The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort. - Alan Watts

Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency. It happens to be timeless time. It harmonizes with our very breathing. It does not count our days. Its pulse is not in the stingy spirit of measuring, it is the breathing of eternity.

The universe is everlasting. The reason that the universe is everlasting is that it does not live for itself. Therefore it lasts. Therefore the sage puts himself behind, and finds himself in front, regards his person as outside himself, and his person is preserved. Is it not because he does not live for himself that he realizes himself?

Thus a Buddhist text says, “If the accumulation of false imaginations is cleared away, Enlightenment will appear. But the strange thing is that when people gain Enlightenment they realize that without false imaginations there could be no Enlightenment.