it is really impossible to appreciate what is meant by the Tao without becoming, in a rather special sense, stupid. - Alan Watts

[T]he soul or personality lives just to the degree that it does not withdraw, that it does not shrink from the full implications of of being one with the body and with the whole realm of natural experience. For although this seems to suggest the absorption of man into the flux of nature, the integrity of personality is far better preserved by the faith of self-giving than the shattering anxiety of self-preservation.

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

"The frightened or lonely person begins at once to think, "I'm afraid," or, "I'm lonely." This is, of course, an attempt to avoid the experience. We don't want to be aware of this present. But as we cannot get out of the present, our only escape is into memories. Here we feel on safe ground, for the past is the fixed and the known — but also, of course, the dead."