阿兰·威尔逊·瓦兹（Alan Wilson Watts，1915-1973），英国哲学家、作家、演说家。因以西方人的身份介绍推广东方思想而出名。一生出版25本著作及众多论文，涉猎的范围广泛。
“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
“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.”
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
“The menu is not the meal.”
“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”
“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
“I 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.”
“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
“The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”
“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.”
“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.”
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
“A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.”
“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.”
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