Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
When no risk is taken there is no freedom.
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
The individual is an aperture through which the whole energy of the universe is aware of itself.
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are
conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money . . . But it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth.
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
To see the light, it is only necessary to stop dreaming and open the eyes.
Copyright © 2021 by Alan Watts. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
