There is little doubt concerning Alan Watts’ impact on bringing Zen thought to the West. His classic treatise The Way of Zen is a must read for anyone looking to take their understand of the history and applicability of these principles to the next level.
The quotes included here are some of my favorite from The Way of Zen. I use them for daily inspiration as I seek to better understand the role the ‘self’ plays in addiction and sobriety.
17 Awesome Quotes from The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
- I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done… For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final… so it comes about that I am more closely associated with what no longer exists that with what actually is!
– This is why it may be so hard to change your perception of yourself, your habits, and, by extension, your future. I believe what Alan Watts would like us to do is spend more time in the present and disassociate from past events and perceptions of self which no longer apply. For me, this is my juvenile ‘party guy’ self that saw me through college, my twenties, thirties, and sadly forties. “Party guy” doesn’t define me any longer and hasn’t for quite some time. - It is notorious that most revolutions establish worse tyrannies than they destroy.
– The more things change, the more they stay the same, only worse - Un-Selfconsciousness is a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.
– This one hits home, and Alan Watts might agree since he struggled with Alcoholism. It’s the voice in the back of your mind always looking for that next opportunity to drink. I, for one, cannot wait to be rid of him. - Consider for a moment that it is impossible to isolate a single fact, all by itself. Facts come in pairs at the very least, for a single body is inconceivable apart from the space in which it hangs.
– Everything exists in relation to everything else. - Transitoriness is depressing only to the mind which insists upon trying to grasp. But to the mind which lets go of and moves with the flow of change… like a ball in a mountain stream, the sense of transience or emptiness becomes a kind of ecstasy.
– As I’ve written about previously impermanence can work for us. When we understand this, we can accomplish great things. I view my alcohol use disorder as transitory and this belief empowers me to to transform it into sobriety. - Reality in itself is neither permanent or impermanent; it cannot be categorized. But when one tries to hold on to it, change is everywhere apparent, since, like one’s shadow, the faster one pursues it, the faster it flees.
– While I’m actively working to rewire my brain and rebuild my body, I realize I’m also aging and someday this body I’m working so hard presently to rebuild will one day be a corpse. I’m okay with that. You should be committed to doing the best you can do right now and in each right now moving forward until you no longer can. - To try not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp, since its motivation is the same – my urgent desire to save myself from difficulty.
– Alan Watts was big on exploring Zen Catch 22’s. I relate this to how meditation caused marijuana to up and leave me around day 35. I wasn’t grasping onto it, I wasn’t pushing it away, it just left of its own accord. I continue to fight with alcohol, but yesterday I made the decision to let it know it’s not welcome in my life anymore. Let’s see if it follows marijuana out the door. - What is singled out exists only in relation to its own opposite… pleasure is defined by pain, life is defined by death, and motion is defined by stillness.
– And alcoholism is defined by sobriety - Awakening will not come to pass when one is trying to escape or change… or get away from the particular experience in which one finds oneself in this moment. Every such attempt is a manifestation of grasping.
– Again, I’m not pushing alcoholism away, I’m disinviting it from my life. Hey, alcohol, don’t let the door hit you in the ass! - The human situation is seen for what it is – a quenching of thirst with salt water, a pursuit of goals which simply require the pursuit of other goals, a clutching of objects which the swift course of time renders as insubstantial as mist.
– Quenching of thirst with salt water sure sounds a lot like what happens to me when I down the better part of a 12 pack. - To succeed is always to fail – in the sense that the more one succeeds in anything, the greater the need to go on succeeding. To eat is to survive to be hungry.
– When I succeed in getting lit, I survive the hangover, only to seek out the buzz again. Mix and repeat. You know, this kind of success sure looks like failure to me now. - The sensation of comfort can be maintained only in relation to the sensation of discomfort.
– When we’re drunk or high all the time, being sober becomes uncomfortable, until we’re sober all the time, then the opposite becomes reality. That’s my personal experience anyway. - When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, the entire relationship between subject and object, knower and known, undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change.
– Removing the ‘I’ from the equation has been quite transformative for me in my sobriety journey. You may find the same to be true if you give it a try. - Nothing is more relative than our sense of the length of time… and death, when it comes, is always too soon.
– Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow… - This (Zen) is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going; it is a philosophy of not making where one is going so much more important than where one is that there will be no point in going.
– What Alan Watts is saying is, it’s all about the here and now not about the then and there. In other words, you should focus on being present and the rest will take care of itself. - For all ideas of self-improvement and of becoming or getting something in the future relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. To follow them is to give ever more reality to that image.
– You may find that in letting go of the abstract image of yourself, self improvement and a better future become a given. - When the sense of subjective isolation vanishes, the world is no longer felt as an intractable object.
– Removing the ‘I’ from the problems you face encourages the solutions present themselves. I now experience this miracle everyday.
So those are my favorite Alan Watts quotes from The Art of the Zen. If you have some you’d like to share, please include them in the comments below.
The morning glory which blooms for an hour
-Alan Watts, The Art of Zen
Differs not at heart from the giant pine,
Which lives for a thousand years.
