Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that playing the violin is a curious and somewhat absurd activity.
Alan Watts uses this metaphor to emphasize the strange nature of human creativity and artistic expression. By comparing the act of playing the violin to scraping a cat's entrails, he invites us to reflect on the unconventional and sometimes bizarre aspects of art, while also celebrating the beauty and skill involved in musical performance.
In practice
During a speech at a music festival to illustrate the oddities of musical instruments.
Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re crazy and you’re blasphemous, and they’ll either put you in jail or in a nut house (which is pretty much the same thing). However if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations, ‘My goodness, I’ve just discovered that I’m God,’ they’ll laugh and say, ‘Oh, congratulations, at last you found out.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.
Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
There are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs.First,use of these drugs may be dangerous.Howev er,every worth-while exploration is dangerous-climb ing mountains,testi ng aircraft,rocket ing into outer space,or collecting botanical specimens in jungles.But if you value knowledge & the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life,you are willing to take the risks.
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.
So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
The call for diversity is about recognizing that in order to be in the conversation come awards season, it goes back to the content that is being produced.
The only thing that's important is the legend created by the picture, and not whether it continues to exist itself.
To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.
Music is the tonal reflection of beauty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.