For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions. Life exists only at this very moment, … - Alan Watts

it is really impossible to appreciate what is meant by the Tao without becoming, in a rather special sense, stupid.

During World War II a friend of mine used to fly Chinese laborers over the Hump to work on the South end of the Burma Road. The long flight was, of course, ideal for gambling, but since there was not enough cash between them to make the game interesting, the stakes were that the final loser should jump off the plane. No parachute.

There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down — traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order, and of religious belief. As the years go by, there seem to be fewer and fewer rocks to which we can hold, fewer things which we can regard as absolutely right and true, and fixed for all time.