Gay Watson > Quotes

“It is not difficult to see how so many of our negative emotions, our fear and dislike, are directed at those who we fell are impinging on or disrespecting our 'self'; or how we feel that this same self will be enhanced by our latest purchase or even our latest haircut. In this way our experience of the world is always coloured by the needs of 'I', 'me' and 'mine'. The imposition of self as noun upon process self as verb is an aspect of our fear of contingency, and the subsequent grasping for a permanence and certainty that can never be achieved.”
― Gay Watson, A Philosophy of Emptiness

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgement, character and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. WILLIAM JAMES”
― Gay Watson, Attention

“For example, the sixfold base referred to above is that of the five senses, to which Buddhist thought adds a sixth or mental sense. All such models set out to disturb our normal sense of self, presenting not an achieved subject, but rather a process of selfing, the creation of self, which is always changing. It is not that a self does not exist, but rather that it does not exist in the manner we consider it to--as permanent, partless, independent and essential. From the Buddhist perspective ignorance arises when this process of selfing is grasped and identified with as an isolated individual entity, not as a changing process. The self, then, which is Buddhism is to be negated, is an illusion; it is the imposition of an identity with attributes of independence and permanence upon the foundation of the transactional or processual self that arises from the interaction of a network of causes and conditions.”
― Gay Watson, A Philosophy of Emptiness

“Attention is at the heart of psychotherapy: first to bring awareness to problems, patterns and pain, second to control unconsidered reactions and replace them with considered responses.”
― Gay Watson, Attention