[I]t would seem that to be incapable of sitting and watching with the mind completely at rest is to be incapable of experiencing the world in which w… - Alan Watts

If we can see that the ego is purely fictitious — that it is merely an image of ourselves coupled with a sensation of muscular strain occasioned by trying to make this image an effective agent to control emotion and direct the nervous operations of our organism — then it becomes clear that what we have called ourselves isn’t able to do anything at all.

The phenomenon moon-in-the-water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. Another poem in the Zenrin Kushu says: Trees show the bodily form of the wind; Waves give vital energy to the moon.g

What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.