They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun.
Alan WattsThere is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
Alan WattsThe reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Alan WattsIf the earth is man's extended body, to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic.
Alan Watts