“when somebody plays music, you listen. you just follow those sounds, and eventually you understand the music. the point can't be explained in words because music is not words, but after listening for a while, you understand the point of it, and that point is the music itself. in exactly the same way, you can listen to all experiences.” PhilosophyMeditationEastern PhilosophyEsoterism Book:Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation Source: Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation
“But spontaneity is not by any means a blind, disorderly urge, a mere power of caprice. A philosophy restricted to the alternatives of conventional language has no way of conceiving an intelligence which does not work according to plan, according to a one-at-a-time order of thought. Yet the concrete evidence of such an intelligence is right to hand in our own thoughtlessly ordered bodies. For the Tao does not 'know' how it produces the universe just as we do not 'know' how we construct our brains.” PhilosophyIntelligenceTaoismSpontaneity Book:The Way of Zen Source: The Way of Zen
“I have always thought that all philosophical debates are ultimately between the partisans of structure and the partisans of "goo.” Philosophy Book:The Essential Alan Watts Source: The Essential Alan Watts
“It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature-whether theological or technological-is a kind of schizophrenia. It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions.” PhilosophyHuman NatureTheologyChineseTaoism Book:The Way of Zen Source: The Way of Zen