The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Alan Watts”

How to Own Your Weakness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of Self-Righteousness
How to Own Your Weakness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of Self-Righteousness

“Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weakness.”

read article

Inner Sanity Amid World Chaos: The Young Alan Watts on What Makes the Human Struggle Bearable, in a Touching Letter to His Parents
Inner Sanity Amid World Chaos: The Young Alan Watts on What Makes the Human Struggle Bearable, in a Touching Letter to His Parents

From the abyss of WWII, an elevating reminder that we each contain a universe within that contributes to the universe without.

read article

The Yin-Yang of Fortune and Misfortune: Alan Watts on the Art of Learning Not to Think in Terms of Gain and Loss
The Yin-Yang of Fortune and Misfortune: Alan Watts on the Art of Learning Not to Think in Terms of Gain and Loss

“The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad.”

read article

Alan Watts on What Reality Is and How to Become What You Are
Alan Watts on What Reality Is and How to Become What You Are

“Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others.”

read article

The Art of Timing: Alan Watts on the Perils of Hurrying and the Pleasures of Presence
The Art of Timing: Alan Watts on the Perils of Hurrying and the Pleasures of Presence

“For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones — for it is the secret of proper timing.”

read article

Alan Watts on Love, the Meaning of Freedom, and the Only Real Antidote to Fear
Alan Watts on Love, the Meaning of Freedom, and the Only Real Antidote to Fear

“You cannot think simultaneously about listening to the waves and whether you are enjoying listening to the waves.”

read article

Alan Watts on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Our Existential Loneliness
Alan Watts on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Our Existential Loneliness

“If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so… The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.”

read article

Sense of Nonsense: Alan Watts on How We Find Meaning by Surrendering to Meaninglessness
Sense of Nonsense: Alan Watts on How We Find Meaning by Surrendering to Meaninglessness

“It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning.”

read article

Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds
Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: New Year’s Resolutions from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds

Enduring ideas for personal refinement from Seneca, Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sagan, Alan Watts, Emerson, Bruce Lee, Maya Angelou, and more.

read article

Alan Watts on the Difference Between Belief and Faith
Alan Watts on the Difference Between Belief and Faith

How to master the delicate dance of unconditional openness to the truth.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)