On Living in Zen

by Alan Watts

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone."

"Problems that remain persistently insoluable should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way."

"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."

"If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging, but letting go."

"A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily."

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."

"The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless."

"Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command."

"When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us."

"Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present."

"Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations."

"We don not come into thsi 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."