50 Best Alan Watts Quotes About Life And Death
The acceptance of death helps you live in the moment.
The meaning of life, according to British philosopher and author, Alan Watts, is just to live. The past and future are meaningless. The Alan Watts quotes about life and death that are listed below talk about the main purpose for existence — living fully in the present and continuing the life cycle.
Death within itself based on his philosophy is a byproduct of life. Existence is the prerequisite of nonexistence or death. The two function together interdependently.
Instead of mourning and fearing death, Watts calls us to accept it. With acceptance, we are awakened to the true fullness of life itself.
More often than not, many of us try to prolong our lives because of the fear of death — as opposed to accepting how inevitable it really is. I think sometimes we fail to realize that death has been a part of life since the dawn of time. All living beings and things will pass on so new generations can live on.
I don’t think anyone really wants to die. At the same time, I don’t think anyone wants to live forever, either. I’m not sure what we want, but I know it’s not death or immortality. To cope, we just find a way to make ourselves more okay with the concept of passing away.
There is slight comfort in knowing that after you die, you’ll always hold a special place in the heart of those who loved you. Frankly, that doesn’t make death any less scary, because it is still unknown.
No one knows what happens when you get to the other side. Once you’re gone, you can’t come back. You never get the chance to tell living all about your experience with death. You don't get a do-over either.
Instead of fearing death, we must accept it. Whether we like it or not it will happen. Death is the only that is promised in life.
Don’t allow the fear of death keep you from living your life before it’s even begun. To live is to go about life as though any day could be your last and that all you have is the present. Every day that your alive should be a celebration of life because you conquered death that day.
If you want to learn more about his perspective on life and what comes after, take a look below to read through some of the best Alan Watts quotes about life and death.
1. Life and death are essential parts of the life cycle.
“Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.”.
2. Happiness should not be placed on the unknown future.
“If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.”
3. The loss of things that make life, equates to death.
“Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.”
4. Death is a natural part of life.
“When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, "There ought not to be winter." That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat. "
5. What you do in your present life is what is meaningful.
“The meaning of being alive is just being alive.”
6. Understanding the point of life is how you overcome the fear of death.
“To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!”
7. Death should be a celebration of life.
“Dying should be one of the great events of life.”
8. Life is meant to be lived without the worry of death, which is inevitable.
“Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.”
9. When someone passes away, there is no right or wrong way to feel.
“There are no wrong feelings.”
10. All that you have is now.
“There is nothing except the eternal now.”
11. When you die the world spins madly on.
“The world is precisely the relationship between the world and its witnesses, and so if there are no eyes in this world, the sun doesn’t make any light, nor do the stars.”
12. Tomorrow is not promised, so plan for the present.
“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live.”
13. Death is not a mistake, it is part of life’s design.
“Everything that happens, everything that I have ever done, everything that anybody else have ever done is part of a harmonious design, that there is no error at all.”
14. You should be asking what's the meaning of life.
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
15. Death is a daily occurrence, we are just blind to it most the time.
“We notice only what we think noteworthy, and therefore our visions highly selective.”
16. Welcome all change.
“We have frustration because we are fighting the changing of things.”
17. Death might be how we wake up from the dream called life.
“This whole world is a phantasmagoria, an amazing illusion.”
18. Life depends on death.
“Everything in this universe depends on everything else.”
19. Life cannot exist without death.
“The positive cannot exist without the negative.”
20. There’s a time to exist and a time to become nonexistent.
“To be implies not to be.”
21. Death is the end of physical existence, but the begging of spiritual existence.
“We have been literally hypnotized by social convention into feeling and sensing that we exist only inside our skins.”
22. Life is temporary.
“Every manifestation of life is impermanent. Our quest to make things permanent, to straighten everything out, to get it fixed is an impossible and insoluble problem.”
23. Death is another form of life.
“You have all eternity through which to live in various forms.”
24. Don’t take life too seriously.
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
25. Only the present exists.
“We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality."
26. The secret to life is full engagement.
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.”
27. The art of living is balance.
“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.”
28. We can only imagine what death will be like until we actually experience it.
“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.”
29. There is no present if you focus on the past or future.
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation."
30. The purpose of life is to live.
“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.”
31. Your life plays a small part in the universe.
“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.”
32. Accept the changes that come with life.
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
33. We come out of this world.
“We do not “come into” this 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.”
34. The longer you live, the closer to death you become.
“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
35. After death, you’ll live on through society.
“Society is our extended mind and body.”
36. A fun short life is better than a long miserable life.
“It’s better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.”
37. Your soul does not die along with your body.
“Your soul is not in your body; your body is in your soul.”
38. Death doesn’t wrongfully occur.
“The sense of wrong is simply a failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.”
39. Live in a state of contentment.
“Don’t hurry anything. Don’t worry about the future. Don’t worry about what progress you’re making. Just me entirely content to be aware of what is.”
40. If you can't live in the present, you can't live anywhere.
"For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere."
41. Death is the greatest question regarding life.
“It’s one of the great wonders of life: What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up?”
42. All you have is today.
“Tomorrow never comes.”
43. Lead a pleasure-filled life.
“The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.”
44. Right now is the point of life.
“This very moment, this very world, this very body is the point. Now. You see? But, if you’re seeking something beyond all the time, you never get with it. You’re never here.”
45. You can reach nirvana if you accept it.
“Nirvana is right where you are, provided that you don’t object to it.”
46. Your destination in life is death.
“To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, To travel well is better than to arrive.”
47. Life is meant to be experienced.
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had."
48. To be alive is to be awake.
"Buddha is the man who woke up, who discovered who he really was."
49. One of the highest pleasures is to be unabsorbed in one's life.
"Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. "
50. Start living life to the fullest now.
“You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now.”
Tamara Sanon is a writer who covers astrology, spirituality, love and relationship topics.