.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, December 15

The attitude of faith

is to let go, and become 

open to truth, whatever 

it may turn out to be.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, August 25

Waking up to who you are

requires letting go of who

you imagine yourself to be.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Friday, June 17

Meditation is the discovery 

that the point of life is

always arrived at in the

immediate moment.

~ Alan Watts

Weekend Zen, January 8-9

You have to cultivate an attitude to life

where you're not trying to get anything 

out of it.  You pick up a pebble on the 

beach, look at it, it's beautiful. Don't try 

to get a sermon out of it...just enjoy it. 

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Friday, November 19

I had a discussion with a great master...about 

working to translate Zen books into English…

he said, "That's a waste of time. If you really 

understand Zen, you can use any book. 

You could use the bible…Alice in 

Wonderland…the dictionary, because 

the sound of rain needs no translation."

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Wednesday, July 21

This is what Zen means by being detached ––

not being without emotion or feeling, but being

one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, 

and through whom the experiences of the world

pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Tuesday, July 20

The soil in which the meditative mind can

begin is the soil of everyday life –– the strife, 

the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin 

there, and bring order, and from there 

move endlessly. But if you are concerned only

with making order, then that very order 

will bring about its own limitation...

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, October 15

When we dance, the journey itself

is the point, as when we play music

the playing itself is the point. 

And exactly the same thing is true

in meditation. Meditation is the

discovery that the point of life is always

arrived at in the immediate moment.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, September 19

The only way to 

make sense 

out of change is 

to plunge into it, 

move with it, and

join the dance.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Friday, June 28

The more a thing tends 

to be permanent, 

the more it tends

to be lifeless.

~ Alan Watts

Weekend Zen, November 3-4

The meaning of being alive 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.

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Thursday, July 12

Did you ever notice that 

when you give things away, 

you keep getting more? 

That, as you create a vacuum, 

more flows in? 

~ Alan Watts

Daily Zen - Wednesday, August 23

Muddy water is best cleared

by leaving it alone.

~ Alan Watts

Weekend Zen, July 8-9

The art of living...is neither careless drifting

on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past

on the other. It consists in being sensitive to 

each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and

unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

~ Alan Watts