Philosopher Alan Watts Quotes & Sayings

Because here's the thing that's wrong with all of the "How to Be Happy" shit that's been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years - here's what nobody realizes about all of this crap: The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I'll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It's what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as "the backwards law" - the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The — Mark Manson

The philosopher Alan Watts, were he alive today, would nod knowingly when told of that experiment. Watts once said, "Only bad music has any meaning." Meaning necessarily entails words, symbols. They point to something other than themselves. Good music doesn't point anywhere. It just is. Likewise, only unhappiness has meaning. That's why we feel compelled to talk about it and have so many words to draw upon. Happiness doesn't require words. — Eric Weiner

The late British-born philosopher Alan Watts, in one of his wonderful lectures on eastern philosophy, used this analogy: "If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I have drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I've drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside. But actually these two sides go together
you cannot have what is 'in here' unless you have what is out there.' " In other words, where we are is vital to who we are. — Eric Weiner