Wanting to get out of pain is the pain; it is not the “reaction” of an “I” distinct from the pain. When you discover this, the desire to escape “merg… - Alan Watts

If it is true that “when the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way,” it is often also true that when the right man uses the wrong means, the wrong means work in the right way.

We must go to the roots of a problem and not invest too much energy fiddling with the symptoms. We shall never get whites and blacks, or Orientals and Occidentals, to unite by trying to tie the different branches of the human tree together with string. Attention must instead be shifted to the stem and the root, where, under the surface, we are one. It will take much less time.

There are, then, two ways of understanding an experience. The first is to compare it with the memories of other experiences, and so to name and define it. This is to interpret it in accordance with the dead and the past. The second is to be aware of it as it is, as when, in the intensity of joy, we forget past and future, let the present be all, and thus do not even stop to think, “I am happy.