“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.”

— Alan Watts, “Culture of Counter-Culture”

Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better
for everyone.

Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and
love.

Give up ingenuity, renounce profit,
And bandits and thieves will
disappear.

These three are outward forms alone;
they are not sufficient in themselves.
It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To realize one’s true nature,
To cast off selfishness
And temper desire.

— Laozi, “Tao Te Ching”

“The transformations of culture do not take place in history, they take place in myth. A model, a hypothesis, or a myth is a way of rendering the invisible. Because the unconscious is outside time, it can perceive transformations beyond the limits of the ego. These unconscious perceptions are expressed in art or mythologies. We ourselves are living in an age of cultural transformation, but if you went to the experts to ask for a description, they would tell you nothing. You have to go to those who are at home in the unconscious and in the subconscious, the artists and prophets: through myth and symbol in art, science fiction or religion, they will describe the present by speaking about the future.”

— William I. Thompson

“So what I think we could aim for in the way of human civilization and culture would be a system in which we are all highly aware of our existing interconnection and unity with the whole domain of nature, and therefore do not have to go to all sorts of wild extremes to find that union. In other words, look at the number of people we know who are terrified of silence, and who have to have something going all the time, some noise streaming into their ears. They’re doing that because of their intense sense of loneliness. And so when they feel silent, they feel lonely and they want to escape from it. Or people who just want to get together. As we say, they want to escape from themselves. More people spend more time running away from themselves. Isn’t that wretched? What a definition. What an experience of self if it’s something you’ve always got to be running away from and forgetting. Say you read a mystery story. Why? So you forget yourself. You join a religion. Why? To forget yourself. You get absorbed in a political movement. Why? To forget yourself. Well it must be a pretty miserable kind of self if you have to forget it like that. Now for a person who doesn’t have an isolated sense of self, he has no need to run away from it, because he knows.”

— Alan Watts

“To spread joy, you have to have it. To impart delight, you have to be more or less delightful. And to be delightful is not some factor of trying to make yourself look delightful, it is to do things that are delightful to you. You become thereby delightful to others.

That is to say people who are interesting are people who are interested.

Any person for example who is constantly thinking about all sorts of other things and other people and so on, because they are fascinating, becomes a fascinating person.

But a person who doesn’t think about anybody else, and who’s got very little going on inside their skull, is boring… if you try to enrich your personality by taking a course in ‘how to win friends and influence people,’ or ‘how to be a real person,’ you become just a washout. Because you’ll be in a sort of small circle, as it were. You’ll be like someone who tried to get good nutrition by biting his nails, and then the fingers next, and then half an arm gone and so on. You’re entirely nourishing yourself with yourself.

— Alan Watts

“Your judgments about other people say more about you than they do about the people you’re judging. The reason you can detect the weaknesses and insecurities of others is because you have experienced those same weaknesses and insecurities.

Similarly, the reason you’re able to see beauty in others is because that beauty lives in you as well. The positive possibilities you see for others are, in many ways, your possibilities too.

It’s very helpful to think of the world outside of you as a mirror. Whatever you see beyond you in some way reflects what is inside of you.The most powerful and effective way to improve the world around you, is to improve yourself. The best way to bring real value into your life, is to create real value for others.

What you admire and appreciate and support in others, grows stronger within you as well. When you seek to understand, you will be understood, and when you listen thoughtfully, you will be heard.

Your world is a mirror, so choose each day to show it your best, most loving and supportive face. And you’ll be delighted with the face you see looking back at you.

— Ralph Marston

“I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend — not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I’m not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don’t know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

— Haruki Murakami, “1Q84”

“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

“We hear so much talk now, particularly from the Orient, about egolessness. You are trying to smash this thing which is the only thing that keeps you in play. There’s got to be somebody up there; otherwise you’re not oriented to anything. The self, that’s the great circle, the ship, the ego is the little captain on the bridge. (…) Of course, to reach the transpersonal, you have to go through the personal: you have to have both qualities there.”

— Joseph Campbell