Ik geloof dat westerse kenners met een christelijke achtergrond het boeddhisme van goede werken nooit echt zullen kunnen begrijpen als ze het niet be… - Alan Watts

common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.

Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels, None other holds you that ye live and die And whir upon the wheel, and hug and kiss its spokes of agony, Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness. Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself. Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished.

if we can really understand what we are looking for — that safety is isolation, and what we do to ourselves when we look for it — we shall see that we do not want it at all.