Alan Watts Quotes

Most of us take for granted that time flies, meaning that it passes too quickly. But in the mindful state, time doesn't really pass at all. There is only a single instant of time that keeps renewing itself over and over with infinite variety.

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.

Inspiration comes from everything from the entire world, and it's hard to pinpoint one thing. I can trace one inspiration to the writing of 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji, who writes beautifully about time.

The future never comes. Life is always now.

The present moment dies every moment to become the past , is reborn every moment into the future. All experience is now. Now never ends.

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

There is neither past nor future. There is only the present. Yesterday was the present to you when you experienced it, and tomorrow will be also the present when you experience it. Therefore, experience takes place only in the present, and beyond experience nothing exists.

The timeless moment. - The "moment" has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.

Try as they may to savor the taste of eternity, their thoughts still twist and turn upon the ebb and flow of things in past and future time. But if only their minds could be seized and held steady, they would be still for a while and, for that short moment, they would glimse the splendor of eternity, which is forever still.

All eternity is in the moment.

If your mind is pure, all buddha-lands are pure.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

To the soul, there is no past and no future; all is, and will be ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed on, but there is really no such thing.

Your mind is nirvana.

Buddhism is really, one of its main practices is understanding and experiencing compassion, and how that ultimately is a road to happiness.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

Nothing is to come, and nothing past: But an eternal now, does always last.

And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.

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 present moment, if you think about it, is the only time there is. No matter what time it is, it is always now.

God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. The present is the only time there is.

The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden.

I have a profound affection for Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism's particular ways of meditating.

If the mind wants to comprehend reality, it will have to come out of the past and the future. But coming out of the past and the future, it is no longer the mind at all. Hence the insistence of all the great masters of the world that the door to reality is no-mind.

The moment is all there is now. All there is is now. That's what God is, too. God is only now.