No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Author
Alan Watts
38 quotations
About Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Watts was a British and American writer, speaker, and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Alan WattsI have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
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.
But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
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And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anythi…
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.