Frases de Alan Watts

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Play to Live : Lectures of Alan Watts (1982)
Contexto: Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race — I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 2000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position. As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise.

Fuente: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 63-64
Contexto: At about the age of eleven, I was reading the thrillers of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace concerning Dr. Fu Manchu and other sophisticated Chinese villains, nurturing a secret admiration for these gentlemen because of their opposition to the suet-pudding heroism of our own culture, and because of their refined and mysterious style of life. While other boys dreamed of becoming generals, cowboys, mountain climbers, explorers, and engineers, I wanted to be a Chinese villain. I wanted servants carrying knives in their sleeves, appearing or vanishing without the slightest sound. I wanted a house with secret doors and passages, with Coromandel screens, with ancient scrolls, with ivory and lacquer boxes of exotic poisons, with exquisite brands of tea, with delicate blue porcelain, with jade idols and joss-sticks, and with sonorous gongs.

Play to Live : Lectures of Alan Watts (1982)
Contexto: Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race — I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 2000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position. As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise.

Play to Live : Lectures of Alan Watts (1982)
Contexto: Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race — I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 2000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position. As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise.

Audio lecture "Individual and Society"
Contexto: I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 72

The Way of Zen, Pt. 2, Ch. 2 (1957)

Interviewed on Les Hixon's show "In The Spirit" on WBAI New York (November 1972)

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 96

Fuente: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 224

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 53

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 112

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 104-105

Buddhism, the Religion of No-Religion

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 53-54

Fuente: The Way of Zen (1957), p. 190

Fuente: Psychotherapy, East and West (1961), p. 8

Fuente: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 61

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 84-85

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 74

Fuente: Psychotherapy, East and West (1961), p. 9

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 83

Fuente: The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951), p. 32

The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)

Fuente: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 92

Watts on Wiggles Waves http://wigglesandwaves.blogspot.nl/2004/12/watts-on-wiggles-waves.html, used in the Cosmosis track No Such Thing (2007).

Fuente: Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek (2017), p. 8

Fuente: Psychotherapy, East and West (1961), pp. 3-4

Fuente: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 122