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 d… - Alan Watts

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.

I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I am not a Zen Buddhist, I am not advocating Zen Buddhism, I am not trying to convert anyone to it. I have nothing to sell. I'm an entertainer. That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music. He doesn't want to convert you to anything. He doesn't want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's. And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or a violinist with his violin. I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy.

[T]he wisdom of the East has a strictly practical aim which is not mere knowledge about the universe; it aims at a transformation of the individual and of his feeling for life through experience rather than belief. This experience is psychological or spiritual, not metaphysical, and except in certain specialized fields has no relation to occultism or to what we understand in the West as philosophy.

What is the next step, the practical application? — I will answer that the
absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become
capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline
which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.