One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
Alan Watts • The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
to identify satori with the consequent feeling of relief, with the sense of relaxation, is quite misleading, for the satori is the letting go and not the feeling of it. The conscious aspect of the Zen life is not, therefore, satori–not the “original mind”-but everything one is left free to do and to see and feel when the cramp in the mind has been
... See moreAlan W. Watts • The Way of Zen
Of course it sounds as if it were the most abject fatalism to have to admit that I am what I am, and that no escape or division is possible. It seems that if I am afraid, then I am “stuck” with fear. But in fact I am chained to the fear only so long as I am trying to get away from it. On the other hand, when I do not try to get away I discover that
... See moreAlan Watts • Wisdom of Insecurity
When you are worried, and you say to yourself, “All right, worry. Get with that worry,” it neutralizes the worry because you are not worrying about not worrying anymore.