The common mistake of the religious celibate has been to suppose that the highest spiritual life absolutely demands the renunciation of sexuality, as… - Alan Watts

Chuang-tzu: ‘‘The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.

The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.

Work is something serious. It’s what you do for a purpose, because you believe that you have to go on living. You have to work to survive, because you think you have to survive. But you don’t have to. And this whole thing doesn’t have to go on, which is why it does. I know that seems paradoxical, but think about it — life is full of examples of this. If I try to impress someone, I usually don’t. If you try too hard with anything, you usually make a mess of it.